A typical Umbrian Christmas sweet: Ciccuto's torrone

 by Silvia Matricardi

Once upon a time in a charming medieval town in Umbria there was an old confectioner’s shop. It was run by a man called Ciccuto, with his wife and daughter. It was one of those old fashioned, family-run artisan’s shops, typical of early twentieth-century Umbrian towns, with little furniture which hadn’t got pretensions to beauty or style. They sold all kind of typical products, most of which were hand made by them, such as maritozzi (kind of currant bun) with whipped cream, custard or chocolate, pastries, as well as rhubarb candies and liquorice drops, besides giving out spirits, coffee and co.
They also made the best chocolate and hazelnuts torrone ever!

You probably know that torrone is a typical Italian Christmas candy, kind of nougat, and that there are dozens of varieties all around Italy: it can be soft or hard, white (made with honey) or black (made with chocolate), with hazelnuts or almonds or pistachio, and so on….

Ciccuto’s chocolate and hazelnuts torrone was really a masterpiece of deliciousness, it was different from any other chocolate and hazelnuts torrone you could find around. Like it happens with Nutella: many artisans try to make chocolate and hazelnut cream and you can find really good ones around (especially in Piemonte) but no one has ever succeeded in reaching the same taste. It’s unique.

My memories of Ciccuto’s shop are very old and foggy, as he closed his activity at least 25 years ago.

Anyway I clearly remember that I used to go there on Sundays at Christmas time, before lunch, with my Dad. I was little but tall enough to see the board where torrone would be kept; it was long, of course, but differently from any other one, when you looked at it frontally it was not large and short, but square. Two foils of host would cover its bottom and top and you could immediately see the huge hazelnuts in the middle.It was also different in terms of consistency: it was not so compact and smooth, but very doughy and slightly crumbly. You did not need to cut it with a knife, you could easily break it with your fingers and get them deliciously dirty.

Anyway, what made it really unique was its taste: it was very strong and rich; when you bit it you could feel many little crunchy tiny pieces of chocolate and it would spread immediately in every corner of your mouth.

Ciccuto would measure it with a knife and cut it where you wanted. Then he would wrap it in an oily white paper and put it in a paper bag.

And each Sunday at Christmas time at my house it was a joy!

Unfortunately Ciccuto’s daughter has not carried on her family’sactivity and the traditional torrone recipe got wasted.

Anyway, for true torrone lovers, those who are really keen on traditional one, hope is not lost. There is an artisan of traditional pastries and cakes in Spoleto who makes a wonderful chocolate and hazelnuts torrone, whose taste and consistency is very close to Ciccuto’s one: it’s the award-winning Pasticceria Pirola, in Spoleto. Giuseppe, the owner, explains the reason: “Of course, it’s my Grandfather’s recipe!”.

Their torrone is not an inexpensive one, believe me, but it’s worth a drive from any corner of Umbria!

The "bad" season in Umbria: smells and colours

by Silvia Matricardi

Some people IN Umbria complain when the Summer is over, as if they couldn’t stand the coming season. I can partly understand them, as the “bad” season is really long here: some years you have to wait until April before you can say that Winter is over.
But is Fall really the beginning of a bad season? How could you define “bad” (or “brutta”, as we say here, “la brutta stagione”) what we are going through these days?!

I personally love this time of the year and also the following weeks, all the period until Christmas. And the reasons are so many I could hardly list them all.

What is beautiful about Autumn IN Umbria is mainly the look and the smell.

The smell you feel going around, in city centers, in the narrow streets and squares, is the smell of the smoke coming out the houses’ chimneys. As soon as the temperature lowers Umbrians start lighting up the fireplace in their homes; not because of the cold (we do have heating, of course!) but because the fireplace “tiene compagnia” (keeps you company), as we say it. Before and after dinner, in fact, families like to gather around the fire and chat a little bit.
But there is also another reason to light up a fire: you can cook a fast dinner based on roasted pork meat and roasted bread (bruschetta), which is typical of Umbria. And you know, the fact of being roasted on the grill on the fire gives the meat a special flavour.
And, talking about the smell of Atumn in the city centers, sometimes when walking in a narrow street or turning a street corner your nose gets whetted by a sudden smell of roasted pork meat. That’s typical too!
There’s another wonderful smell in the Fall: you feel it when you walk along a street besides a public garden or along a row of trees, or better when you go out in the country. It’s the smell of moist earth, of rotten leaves and wet grass: it’s strong, fresh, rich, loamy and succulent. It reminds me of ancient walks, as a child, with my grandfather…It reminds me of a beautiful secret garden in Spoleto, cloistered between the stone walls of an old convent. My garden.

The colours of Autumn are no way inferior to its odours.
Besides the green, the everlasting green of the Green Heart of Italy, the predominant colours you find around are: yellow, orange, brown and red, with different shades and nuances. Not only can you see them out in the country or in the woods, or along the many walks up and down Umbrian hills, but also in the many fruits and vegetables that fill people’s kitchen tables and market’s stalls.
What I find interesting it is that also the clothes people wear during this season have got these colours, as if everyone wanted to be in tune with nature.

We could not list all the trees that have beautiful colours in the Fall, but we can surely list the fruits and vegetables that fill our tables, which you can find in the stalls of weekly markets (il mercato), like the one we spotted last Friday.

Chestnuts or marrons (Spoleto marrons are famous): different shades of brown and reddish –brown; you can prepare them roasted or boiled, or you can use them to make soups or tartes or flour.

Mandarines: total orange; they are the first citrus fruit that come out and their smell is just delicious, being one of the precious gifts Winter brings in, which reminds a little bit of approaching Christmas time.

Nuts: light brown; you can eat them raw or crush them to prepare stuffing for typical cakes, such as the “attorta”, the just-great-! Christmas cake we make in Spoleto.

Pumpkins: orange, yellow, green, brown and mix; those that survive Halloween time can be used in a thousand ways: sliced and fried, in soups, as a seasoning for pasta and risotto or to make cakes; there’s also a bad joke about pumpkin icecream that my husband tells, but let’s skip that!

Khaki: oh Gosh, my favourite! Total orange; this incredible fruit can be hard or soft; my favourite is the soft variety, which is pulpous, sweet and “slippery” besides being highly nutritious. I eat it fresh, raw, with a tea spoon.

Winter string beans, chard, chicory and the other winter herbs: different shades of green; these herbs are wonderful if you cook them with simple ingredients: extra virgin olive oil and salt; you can boil them and add some lemon juice; or you can fry them in a pan, together with celery, carrots and small tomatoes; or you can use them to stuff pizza or calzoni or piadina or...whatever, they are wonderful with anything!

Cabbages and broccoli: different shades of green, white; they can be cooked the same ways as the other herbs we mentioned.Our favorite way is: boil them, then put them in a pan with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, salt and hot pepper and fry them for a while; then spread them on hot, crispy bruschetta.

Spinaches: bright green; besides being Popeye’s favourite food they are great to accompany a roasted meat course or to make a pie, with parmesan cheese, eggs, grated bread and pieces of smoked pork underbelly.

Grape: different nuances of red and green; at the end of special refined dinners we love to serve our friends crackling grape accompanying soft and hard cheese seasoned with acacia honey. Aren’t we just immoral?!

Black olives: absolute black. This is the most typical fruit here in Umbria, that’s the land of olive oil. When you don’t use all of your olive trees’ fruits to make oil you keep some of them in glass jars, under salt, either close to the fireplace or out of the window in the cold, for some days, until they are ready to be eaten; then you season them with pieces of garlic and orange peel, olive oil and salt. And they come out perfect and delicious: incredibly bitter!

Anyway, there is something that’s really special about November, which isn’t neither a color nor a smell; it’s something that embraces all that we have been mentioning and everything else, giving this time of year its special mood: it’s fog, the light, transparent fog of sunny days at Fall, you can only find in a few Umbrian valleys.

Dear non-Umbrian friends, please forgive us for praising something so annoying as fog can be: we are Umbrians, we love to wander in woods, to go up and down hills, to eat marrons, herbs and mushrooms, and, to quote a young and promising Umbrian actor - Filippo Timi - we are a little bit like “hairy wild boars”!