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Le Marche – Tuesday: The Gastronomic Landscape, Shrine & Wine

We began our Tuesday last week in a room at Garofoli Winery, with a talk by Dott. Antonio Attorre (President of Slow Food Marche and teacher at the Università Politecnica delle Marche) about Le Marche as a food-producing region, which is largely a story about landscape. While – as we’d previously learned – Italy is 80% mountains, which affects everything about the country; this region has 13 rivers, which means 13 valleys and 13 different food traditions. It is further divided into mountain-dwellers and a coastal population, and still shows the pattern of the feudal system that marked it in previous centuries: houses are surrounded by a small piece of land, so it is not a system of intensive farming, but a more fragmented patchwork of vines and olive groves.

We’d heard at some length the afternoon before (during a talk on a Presidia product, the Portonovo “mosciolo” / wild mussel) that in coastal areas, the farmers who worked land in the hills also often doubled as fishermen, in order to supplement their diet and income with seafood. So, we were told, somewhat unique in Italian cuisine is Le Marche’s preference for dishes that combine vegetables with seafood. (To be honest, we didn’t notice many vegetables in the food we ate last week, but we had been noticing, in Parma, the segregation of vegetables and meats which are, where both occur in a meal, often served in different courses.) He also mentioned that the seafood recipes of the region have an obvious historical link with local meat-based cuisine, since the techniques for cooking fish often mirror those for meat – you simply substitute the protein source.

Le Marche, he said, was the first region in Italy to embrace organics, and ten years ago began organic trials. It also pioneered beef certification (for traceability, post-BSE), and seven years ago was able to win EU exemptions for small scale cheese producers who had been crippled by regulations designed for large scale operations. He mentioned A.S.S.A.M., l’Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare Marche, which provides research and advice for the region’s agricultural industries.


Next we had a talk about and lunched on three Le Marche Presidia products: the Mele Rosa dei Monti Sibillini (a sweet, long-lasting heritage apple, mountain-grown, brought back from the brink of extinction); Salame di Fabriano (a seasonal, hand-cut salami, with cubes of lard and whole peppercorns, made from prime prosciutto-grade pork); and Pecorino dei Monte Sibillini (pecorino fresco, a young, soft version of the sheep’s milk cheese we’ve been happily encountering at every turn).


Over the lingering lunch hour we took a side trip – thankfully at the wise and persistent urging of our art history grad Fabi – to see the Basilica del Santuario di Loreto, a stunning basilica built around the shrine of Santa Casa Maria (the Virgin Mary’s house, in which the Enunciation is said to have taken place). It had been, so they say, spirited away from Nazareth by the angels, and arrived here via Croatia in the fourteenth century. It was encapsulated in the basilica in 1507 and has been visited by pilgrims ever since.

We returned to Garofoli for a talk and tasting to embrace the region’s long wine-making tradition, dating back to those early vinificators, the Etruscans, who took a turn of influence here.

Started as a family enterprise in 1871, it is run today by the brothers Gianfranco and Carlo. Carlo is the enologist, and he gave us a short history of the region’s wines, and the transition of Italian wines from the 1950s through the present. We had been hearing a lot about Verdicchio, and he explained its status as the first DOC wine of the area.

Some sources, he said, claim it has been grown in Le Marche for 2000 years, but he would be willing to bet on the past 150 for sure. This varietal grows well in the area, usually within 20 km of the sea, favouring the mild climate and sandier soil, but is susceptible to diseases, especially moulds, and matures quite late. While exposure and altitude affect the alcohol content and acidity of wines, the interesting piece of trivia he shared about Verdicchio grapes is that the river Esino, which empties into the Adriatic north of Ancona, separates production areas into yields of higher and lower acidity.

Verdicchio began as a strong, high-alcohol wine, but has been refined into a fruitier, milder wine with a lower alcohol content. I think he was saying this was a result of American tastes for such wines, and is also the product of Italian wine-making efforts over the past thirty years to stabilise the quality of wines, while retaining their individual characteristics.

He talked about his growing methods, which we’d learned a bit about in our wine history classes. He said that previously they’d used four vines per plant but discovered that using only one would give more light to the plant, make it hardier and healthier, and therefore give a more reliable yield with less need for fertiliser. And then we tasted some wines (a couple of Verdicchios: Podium and Serra Fiorese, and a red from the other big Le Marche grape, Montepulciano: Grosso Agontano) after which we rampaged through the shop and then had a free supper. Which we enjoyed very much at Trattoria La Rocca, where – after running amok in the enoteca next door – we dined on fresh anchovies, fried sardines, crab pasta, battered wee fish and a lovely, lovely salad. And a sort of creamy lemon slurpee for dessert, followed by a very potent ‘fisherman’s coffee’ and a pleasant amble back to the hotel along the tree-lined sea front.

Ghosts of the orange tree, Porto San Giorgio.

Le Marche – Our Day of Pork


View from a Trattoria.

The topic of vegetarianism has been well discussed by all of us on this pork-fest we call food school. This is repeatedly no course for vegetarians; even as the borderline veggies among us are starting to scramble back to the clean side of the line, the omnivores are talking more and more obsessively about vegetables, between bites of whatever part of the pig we’re eating this meal. It was all taken to extremes on Wednesday when we had a food history lecture on pork, followed by a bit of salumi, followed by a six course meal of… pork.


Salumi, including (I hope I have these right): Ciavuscolo, a soft, spreadable salami flavoured with garlic; Salame di Fabriano, a knife-cut salami with whole peppercorns; and Testa in Cassetta, or head-cheese, this one including olives and almonds.

The lecture, by Prof. Hermes Ercoli, Università degli Studi di Macerata, took place in the breathtaking (view as well as temperature, which slowly plummeted through the afternoon) hilltop setting of Trattoria Damiani e Rossi.


First course: Filetto di maiale farcito con il suo fegato e pistacchi, salsa di bergamotto (the bergamot is what looks here like lemon rind but tastes like, well, Earl Grey tea!)

We watched the sun set over the Sibilline Mountains while we heard about the pig’s rise and fall in myth, religion and practical matters of the table (an excellent post-script for me, having listened only last week to Barbara Klar’s similarly broad-ranging treatment in Swine Before Pearls on CBC).


Second course: Maccheroni con il sugo delle costine.

We heard about the ‘intolerance soup‘ made of pork that was served in a far-right sponsored soup kitchen in Paris only last year, which sought to divide the hungry – through religious dietary observance – into the ‘real French’ and those who the group sought to exclude through a culture of food.


Third course: Zuppetta di trippa di mailale con fagiolina del lago Trasimeno (tripe soup: who knew it could be so delicate?)

Then on to the pig’s misfortunes which begin in etymology, its name tangling with the human body in Latin languages; in Italian, porco/corpo; in Latin, porcus/corpus; in French, porc/corp; and so on.


Fourth course: Polenta con sangue di maiale al profumo di arance. (Blood flavoured with oranges; we couldn’t quite work out, even after eating, which part was blood)

A forest-dwelling creature, and one whose diet makes it a competitor for food with a hungry human population, the pig’s fortunes suffered with the historical rise in agriculture and the reduction of its habitat. And religion stuck its oar in. St. Clement of Alexandria bad-mouthed it for its omnivorous and unwholesome appetites which might contaminate those who ate it with similar behaviours, and advised that a pure life is one without pork. Unfortunately for believers in pure theory, at the end of the Roman Empire, with Goths battling the Byzantines all over Le Marche, the area suffered a 98% reduction in its population, with whole villages committing suicide in times of imminent starvation. So the hungry inhabitants turned back to more practical pagan worship which at least allowed them to eat something that was gaining ground as the forest began to reclaim agricultural land.


Course five: Sella di Maiale arrostita con castagne e tartufo nero (with —ahh, even a bit of crackling, Italian style).

Needing to restore control, the pragmatists in the Christian church had to think of something. In accordance with the long tradition of Christian colonisation of pagan festivals, Feriae Sementivae, the winter feast of Ceres (Cerere / Demeter), the Roman goddess of grain, to whom swine were sacrificed, morphed into the feast of St. Anthony, who picked up the Christian thread and became friend to swine. At his feast there might be blessing of the animals, or the serving of bread, the crumbs of which would be taken home for the animals.


And finally, dessert: Savarin con gelato di pistacchi salata (as far as we could see, pork-free, but I’m not betting my life on that)

There is much more pig mythology we didn’t get into, and much more to say about pigs in general than can be reported here, but our speaker left us with a few tantalising thoughts: pigs helped us to reinvent our world, he suggested; should the American flag not more appropriately feature the hot dog rather than the stars or stripes?

A week in Le Marche – Olives


Ok, so I had never heard of Le Marche before I came to Italy. Well I had, I just didn’t know what “The Marches” meant – it was a phrase out of turn of the century literature, I thought; and if I’d thought about it I probably would have believed it was an old demarcation that no longer existed. And in fact the term, meaning “borders” or “boundaries” has been used to describe the margins of many different countries.

In Italy, the name was bandied around through history due to this area’s position between the north and south of Italy, which at one time marked the border of the Holy Roman Empire. It has been settled since paleolithic times, changing hands at intervals as the Picini gave way to the Romans who gave way to the Goths who gave way to alternating spheres of ownership by emperors and the papacy, until the fiefdoms gave way to free communes, and the area joined the kingdom of Italy in 1860 and that gave way to the republic in 1946. Now here we are in the modern era, watching successive colonisations by various armies of tourist and agribusiness.

We stayed pretty firmly in the central province of Ancona for our visit, named by previous owners for the “elbow” (agkonas)/Ancona, the eponymous industrial port that sits above Monte Conero, but caught glimpses of the others. Facing the Dalmation coast, Ancona is a big chunk of mountainous land well-provided with beaches for summer visitors.

Our hotel was in Porto San Giorgio, an off-season seaside town if ever there was one, the fronds of its palm trees bound up in bamboo against the winter storms, shutters drawn, shops and restaurants closed for the season. Or maybe not, since there are apparently a lot of out-of-towners from Rome and elsewhere with a proprietorial toe in the Adriatic who come up for weekends.


Among the many delights we tasted over the week, olive ascolane deserve special mention. These Italian equivalents of scotch eggs are made from olives (originally the nice big juicy Ascolana olives, of course) stuffed with or around meat filling, then breaded and fried. Lesser versions can be found in almost any supermarket in Italy, and there are many home-made versions. The ones we had were particularly fresh and tasty, so we’re spoiled (yet again) for life.


We managed to hit a warm, breezy day for our tour round the 25 hectare olive grove at Azienda del Carmine, where they grow Ascolana (the first to ripen, in May), Leccino (a smaller olive), Frantoio (the name means ‘olive press’ we learned), and other varietals.

Our translator explains the use of pheromone traps which the growers use to check the progress of the Bactrocera oleae, the olive fruit fly which is the main pest for olive growers. It lays eggs in the olives which not only destroy the fruit but make the crop unpalatable for use in olive oil; because of the volume of olives you need to put through the press, it’s impractical to try to sort the damaged olives, so prevention and chemicals are the only weapons there are. Instead of routinely treating their trees with pesticides as some of their neighbours do, these growers check the trees and fruit for flies and then treat only infested trees. Unfortunately it’s been a bad year for them this year.


Every ten years, the olive trees need a rigorous pruning, which takes them a year or two to recover from, so the grove is pruned in sequence, 5 hectares at a time.

After a welcome opportunity renewing and showing off our olive oil-tasting skills on a couple of their top oils, we were treated to a big spread of breads, cheeses, salumi and salads.

Yep, marvellous mozzarella – and a couple of different pecorinos, a young one (fresco) and a stagionato, all delicious with splodges of condiments which included a peperoncino jelly. The revelation for many of us was the wonderful combination of top quality olive oil taken in a single lingering mouthful with a chocolate shot cup, and an equally surprising and equally fine idea: drizzled over vanilla gelato.

Wednesday: Culatello and the tale of the black pigs

What a difference Wednesday’s trip was from Tuesday’s. We travelled to the village of Polesine Parmense to visit the Antica Corte Pallavicina – home of some prized artesanal Culatello di Zibello and the much revered Al Cavallino Bianco (“white pony”) restaurant.

Polesine’s very name, according to our guide, means village that has been destroyed many times by the Po River (Po + lesionare/to damage), which has a history of flooding. Although it was very low when we were there – we couldn’t see any water at all from the banks we walked along – it did overwhelm this area massively in the floods of 2000 (which had also put another of the restaurants we’ve visited under water). The climate favours culatello production: high humidity coupled with great heat in the summer and cold temperatures – normally below freezing – in the winter. Artisanal culatello aging takes place in cellars, using windows to regulate the flow of air rather than automated humidity and temperature controls used in industrial production.

One of the cattle to be seen on the property where, later this summer, a high end Agriturismo will be opening, with guest rooms in the castle.

The place is owned by by the remarkable Spigaroli brothers. We were shown round by Luciano, the businessman; Massimo – a distinguished chef and president of the Culatello di Zabello consortium – was unfortunately away, but we heard a lot about him both from his brother and from last year’s students. Massimo’s passion for pigs is legendary, and he’s gone to astonishing lengths to build the farm’s heritage breed herd of 500 – the only free range culatello pigs in Italy we were told. This fact is not due to the innate cruelty of the Italians, but to the scarcity of land available to most pig farmers here (but why then, I wondered, is there free range pig farming in tiny wee England? More arable land than mountainous Italy, at a guess. And perhaps due in some part to the highly vocal, highly visible animal welfare lobby in that country which as far as I can tell has no real counterpart in Italy).

The pigs Massimo has found and raises to use for Culatello di Zibello for this operation are black pigs, similar to Spain’s Pata Negra (cerdo ibérico) pigs. They are free range only in the summer months and cost a lot to raise, because they are not suited to rearing indoors in crowded sheds like the prosciutto pigs. He wanted to raise them in traditional ways, using cereals produced on the farm. The only way he can do this is to fund the Culatello di Zibello production with income from the restaurant.

We started in the production area where some new pork thighs had just arrived. It’s a very small production, deliberately so, to control quality. The three men – Roberto, Carlo and Kumar (a vegtarian from India) – working the table were trimming and preparing the meat, which arrives in the same shape, more or less, as a prosciutto ham, but only the large part of the thigh is used, the bone is removed, and the meat is sewn into a pig bladder. The size of the pigs used for culatello production is different as well: these porkers are 250-300kg when they are slaughtered (as opposed to the 140kg prosciutto pigs – which are again bigger than commercial pigs from Northern Europe). So that makes them more expensive, because it costs more to raise pigs to this weight.

Roberto prepares to trim the ham. After he has trimmed and de-boned it, it’s whacked and trimmed precisely into its characteristic pear shape, then trussed, rubbed with locally produced Fontana wine and garlic, seasoned with salt and black pepper, and then refrigerated for ten days.

After ten days, during which time the ham is massaged daily, the ham is washed and placed in a pork bladder. Roberto stitches it closed:

and weaves it into its characteristic shape with string:

Done:

An artesanal Culatello di Zubello will carry three labels: one identifying it as Culatello di Zibello; one with the label of the consortium; and one with the label of the producer. What is sold in restaurants or delis as simply “culatello” is not produced in accordance with the consortium’s standards; what is sold as Culatello di Zibello DOP (and lacks that third tag) is not artesanal, using traditional aging cellars, but has been produced in the eight villages of the allowed region and is likely to be the product of an industrial scale production.

We moved into the cellars to inspect the culatellos hanging from the rafters, enjoying the Po breezes.

Moulds on the outside of the ham are part of the aging process, as the hams develop their character.

Some Culatello di Zibello that has been aged 21 months and sliced in the typical ultra-thin slices — which you can and should eat with your fingers.

Finally got to taste some lardo. And it was… lardy. But it had definite texture, a bit chewy, and the seasoning was lovely. Perhaps on hot toast it would be better. But I was swiftly distracted by the arrival of some awesome tortelli (hot and flowing with melting cheese and spinach.. or was it chard) and some interestingly flattened gnocchi in a tomato sauce.

A fantastic cheese tray. Top row: not sure about the first one; second one is Gorgonzola (dolce); then Pecorino Toscano; Parmigiano Reggiano (24 months); bottom row: something very ripe and runny with black pepper coating (not sure what it was); bottom right-ish is Caprese (goat cheese) wrapped in chestnut leaves.

Dessert: a delicious, mildly alcoholic, vaguely custard-like, pebbled with almondy? crumbs signature dessert accompanied by gelato (frutta di bosco – berries or mele – apple). After coffee we sampled some of the house-made liqueurs and with the full complement of Antica Corte Pallavicina wares in front of us – half a dozen kinds of salami, Culatello di Zibello, wines, liqueurs – forthwith invested collectively and decisively in the retail side of the business.

Tuesday: the pig breeder and then lunch at La Nonna Bianca

Phew. I have been in more than one barn in my time but never one that smelled like Tuesday’s. This was a day to sober the hardiest meat eater: when we parted ways at the end of it I was reminded of people leaving a funeral.

Our guide through this version of hell was Francesco Sciarrone, the veterinarian and meat inspector who had previously talked to us about animal welfare and slaughterhouses. He and the pig breeder answered questions afterward, and at one point someone asked him how he felt about eating pork, witnessing as he does the entire grim saga from industrial pig production through slaughter every day.

Traditionally, he observed, people ate meat once a week, or maybe every couple of weeks; nowadays we expect meat every day, even several times a day. So, his implicit reply was: if you want meat every day, this is the market economy’s way of fulfilling that request.

He told us he himself doesn’t eat meat every day; he has it maybe once a week, and for that he goes to the butcher in his town, so he knows how the meat was raised and who is slaughtering and processing it. So he pays four, five or maybe six times what we’d pay for the meat of the animals in those hellish sheds, but that’s what it costs to raise it humanely. And he’s fortunate to be in a part of the world where small scale butchers have not yet been entirely driven out of business by supermarkets. (I recently saw some figures for England: The number of butchers in Britain has declined from 22,900 in 1980 to 6,600 in 2005.)

I guess that makes it vote with your feet time. Here’s the Italian version of where that pork chop on your plate comes from:

We kitted up in some protective plastic for the occasion and that kept the muck off us (but was more for the protection of the pigs from infection). The smell when we walked in to the sow shed was overpowering, overwhelming, persistent.

According to the EU, “Sow stalls are the most widely used housing system within the EU because they allow individual rationing, prevent aggression, are easy to manage and occupy little space. However, in some member states, the use of individual stalls for pregnant sows has been made illegal or is currently being phased out.” Signatory states have until 2013 to change their systems, but the stalls (aka gestation crates) can still be used to confine the sows for up to four weeks after gestation, according to the US Humane Society’s report on the subject (they also have a short video clip about sow stalls on their website). I was grateful to learn that the UK has banned these since 1999. I don’t know if there’s legislation governing this in Canada, but the largest pork producer in the US has just announced its intention to do away with them.

Anyway, here – from the point of insemination (usually artificial), for at least the next three weeks – they stand, sit or lie down, because that’s all they can do.

When after 21 days they are seen to be definitely pregnant, they are moved to another barn – which we didn’t see – to finish the gestation period, about three more months. (My reading tells me that at least 60 to 70% of US sows are housed in stalls throughout the entire gestation.) Presumably the ones who didn’t get pregnant the first time get to stand there for another round. If they’re lucky.

Then when they are ready to give birth, it’s into the farrowing crates; these too are designed so that the sow cannot turn or move other than to stand, sit and lie down, with what is called a “creep” area for the piglets to move around her. She is barricaded from them so that she does not lie on them (and damage the product). Even when they are safe from crushing, the farmer said there would be around a 10 percent mortality among the piglets, mainly from issues to do with development and feeding.

Once the piglets are weaned (by law when they are at least 4 weeks old), the sows are returned to what the EU coyly calls “service accommodation,” namely, in most cases, sow stalls. They can expect to live like this, moving back and forth from one crate to another, for their entire lives, which for good breeders last 6-7 litters (around 3 years). Longer lives than the pigs we eat, which are slaughtered when they reach prosciutto weight – about 9 months and 140kg.

When they’re weaned, the piglets move into teen (weaner) housing, kept in family groups. Not because we love them so, but because it keeps them from fighting for hierarchy and damaging the product. The promising ones – from a size point of view – are branded on the hips with PP – Per Prosciutto. We noticed this on some of the hams we saw at the prosciuttificio the day before.

This is all the fresh air these pigs get in their lifetimes.

When you live in conditions like this, you get sick. This was the top of the nearly overflowing bin we passed on the way into the barn. Before slaughter, there’s a resting period for animals who’ve been on medication, to try to get the drugs out of their system – to minimise harm to the people who eat the product.

The illumination beyond the door, which looks like daylight, comes from the windowed or skylit outer areas of these barns; it’s not an outdoor run.

Again, kept in family or familiar groups to keep them from fighting. I guess this is where they stay either until they reach slaughter weight or until they are transferred to another farm to be “finished”. One thing I am guiltily grateful for: that our tour did not take place in the heat of summer, which I’m told is hot and humid – temperatures in the thirties and forties (celcius). I cannot imagine what those sheds must be like then.

The smell hung around for hours as we debriefed soberly afterwards at La Nonna Bianca, the very trattoria that waylayed Carlo Petrini on his way to talk to us. Even without the salumi, which we declined, the meal was pork-heavy: this is after all pork country. We each said, I’m sure, our private apologies to the pigs on our plates. I mulled over what Petrini had said when asked about animal welfare, something poetic about how you eat the violence you wreak on other living beings.

So, the food began its march across our tables. Petrini’s favourite: tortelli verdi (what we’d call ravioli, though by definition, it seems that here, ravioli are meal-filled pasta; these vegetable ones are filled with ricotta and chard, or was it spinach), followed by equally sublime tortelli di zucca (sweet pumpkin filling) (–they disappeared too quickly to photograph), both served with butter and parmigiano–reggiano.

Coppa di maiale arrosto con patate all antico – rich, soft pork with fabulous pan-roasted potatoes, golden and tasty and speckled with crispy bits of rosemary.

Guanciale brasato con crostoni di polenta (braised pork cheeks) with fried polenta (getting a little full by this point..)

Gorgeous desserts – a kind of standalone creme brulee, a fruit tart and chocolate pudding.

Lodi: mozzarella and ricotta

We had a day out today, and watched some small scale mozzarella cheese making in the Istituto Sperimentale Lattiero Caseario/Institute of Dairy Science in Lodi, not far from Milan. The lab is equipped with a cheese making facility and over the course of our day-long visit, the master cheesemaker whipped up a batch of mozzarella and a little ricotta for us.


Mozzarella curd: whole milk from the institute’s dairy farm has been acidified (lowering the pH from 6.8 to 5.85) with citric acid (interesting to see it’s useful for more than cleaning one’s kettle).


Mozzarella curd: cut, drained, cut and then left to drain again.


Mozzarella curd: cut, drained, cut, drained and now cut again.


Mozzarella curd: cut, drained, cut, drained, cut, drained and then put into the basin; cut once again. Then some hot water (around 90 degrees c) is added and the stretching begins.

Hand stretching the curd – a slower, lower-yield way to make mozza. The advantages are that any problems with texture can be dealt with right away, so you end up with a better quality cheese. But you’d go bust doing it: the volume of milk you need to process to make mozzarella, together with the greater loss of milk solids into the liquid, and the slower processing (man ain’t no machine) just aren’t cost effective these days.

Stretching the cheese; shaping it into balls. Stretchy stuff with characteristic threads (elongated casein strands, eh?): practical heat and chemistry.


Hand-adjusting the steam-heated vats to start making ricotta from the mozzarella whey. Ricotta, we now know, means ri-cotta, or re-cooked/twice cooked. (Want to make your own? Here’s an illustrated guide.)


The whey starts off at the same pH as the mozzarella curd (around 5.85 – lowered from milk’s natural pH of 6.8). Sodium hydroxide was added in order to raise the pH to what’s needed for ricotta, between 6 and 6.5; the pH is regulated and if it goes too high, more citric acid can be added to lower it again. In the process we watched, there was a mistake – the pH gauge was too close to the sodium hydroxide when that was added, and gave a faulty reading, so it never quite worked out while we were watching. Which was instructive: we saw the effect of curds that were too small to bind properly for ricotta. However, under optimum conditions, the whey begins to coagulate and – after adding milk (around 6% in this case, although up to 20% might be used) – the foam needs to be skimmed off. The ricotta is then poured into baskets to drain and set, and is used most often in pasta and cake fillings.


In one of the labs: Roberto Giangiacomo tells us about a piece of equipment called ‘the sniffer’ while Richard Gere and Clive Owen look on.