Abruzzo by Maxine Jones
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Villa Dragonetti
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If you’re applying for work as a chef in Italy and you say you’re from Abruzzo, the job is as good as yours. Italians recognise this region’s supremacy when it comes to food and cooking. Every village will boast about its local dishes, its cheese, its truffles, its cakes, its liqueurs. Cellars and larders are treasure troves here and, inland at least, supermarkets are unheard of. This is civilisation at its height.
In the village Madonna’s grandmother left, I sit down to a 15-course meal in the Taverna de li Caldora, at a long table overlooking a sweeping valley. On the other side of the restaurant the horizon is much narrower. A mountain peak looms up almost immediately. On a recent tour Madonna was invited to Pacentro to be offered the freedom of the village. She didn’t turn up.
I enjoyed a plate of local charcuterie, followed by ricotta made from goat’s milk, then fresh sheep cheese grilled, fried courgette with anchovy in batter, broccoli with balsamic vinegar and red garlic, lamb’s innards with scrambled egg, mountain mushrooms, cod and chickpeas, white beans and village mushrooms, chitarra (local pasta) with truffles from Abruzzo (where 80 per cent of Italian truffles are found) and saffron (also local), ravioli (made with flour and eggs from the village) stuffed with lamb in tomato sauce, grilled meats, salad (with village olive oil), a sausage based on a 4,000-year-old recipe... I won’t go on. Suffice to say the desserts (yes, several), wines and homemade liqueurs were memorable and I will probably go back to Pacentro just to do it all over again. Madonna, you don’t know what you missed. The bill, by the way, including drinks, was 25 euro.
The old sausage recipe dates back to the transhumance when shepherds’ wives made it for them when they took their flocks from Abruzzo’s mountains to milder coastal pastures. Pescara, the main coastal resort, is on a 16 km strip of white sand, popular with Italian sunseekers, but little known abroad. Inland Abbruzo is an even better kept secret. It is a natural wilderness dotted with ancient hill villages. The highest peaks in the Apennines are here, as well as a glacier and four important nature reserves. Known as the ‘green heart of Italy’, 33 per cent of the province is protected parkland, beech forests and home to wolves and the brown Marsican bear. It is ‘Italia vera’, hidden Italy, where people are proud to say they ‘speak from the heart’ and keys are left dangling from front doors and dashboards. While welcoming tourists, they recognise the value of their slow way of life and are in no hurry to change it. People from Rome, incredibly just over an hour away by the autorstrada, have taken refuge here, knowing their children will be safe and their lifestyle healthy.
Traditions live on and are not just put on for show. Older women in the village of Scanno in the valley of the river Sagittario, dress in long black aproned skirts. Henri Cartier-Bresson among many other photographers has used them as subjects. Wedding dresses are of a type found in Asia Minor, the original home of the Scannese. Lace-making and crochet continue here as they always have. Jewellers work filigree patterns in gold, two hearts for lovers, in pendants the same as the ones exchanged before the shepherds left for the transhumance. The traditional Scanno wedding ring is not unlike the Irish claddagh ring. A man’s and a woman’s hands clasp and the ring opens up to reveal a heart underneath. Chocolate and almond pastries made here are the same as the ones that, according to a local myth, a bear chose to eat, leaving a shepherd’s flock intact.
Sulmona, with its sophisticated shops and an arts and culture programme said to rival Rome’s, lies around 20kms north of Scanno and just west of Pacentro. Home of Ovid, it has a comfortable urban feel and its historic centre is lined with imposing palaces. Sugar almonds, twisted with wire and ribbons into flowers, are on sale everywhere. Gold jewellery is the other source of the town’s wealth.
Bustling Pescara on the Adriatic coast seems a world away from the mountain villages, but the character of the people retains the same openness and honesty. Abruzzo has the lowest crime rate in Italy. There is a rare connectedness between the people here, which reaches out to include visitors, at least for the moment when there still aren’t that many. Maybe in time some of the aloofness encountered in Rome and Florence will emerge, but for now Abruzzo offers an Italian destination to match any other and one where good food and accommodation can be found at a fraction of the cost in better known regions.