The traditional way of chestnut drying process (Metato)

The chestnut tree is a plant known and apppreciated since ancient times. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Bible and in Homer's poems, while the Greeks called its fruits "Jupiter's acorns". In Italy it has been widespread since ancient times, above all in the Appennines between 300 and 1000 metres of height. Since the Middle Ages until almost our days the chestnut has been the feeding base for mountain peoples, as it is shown by many legislative acts related to chestnut woods promulgated during the centuries. The Gavinana Statutes in 1540, for example, expected landowners to pick their chestnuts within the month of November. After that, poor people could go without restriction and pick the fruits which had been left. On this subject, ther is a popular belief that the husk holds three chestnuts: one for the landowner, one for the peasant and one for the Poor. In order to be milled, chestnuts must be previously dried.n Tuscany the drying took place in the "metato", a rural building set up in the harvest place. Somewhere, in the Appennines north of Pistoia and in the Garfagnana area for instance, this building was an integral part of the dwelling house: it substituted the kitchen and it was a meeting place where people stayed up late. 

Chestnuts were set to dry on a reed-bed, that is on a structure built up with close boards or reeds whose nearness to the kitchen-fireplace granted an even heating. Pascoli recollects it in one of his poems: "lonely metato in which the sweet wooden bread dried up on a sweet fire: over the reed-bed the chestnuts crack, and the red fire burns in the darkness." (The log, in Castelvecchio Poems) Once dried up, the chestnuts were husked by a strong beating which ground the shells in strong sacks or in a proper container called vat. Today this way of proceeding has been substituted by proper husking machines. Also the metati have almost entirely disappeared. The places once used for that purpose have been changed into dwelling rooms or tool storerooms.

                                                                   Thanks to Margherita Azzari 

Budino di Farro (Spelt Pudding)

Ingredients for 6 persons:

250 grams of spelt,
1 hectogram of raisin,
3 eggs,
1 Litre and half of milk,
15 grams of butter,
80 grams of sugar,
20 grams of grated bread,
60 ml liquor (50% Rhum - 50 % Sassolino)


Preparation

Cook the spelt in the milk. When is half cooked, add raisin previously soaked in the water with the sugar and butter
When the spelt is cooked (about 25 min.) cool all.
Add eggs and wine "Vinsanto" and mix with care and until forming a creamy compound
Meanwhile put butter and grated bread into the pudding moulds or pastry pan. Bake for 40 minutes to 150 at least
Let it going cool and serve

"Ballocciori" Boiled Chestnuts

Chestnuts were called "tree bread" and used to be the main product of our earth..an irreplaceable resource for our farmers because they could use chestnuts for their daily meals,so they would be more tasty and nourishing.
With the chestnuts flour,our ancestors used to feed themselves every day by cooking it in the form of "necci" or polenta or chestnuts cake or simply as "ballocciori" (boiled chestnuts).

"Ballocciori" are a very simple recipe :
Take the chestnuts in the desired quantity and put them in plenty cold water. Add salt,some laurel leaves and some wild fennel. Let gently boil and then let it simmer until the chestnuts will be well cooked.
You can eat them both hot or cold. It's advised to use "Carpinesi" chestnuts as the skin will be easier to remove.

Prosciutto "Bazzone"

Prosciutto Bazzone's origins are around the late nineteenth century, when families of farmers living around Serchio river slaughtered pigs weighing 200 kg,thus about 18 kg thighs. The production process at the time, maintained even today, provided that these hams, heavy and elongated, were placed together with other parts of pork (bacon, lard, cheek) in a stone basin (pond) for seasoning,adding salt, garlic, spices and wine. The Prosciutto Bazzone currently weighs an average of 13-15 kg depending on the season, shows a typical elongated shape and with a step of about 4-5 cm along the edge (Bazza,in italian), hence the name. The meat is usually deep red and may have small infiltration of fat that give a taste quite recognizable but delicate. The Prosciutto Bazzone  of Garfagnana and Serchio Valley  is, since 2004 a  Slow Food product,and it is still made using  the old tradition recipe. After trimming, the hams are placed in groups of 5-6 into a stone basin of Cardoso Stone by adding salt, pepper, spices, bay leaves, garlic and rosemary. After 90 days, the hams are removed from the tanks, washed and left to dry in cold adapted, temperature and humidity controlled. Once dried, covered with a shirt are composed primarily of pepper, garlic and spices, then hung from the ceiling of rooms adequately ventilated or in dark cellars. After a minimum of 20-36 months of slow maturation, Prosciutto Bazzone is ready for use. Thanks to Antica Norcineria

Filetto di Manzo all'Alpina "Beef fillet with porcini mushroom cap"

Ingredients for 4

4 beef fillets
4 porcini mushrooms caps
extra virgin olive oil
garlic
calamint
chilli
salt


Preparation 


Clean the porcini mushrooms caps. Put them in a baking pan and season with olive oil, salt, red pepper, sliced garlic, calamint and a splash of wine. Cook in oven for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees. Cook the tenderloin on the grill. Then place the fillet on a plate and above the cap of porcini mushrooms. Dress with extra virgin olive oilAccompany with a red Sangiovese wine

*Look my post about Garfagnana Porcini Mushrooms

"Formentone" Otto File VS Traditional Polenta

The 8-row maize (Zea Mays) of Garfagnana, locally also known as "Formentone", was once widely cultivated throughout the valley, exclusively for use as food. Later it almost completely disappeared as a result of the depopulation of the mountain areas and the abandoning of crop farming. In recent times, the rediscovery and renewed popularity of typical and ancient products has convinced certain farmers of the region, who had continued to grow it, to devote special care to its cultivation, avoiding "contamination" with other varieties offering greater yield but inferior quality. It is a herbaceous plant, growing to a height of about two metres, bearing one or two ears per stem. The ears are long and covered by many coats of leaves. The mature kernels are an orangey yellow colour, with slight, more or less intense shading, round and fairly large. This crop does not have a high yield, but boasts nutritional features which now distinguish it as an excellent maize for polenta.

Farina di Neccio della Garfagnana Dop

Chestnut (or 'neccio', an ancient local word) flour was, for many centuries, a staple ingredient in the daily diet of the rural people of Garfagnana. Today, 'neccio' flour is used almost exclusively for making sweets. The important role played in the past by chestnuts in the rural economy of this district of the Province of Lucca is documented by several historical sources, including a set of regulations concerning the harvesting and exporting of the fruits of the chestnut tree dating back to 1360. Laws protecting chestnut woods were enacted as early as 1489. Throughout Garfagnana, many ancient structures that house chestnut processing and milling equipment still stand. These buildings (mills and 'metati', traditional chestnut-drying facilities) have such unique architectural and structural features that local building codes ensure their protection and preservation as an expression of the local culture and as evidence of its close links with the environment.

Garfagnana Spelt

We distinguish the small spelt (Triticum monococcum L.), the medium spelt (Triticum dicoccum Schrank) and the big spelt (Triticum spelta L.). The interest of the farmer is just for the medium and the big spelt, for which populations, selectioned production lines and cultivated varieties exist. The small spelt nowadays is useful in the work of the genetic betterment. It is different from the cultivated one because it maintains the "dressed cariossidi" (covered by glumes and glumellas) at the end of the treshing.
The elimination of the exterior wrappers needs a further "undressement", that together with the low yields, has caused the almost total abandon of this cultivation.The spelt is one of the most ancient cereal used by the mankind. His cultivation goes back at least to 7000 b.C. It has been the basic food of Assyrians, Egyptians and of all the Middle-East and North Africa populations.Attending to recent studies the birthplace should be Palestina, where also nowadays is shed a spontaneus kind of spelt (triticum dicoccoides); it seems that this cultivation have been taken from this region to all the others by the nomadic sheppherds. It's a graminaceous plant with an erect and resistant stalk and with a linear leaf, that grows in the mountain areas. The name "spelt" means fobber in Latin and it's a particular type of wheat, which was widely cultivated in the Roman age. After that it has been almost abandoned and only recently rediscovered for many purposes. Without this precious and nutritious cereal (it's known that 100 grains can give a lot of energy), Roman legions, who commonly received it (also as wages), wouldn't have conquered the world. Two dishes were really appreciated at that time: the "mola salsa" prepared with the tosted spelt flour and salt, and the "libum", a kind of spelt pie, also offered to divinities during the propitiatory cerimonies.Salt and spelt grains were offered to all the rural divinities, but particularly to Demetra, the earth goddess, to propitiate a good harvest during the "Idi of March".Also in the bible (Ezekiel 44-30) the spelt is mentioned with the hebraic name of "Arisab". Nowadays this c ereal is used to cook national dishes in Liban, Libia, and in almost all the Middle-East countries, even if called with different names (Taboulé, Kibbé, Salf). Generally these dishes result being more or less the same course, that is kind of a very thick soup of soaked spelt (raw or cooked), chikpeas, mint, olive oil and pepper, with which they stuff just bloomed tender fig leaves. The Lebanon's Kibbé is made of soaked and boiled spelt in the tomato sauce with sheep meat. The Libic Kibbé, known as well in Tunisia and Morocco, is made of soaked and boiled spelt, fillets of fish, chopped pumpkin and walnut slices.The spelt has been widely used also with a medicinal aim, and there are many ancient scriptures that quote cures with this precious food. In the Padania plane (Italy) it was cultivated even in the earl neolitic age. The most ancient testimony of the cultivation of the wheat comes from Vhò (Piadena, near Cremona), where in the 4300 b.C. a primitive wheat, the most slender of all the cultivated wheat species, the small spelt (Triticum monococcum) was sowed . The small spelt shows erect green-yellow spikelets, flatted on the sides. The single spikelets, with two flowers, are ordered on two lines. Normally just the lowest flower of each spike matures, from which the denomination "monococcum". The small spelt is "dressed", that is the grains, the matured ones too, remain tenaciously wrapped up, differently than the "naked" grain; in the treshing only the spikelets are removed and so it's necessary to roast them in a drying oven to set the graions free.In the neolitic age the most important cereal wa s the small spelt (Triticum monococcum), next the big spelt (triticum dicoccum) and the barley (Hordeum vulgare). In the north of Italy the inventory of the plants that were cultivated at that time coincides with the ones of the near Orient, where was occured the farm revolution. In the middle and in the late neolitic age, the cultivation spread out also in the interior alpine area; the farmer came from south in the valleys, as results by the eral presence of cereal in the provinces of Brescia, Trento and Bolzano. In addition to the two quoted cereals were cultivated at that time also the big spelt and another "dressed" wheat, very similar to the small spelt. The spikes of the big spelt are heavier and more hanging down if they are matured; the spikelets have three flowers and usually just two mature so the harvest is more profitable. In the Roman age there have been a radical changement in the cultivation of cereals: in the middle-alps the barley (Hordeum vulgare) and the big spelt (Triticum dicoccum) got big importance, followed by spelz (Triticum spelta) and the dwarf grain (Triticum aestivum compactum); along the time, the small spelt lost importance and it was just marginally cultivated; the millet (Panicum miliaceum) took over the foxtail (Setaria Italica). In the high Middle-age, or age of the barbarian migration, the most important products remained the big spelt (Triticum dicoccum) and the barley (Hordeum vulgare), followed by dwarf grain (Truiticum aestivum compactum) and spelz (Triticum spelta); the small spelt (Triticum monococcum) was cultivated just in the areas with a rigid climate, where it couldn't grow neither grain, nor spelz.The spelt is nowadays cultivated in Garfagnana (Tuscany) in modest quantity but with an excellent quality to obtain the protected origin denomination (Dop) in the countries of the European Community. In some areas of Umbria, and in Monteleone of Spoleto in particular, the cultivation of spelt has never disappeared. For the San Nicola festival in Bari, on the sixth of December, a tipical spelt minestrone is prepared.It's not a coincidence that the spelt minestrone were always suggested to old and young people, more

influenced from the risques of underfeeding. In Umbria and in Marche, the antique spelt varieties are still cultivated, and they are partcularly appreciated for the flavour and the richness of fibres.