Skip to main content
Home
The Foodie Pilgrim

Main navigation

  • Home
  • What's on My Plate?
  • What's in My Glass?
  • What's on My Mind?
User account menu
  • Log in

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. What's on My Plate?
  3. Feasts & Menus
  4. Discovery Feasts

Italy All-Star Feast: The Middle

By John, 30 September, 2021
Region
Italy

The antipasto platterOn September 5, '21, we celebrated the cuisine of central Italy with our friends and summertime neighbors Lance and Lynda Hylander. For this project, one of three recorded on this blog, I defined "Central Italy" as the six regions north of Campania/Apulia and south of Emilia-Romagna and the Po River valley, to wit: Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Abbruzzo, Molise, and Lazio (Lazio is where Rome is).

As usual for these dinners, we started out with Vermouth in cordial glasses and an Antipasto course of a fine salumi platter that represented all of the regions featured in the dinner.

The Insalata course was a hearty Insalata di Lenticchie, or lentil salad, with delicious tender lentils from Umbria, an area known for its lentils. This also showed that not all Italian cuisine demands tomatoes! With the salad we opened a couple of local white wines, a Trebbiano d’Abbruzzo (from Abruzzo) and a nice Frascati (from Lazio).

Pasta AlfredoThe Pasta course was a Maccheroni Chitarra Alfredo with a Chianti Classico (a red from Tuscany) & an Orvieto Classico (a white from Umbria). This was the hit of the evening!

Fettuccini Alfredo, Original is a classic Roman dish made with butter and cheese but no cream. I did it with Maccheroni Chitarra, a pasta style from (and almost unique to) Marche. Maccheroni Chitarra is like spaghetti that is square in cross-section. It's made by rolling thin sheets of pasta dough and then pressing them through a grate of fine wires that resembles a guitar, thus the Chitarra of the name. 

By this time we had four bottles of wine open, that would keep us nourished through the fish and the vegetables until I opened a big red to go with the meat.

Trota del NeraFor the Fish course, we had an Umbrian specialty, Trota del Nera. Trout is common in the mountainous interior of the Italian boot, both farmed and caught by anglers in the many regional parks and wildlife preserves. This preparation is simply baked with fresh herbs to complement but not to mask the flavor of the fish.

The vegetables included Carciofi alla Romana (Artichokes in the Roman style) and Sedano alla Molisana (Molise Celery).

The artichokes were trimmed into cups and stuffed with parsley and a little mint, then simmered in water until tender.  The recipe seems simple enough, until you actually try to do it... I learned that I will give myself more time for the trimming step the next time I try this one!

The celery is a fine dish. We cook plenty of celery as a seasoning in mirepoix and in other uses, but we don't usually think of cooking celery as a vegetable. This style from Molise is delightful and definitely worth trying.

PorchettaThen I opened up a fine Brunello di Montalcino (a Tuscan red) from our cellar to go with the meat course, a savory and tender Porchetta, my favorite Italian pork dish, from Arisia just outside Rome. Porchetta is so succulent and tender that you can't really carve it; you just chop it into savory morsels.

When we went to Rome in 2015, I had learned about the best porchetta in Rome, at a little hole-in-the-wall just as short walk between the Termini train station and our hotel. When I got there, I was dismayed to learn that the proprietor had just passed away two weeks earlier and the place was closed!

Finally the Dolce course arrived: Castagnaccio (a dense Tuscan chestnut-flour cake) and Tuscan Biscotti, with Espresso and Sambuca, and Amaro Nonino.

Book traversal links for Italy All-Star Feast: The Middle

  • Fiddleheads Feast
  • Up
  • Italy All-Star Feast: The North

Explore our content

  • Recipes
  • Artisanal & Seasonal Foods and Mundane Ingredients
  • Feasts & Menus
    • Actifio Pot-lucks
    • Celebratory Feasts
    • Discovery Feasts
      • 2019 - The Old Colony Club 250th Birthday Gala
      • A Slavic Feast
      • A Feast of Burgundy on French Election Day
      • A Feast of Normandy
      • A Feast of Parma
      • A German Winter Dinner
      • A Swedish Feast
      • An Eastern Sicilian Feast
      • Colonial Tavern Dinner
      • Discovering Our Roots
      • Feast of Italy's Piemonte and Valle d'Aosta
      • Feast: Beef Fancy and Plain
      • Fiddleheads Feast
      • Italy All-Star Feast: The Middle
      • Italy All-Star Feast: The North
      • Italy All-Star Feast: The South
      • Moroccan Dinner
      • Moroccan Dinner with New England Treats
      • Provencal Feast for New Neighbors
      • Swedish Christmas Dinner
      • Tour of France Dinner
      • Traditional Russian Feast
      • Welcome Autumn Dinner
    • Casual Dinners
    • A Superlative Birthday Dinner

Newest Recipes

  • Neapolitan Beef Braciole
  • Pasta alla Gricia
  • Pasta all'Amatriciana
  • Pasta alla Napoletana
  • Penne with Pink Vodka Sauce
The Foodie Pilgrim
Powered by Drupal