Eating Habits and Useful Vocabulary

Typical luncheon

Antipasti: often crostini, little crusts, bread with various dressings, all savoury.

Primi: home made pasta: flat ribbons which we thought were called tagliatelle, those which are cut, but which the makers, the housewives, call spaghetti, they should know; brought to the table in a newly boiled, "al dente" mode. Not soggy like the Heinz tinned variety, but firm to the teeth. Mix in layers with handsful of fine ground peccorino cheese and ladles full of tomato based sauce, sugo, in which repose slices of sausage and pieces of chicken.

Secondi: follow this with a selection of roast meats, with Contorni; some greens, some salad, potatoes, peperoni etc., a quaff or two of a mellow, full bodied home made wine, without the slightest whimsey of flintiness, or even the mischievous sparkle of insolence, or even insoucience, beloved by those who write for some of the better Sundays.

Dolci: follow with madeira style cake cut in generous slabs, coffee fortified with Mistra, an aniseed flavoured liquor and if there is any room left squeeze down a blood orange, an apple, a pear or a few grapes. Whew!!

Typical Umbrian Fare

Crostini: small slices of dry bread, garnished with minestrone, and topped with egg, mushrooms, anchovies, mayonaise, olives etc.

Pasta: often two types, thick or thin, flat, round or tubular, or fashioned into small envelopes, or croissant style folds. Sauces come in a variety of meats, fishes and vegetables.

Meat: often of several varieties, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, pidgeon, duck, goose, and guineafowl being a reasonable selection. Traditionally cooked in a very hot bread oven these meats seem to us to be overcooked. They are always hacked into reasonably small pieces prior to cooking because when roast in a very hot oven if the meat was left entire it would be burnt on the outside prior to cooking on the inside. Usually heavily salted and garnished with rosemary etc. Delicious!

Contorni: usually cool rather than hot, pre salted and oiled, all the vegetables one would eat in England plus artichokes, and many different varieties of "greens".

Dolci: Madeira style cake and vin santo, a sherry type wine made from 10% of the vendemia, grape harvest. The bunches of grapes were traditionally hung up in the smokey kitchen for two or three months. They gradually dried, became fortified and at the same time absorbed a smokey taint from the fire. When crushed, the raisins, for this is what the grapes had almost become, yield a drop of strong natural wine, vin santo. Some 10% of the crop when treated in this way delivers 10% of its original juice.

Wine and water throughout, coffee, liquers and fruit to finish.

Regional/local foods

Siena Pan forte, fruit and nut nougat
Perugia Serpente, round almond and sugar snake-shaped cake
Pan d'Assisi, raisin loaf
Perugia, Perugina chocolate

Tiramisu - an alcoholic and coffee flavoured trifle- its name is "Pick me up"
Mascarpone - creamy cheese and egg layered with savoyarde biscuits
Macedonia - fine and boozy fruit salad
Ice Cream, produzione propria = homemade
Panna Cotta - cooked cream with various toppings

GLOSSARY of food terms, herbs, implements etc

Fagotto- Warm puff pastry roll with ham and cheese. Available in bars.

Porchetta- Whole roast pig, cooked over a wood fire, stuffed with herbs, eaten cold and often served in a crisp bread roll. From roadside or market vans.

Breads- varieties with and without salt and or oil, white and wholemeal. Many people still make their own bread, Ovidio, who lives above Calzolaro, makes very fine bread. His receipe? Just flour, salt and wine, not water. How much wine per loaf? Three glasses. Three glasses? Yes, one for the bread and two for me!