A Good Day for Soup

Wednesday is market day in Spello; unfortunately, since Spello is a very small town, the market here is more flea market than produce market.  There are only 2 produce sellers, the rest sell clothing, shoes, and plants.
My guy talks non-stop to the buyers, and is a lovely man.  Happy to sell you his wares, and also adding what he thinks you'll need for your meal.  Since I was gifted with a few zucchini and an onion from a friend, I wanted to make a minestrone.  That necessitated a few more ingredients from the frutivendolo.  As I was making my purchases he asked if I wanted the black celery from Trevi a nearby town that has a DOP (denomination of protected origin) designation for its special celery---it is aromatic and delicious, so of course I chose it, after that he was putting extra carrots and parsley and onions into my bags.  The celery isn't actually black, they cover the root end, and the chlorophyll goes to the leaves, which turn a very dark green. There is an annual festival in Trevi celebrating the sedano nero.

Escarole

Romanesco

Here pepperoni is the vegetable, not the meat on a pizza

Eggplant

Zucchini

Golden delicious apples from the north

Gala apples from the north

Really new potatoes

Garlic

Beautiful flowers

Minestrone

Serves an army
Let me just say that you can sub in your favorite vegetables here, I usually use escarole, but the heads he had were as big as my head, and I didn't need that much, so I picked up some spinach instead.  Pancetta is also optional, perfectly acceptable to leave it out.  Minestrone means without stock but I used chicken for this one.  You can use water if you prefer, the fresher the vegetables the better your soup will be. 

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
one 1/4-inch piece pancetta finely diced
1/4 cup finely chopped onion (today I'm using the DOP cippolini from Cannara)
3 medium carrots, chopped
2 ribs of celery with leaves, chopped
salt and pepper
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth or water
1/2 cup chopped spinach
1/2 cup green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup diced zucchini
1/4 cup pearl barley
1/4 cup small lentils
salt and pepper

Lining up the ingredients

1. In a Dutch oven heat the oil, and saute the pancetta until it is almost crisp.  Add the onion, carrots, and celery, and season with salt and pepper.  Saute for 5 minutes until the onion is softened.  
2. Add the broth, spinach beans, zucchini, barley and lentils and simmer, partially covered for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the barley and lentils are softened.  
3. Season with salt and pepper and serve with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and freshly ground black pepper.  

Bubbling on the stove top

After our lunch, we took our afternoon stroll and ended up in the piazza and had a gelato to celebrate having such a healthy lunch. 

Ciao for now.

Wine Tasting in Montefalco

Another day, another day trip to the country.  With home base in Spello, we can easily visit beautiful hill towns within 20 to 30 minutes.  Today, we decided to visit Arnaldo Caprai, the largest producer of Sagantino wine in Umbria.  With our entry reservation arranged by Enoteca Properzio we arrived at 11 a.m. and were blown away by the color of the vineyards, beginning to turn autumn colors.  The landscape here in Umbria is breathtaking: look one way you see a brilliant pink stone city on a hill, look the other and you see nothing but the feathery grey green leaves of olive trees dotting the hillsides, and look farther and you see the bright yellows and rusty reds of the vineyards planted on the hillsides. 

Caprai is famous for their Sagrantino; originally only a dessert wine, or passito, in the late 1990's they decided to age it to see how it would taste.  Working with the local universities, they came upon the right way to age the wines, and the rest is history, with the wine being crowned the number one wine in Europe. 

We were taken to the fermentation rooms, where the wines were just at the end of their cycle, and then the to aging rooms.  Then up to the tasting rooms, where we sampled the white Grecchetto, and the reds.  There is a DOC wine in the area called "Montefalco Rosso", predominantly Sangiovese, with a bit of Sagrantino, Merlot and possibly other grapes, it is one of my favorite wines.  The 100% Sagrantino is the jewel in the crown here, and for good reason.  A wine with tannic flavors, it mellows out after aging, and is delicious paired with many dishes.  Grazie to the Caprai winery for such a beautiful morning. 

After tasting all these wines, we had to have lunch, so headed to L'Alchimista in nearby downtown Montefalco; I mean downtown in that it has a central piazza with a few restaurants surrounding the piazza. 

With our reservation made by Roberto at Enoteca Properzio, we decided to have the specials of the day.  Again, I'll let the photos speak for themselves. 

Since it is the celebration of the black celery, we had celery Parmigiana

Creamy celery soup with black truffles, olive oil and cippolini onion souffle

Gnocchi in Sagrantino

Fresh Strangozzi pasta, with black celery, sausage, and pumpkin

Pork Tenderloin braised in Sagrantino, with grapes (Mama Mia!)

Lemon sorbet with peaches poached in rosemary

After they rolled us out of here, we were on the road again back to home base in Spello.  What a beautiful way to spend the day.