Just two nights away and I come home 4Ibs heavier! Where could I possibly have been? I’ll give you a clue – copious quantities of extremely gluggable red wine (a 5 litre plastic bottle of it!!), a little sunshine, fabulous coffee and a mosquito bite or two….
Sant’Egidio alla Vibrata in the Province of Teramo, in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. A town of approximately 8,000 inhabitants and home to much of Hubby Pizzi’s extended family. Mama Pizzi likes to go ‘home’ to Italy two or three times a year and the responsibility for delivering her there safe and sound rests with her three sons who take it in turns to perform this duty. This time, in order for her to be home in time for the All Saints Day celebrations on 1 November, it fell upon Hubby to be her chaperone and I tagged along too…!
Leaving early on Friday morning, flying out of Stansted which feels a million miles away from our home in Surrey, we had arrived in Sant’Egidio (via the supermark
et) by mid-afternoon and we were starving! Fortunately a feast was quickly prepared so we weren’t hungry for long. One of Hubby’s aunties joined us and brought along a gift of freshly prepared deep-fried whitebait (as you do!). These joined the fritto misto from the supermarket, some roasted pork belly and chicken, a tomato and fennel salad and my favourite – olive all’Ascolana – green olives stuffed with a herby pork and veal mix, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. Absolutely delicious! We ate like Kings!
The next day we took a drive to the beaches at Alba Adriatica and Tortoreto. On the Adriatic coast, these beautiful sandy beaches slope gently down extending out under the sea on an apparently endless underwater shelf, making it popular with Italian families in the Summer months. My recollection of these beaches, having last visited during the month of July, was of a sea of sunbathers and parasols with barely a grain of sand left uncovered. It was quite a different sight only three months later and although the temperature was peaking at around 21 degrees – quite pleasant really – there was not a sun-worshiper to be seen.
The sea air had induced a ravenous appetite and I was looking forward to our evening meal. We had invited several of Hubby’s aunties to join us at one of the town’s pizzeria – O Sole Mio. This is a little gem of a restaurant where the pizzas are made to order but rather than an individual pizza for each diner in the group, they make just one! Each person still gets to choose their preferred toppings which will cover approximately 20cms of the pizza base (which is about a foot wide). The pizza dough is rolled along what can only be described as a long wooden plank and the toppings added before the whole thing is carefully lifted and slid through the mouth of an enormous wood oven to cook for just a few minutes.
A metre of pizza will feed around 5 people…and this is what it looks like!
There were eight of us around the table, so in addition to this monster pizza, we had another one of 0.6 metres with yet more toppings…clearly being enjoyed by young Luca who chose the spicy Diavola (Italian spicy sausage) and kept it all to himself!!
The ages around the table ranged from 11 to 93 and never a heartier appetite for pizza will you ever see. There was barely a crumb left…and still there was room for Tiramisu, Panna Cotta and Lemon Sorbet!!
Our weekend in Abruzzo was nearly over. Large vacuum packed chunks of Parmesan cheese were sharing space with clothes and underwear in our hand luggage as Hubby appeared with about a dozen persimmons or cachi fruit in Italian. Picked from his mother’s tree this fruit grows in abundance in Abruzzo and must be eaten when ripe otherwise it can taste foul. Harvested in the Autumn, as the clocks change, along with the region’s olives, the cachi’s sweet interior resembles an orange jelly. Eaten too early and they are bitter and nasty.
So, having read this blog post, it’s hardly any surprise that I gained a few pounds is it? Back to my rice cakes and lettuce leaves now…till the next time!
cobnuts 