By Sally Sontheimer
The food you can eat at Villa Madreselva
I
have to admit it. I’m a vegetarian at heart. I never did like the idea
of eating something that could look at me with big warm brown eyes. When I
was a kid I refused to eat my mother’s beef stew. It was too obvious
that there were big chunks of cow floating in that gravy. But despite the
pasta, it wasn’t easy being a vegetarian in Italy. It came covered in
ragu, wild boar, hare and anchovy sauces… I skipped the second course
of roast as it was passed around the table and went for the potatoes instead.
Older people looked at me truly concerned that I wasn’t getting proper
nutrition. They had raised their children on the belief that you must consume
some proteine nobile, i.e. meat, and often came out of the kitchen with a
plate of sliced prosciutto for me. This wasn’t meat in their eyes, but
to me it was even more offensive than the roast. It was raw.
Pregnancy changed me though. I can remember walking in front of one of those
fancy food shops in Rome and seeing a huge roast beef floating in its own
blood on a metal plate in the window. I cringed, yet salivated at the mouth.
For the sake of the unborn I could no longer deny my instincts. I ate my chicken
and meatloaf but after bringing two children safely into the world I easily
lapsed back into my old vegetarian ways.
“Although things tend to be lax in Italy, the exception is when
it comes to food.”
My views changed radically one cold blustery March day in 2001when I bumped
into Sandro Ciofi up at the Castello di Spannocchia. The Castello is a big
organic farm and cultural center in the Montagnola hills west of Siena. Sandro
is our friend from down at the shop in Costafabbri, the owner of the Antica
Salumeria Salvini, established in 1931. I bought my bread and pecorino cheese
from him every Saturday upon our arrival from Rome. Lucio bought salumi -
Italian cold cuts - and wine. The shop was always our first stop, part of
our routine.
‘What are you doing here,’ I asked.
He smiled at me with the same jovial air that he uses behind the counter.
‘Buying pigs,’ he replied.
Outside the Antica Salumeria Salvini, a sign states that the shop carries
the famous ‘cinta senese’, ham made from an ancient breed of indigenous
black pig. I had seen these pigs running wild through the chestnut forests
where I often went for a walk.They feed on acorns and chestnuts, and a mush
made from organically grown grains and vegetables from the farms. It turned
out that Sandro buys them regularly and turns them into prosciutto and other
pork products which he sells in the shop.
‘You mean you make the salumi?’
‘In my laboratorio,’ he replied.
Next time I went to the shop, Sandro gave me a hearty welcome.
‘This is cinta senese,’ he said pointing to a prosciutto sitting
on the top of the glass in a carving rack.
He cut me a slice with a big knife. The best prosciutto is always cut by hand.
‘Can you taste the chestnuts?’ Sandro asked.
I couldn’t. But it was good, and it was real and I knew what those pigs
had eaten and that they had spent their life grunting around a chestnut forest.
Since then, I always buy a hundred grams or two of Sandro’s prosciutto
every time I go down to the shop.
What can I say?
Later I learned that when Sandro bought the shop, he went to its original
owner, old Signor Salvini himself, for the recipes. He paid almost as much
for those as he did for the shop. He wrote them down, memorized them, and
then burned the book.
I was aghast.
‘Sandro,’ I said, ‘you have to write them back down again,
to preserve the local knowledge.’
It’s a tough, competitive market out there, he replied. Salumi making
is an art and Sandro is an artisan. Only the best parts of the animal are
used. Sausages – and you must try Sandro’s – are made with
the best meat from the shoulder. I’ll repeat that. The best meat, not
the residue from everything else. If you invite Sandro up to cook for you
(see my next article on the Kitchen Angels) he may offer you an antipasto
of a raw sausage split open and spread on bread. This is what Lucio’s
grandmother had for breakfast everyday. She died peacefully in her sleep just
before her 104th birthday.
Sandro also makes prosciutto from white pigs, and this is the prosciutto Toscano
that you will most likely be offered down in Sandro’s shop. It’s
excellent as well. Sandro buys the white pigs from local farmers. They are
then slaughtered at the municipal slaughtering house. This is the law in Italy.
Sandro made the comment that although things tend to be lax in Italy, the
exception is when it comes to food. The regulations are very strictly followed
and thus he believes that food in Italy is very clean, even industrially produced
food. There is pride even there.
Sandro also sells freshly butchered pork meat, but only on a Monday and not
in the summer months when it’s too hot.
Don’t you dare ask for fresh pecorino in autumn
There are only three kinds of cheese in Siena, all of them made from sheep’s
milk. Pecorino fresco (fresh), pecorino semi-stagionato (semi-aged) and pecorino
stagionato (aged). Sandro’s come from a family of old Sardinian farmers
who brought the art of pecorino making to the valley of the Orcia river (Val
D’Orcia) in the last century. They are made from organic milk. The children
love the pecorino fresco, which starts to come out in late February when the
ewes are producing milk for the lambs. Yes, the cheeses too have their season,
as Sandro will point out to you if you dare to desire fresh pecorino in autumn
when the ewes have no milk.
For more information about the offerings at the Antica Salumeria Salvini,
see their website: www.anticasalumeriasalvini.com.
Click the British flag at the top of the page for English.
:: Listening under the portico :: The
kitchen angels :: ‘I only eat pigs I know’
:: My beloved mountain ::
