This morning we drove roughly 30 minutes into the Abruzzi countryside to an “Agriturismo” an innovation found predominantly, I think, in southern Europe. An Agriturismo is a working farm with a restaurant and or Inn attached as an adjunct business. According to Fabrizzo, the guide/owner of Italia Sweet Italia tours, the agriturismo program was started in the lates 80’s early 90’s as a way to preserve small family farms which were rapidly being abandoned at the time.
According to Piena, one of the owners of the property, the only ingredient items they purchase outright are flour, coffee and sugar. Everything else is derived from animals and vegetables grown on the farm.
We started our cooking adventure that morning by making “la pizza scemo” or stupid pizza. Stupid pizza is thought to have been created by the jewish population which arrived as refugees from eastern europe in the 14th-15th centuries. Similar to matza, the traditional unleavened bread served at passover as flour and oil are the predominant ingredients, this bread is ever so slightly leavened, not by yeast as in traditional breads, by white wine as the sugar in the wine creates gasses which allow the dough to barely rise.
Now, I’m great at hanging wall paper but I suck at house painting. In the area of culinary skills I consider myself to be an above average cook but I suck as a baker. However, Zia Miranda was a baker after my own heart as when one of the group asked for measurements of the oil and wine with the flour Zia Miranda replied without missing a stroke “Quando è abbastanza” (when it’s enough). A cook after my own heart as I rarely measure things precisely, my hand is my measuring spoon set though I will admit to using measuring cups when necessary though rarely do I level them off. Thus, given that baking is very much a chemical reaction in part driven by fairly precise ratios of ingredients to one another, I am a much better cook than I am a baker. But I did get a chance to get my hands a little messy after the fact.
The pizza, and the stew that was going to be our lunch, where cooked on an outdoor hearth, heated with olive tree trimmings from the farm.
It was pretty cool how Zia Miranda checked the temperature of the hearth she would dribble a little olive oil on the stone if it didn’t sizzle the stone was not hot enough and she would place hot embers in the area to heat it up. If the oil smoked, the stone was too hot so she had a pile of ashes set to the side that she would use a small shovel to place on the stone to cool it off and then brush the ash off and place the pizza directly on the hearth stone to bake.
She would then cover the pizza place hot coals on the lid to in essence create an oven within which to bake the pizza and, as shown above the cover on the right was cooking our stew in a similar manner.
We then moved onto cheese making where we were each given a ramekin of whey to make into cheese.
What I found interesting in this process is that once the solids are separated from the whey to begin the cheese making process as shown above, the whey is heated again which releases more solids. This “recooked” whey….(“ricotta” in Italian) is the source for what we in the States call ricotta cheese. However, ricotta in Italy is not considered a cheese. It is just ricotta. Who’d have thunk LOL.
As you can see above, they grow and store virtually everything used on the farm and were almost apologetic that they had to use sheep’s milk from a neighboring because wolves had gotten into the sheep pen and killed all but one of their sheep. While I am sure that this is not true, it seemed like during this trip in general that every one owns their own little plot of land were they either grow grapes, or olive trees, and make their own wine (the coastal area of Abruzzo is one of the top wine producing regions of Italy) and or olive oil (more on that in another post) for home consumption. So, the lunch was lovely, and the wine was delicious.
This was a busy day, so busy that I am going to have to leave Dante and the castle for another post. Ciao per ora! 🙂
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