Umbria, Italy’s Best-Kept Culinary Secret, Is Budding.

[elleng]

Last edited Tue Sep 13, 2016, 04:51 PM - Edit history (2)

NORCIA, Italy — Norcia, a small town in Umbria, is little known outside Italy. It’s not a celebrity hill town like Siena or a religious destination like Assisi, but in Italian food its name is even more resonant. . .

Umbrian cooks traditionally agree on one thing: Fresh pasta here should be made of nothing more than flour and water. Women pride themselves on being able to make tender, springy pasta without eggs, using a vigorous full-body kneading motion they call “a culu mossu” (with a moving butt), which looks something like dancing a samba. (For modern or modest cooks, the constant movement of the food processor is a good substitute.) . ..

Umbrian prosciutto and salumi are wonderful, but are prized in Italy, so very little makes it beyond national borders. Local cooks like Ms. Ciubini use small amounts of local prosciutto, guanciale (jowl) and pancetta (belly) to add richness to traditional cucina povera, the cooking of the poor. (In Italian, that phrase is not as patronizing as it sounds in English; it is a respectful description of the art of thrifty cooking.)

Ms. Ciubini, when faced with stale breadcrumbs, may create a classic panzanella salad or thick tomato soup, but she can also make them into a really luxurious dish, in which they are soaked in eggs, milk and grated cheese, then squeezed out and pinched into gnocchi.

For a simple sauce, any seasonal vegetables are braised with olive oil and minced salumi while the gnocchi have a quick boil; the vegetable pot is deglazed with white wine, the gnocchi drained, and all is tossed together over low heat in a huge pot. At Civitella Ranieri, Ms. Ciubini often makes this for the visiting painters, poets, sound artists and graphic novelists — all of whom have a hot, handmade lunch delivered daily to the studios where they work.

“Cooking everything from scratch takes a lot of time,” she said. “But it is the only kind of cooking that is worth the work.”>>>


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/dining/umbria-italy-food-cooking.html?

[japple]

1. You will know about Umbria and their food if you listen to Stuart McLean's Vinyl

Cafe program.