Pork: porchetta, ciccotto, cured meats...

Pig culture is highly developed in this area. In the winter months, starting from mid-January when traditionally the pig is 'ready' to delight our palates, chops, chicory, livers, slices of fat and lean meat and all the parts of the animal not intended for the preparation of sausages are frequently present on the tables.

The well-known flavor of Umbrian cuisine, in addition to the raw materials, is largely due to the use of condiments.
Lard, i.e. pork fat, especially in the past replaced oil in the preparation of soups and sauces as, when beaten together with herbs, it gave them a strong flavor and at the same time provided a significant caloric intake.
Lard, the product of the fusion of the lard itself, entered the preparation of roasts both as a ‘pillotto’ (inserted together with the herbs in the cuts made in the pieces of meat), and sprinkled on the meat while it was turning on the spit.

The porchetta

Porchetta, a product obtained by cooking all parts of the pig, is deboned, seasoned and flavoured, finally tying it with string.

Slow cooking helps obtain a crispy and golden crust. Procedure very well known since the Etruscans and ancient Romans. Jealously preserved, porchetta is one of the typical products of Bevagna and Gualdo Cattaneo. In the small medieval village of Grutti, in Gualdo Cattaneo there is still a municipal wood-fired oven which was used until a few decades ago by the families of the town to cook this inviting dish!

Grutti's Ciccotto - Slow Food Presidium

It is the small village of Grutti, a hamlet of five hundred inhabitants in the municipality of Gualdo Cattaneo, which is the birthplace of the famous “Cicotto”, which has now become a Slow Food Presidium!

Its preparation is a tradition like the now famous porchetta and its long and patient preparation has been handed down in the country from father to son, from the elderly to the current producers.
Ears, trotters, shin, tongue, tripe and other offal are processed and boned by hand, washed and cut. The mixed meats are placed inside a tank and then in the cooking oven under the porchetta, in order to collect the fat of this and the spices used for its cooking, a mixture of fresh rosemary, red garlic from nearby Cannara, black pepper and fennel.

Cooking is slow, from nine to twelve hours, at a temperature of around 200°C, to make the cicotto soft and rich in aromas. Once cooked, it is left to cool, the fat and cooking liquids are drained into special baskets and then it is ready for consumption. But it is also excellent preserved and reheated.
Cicotto is also used to prepare sauces or a typical local recipe with snails and some recipes with chickpeas or beans. Intense, with a soft, juicy consistency and smoky notes on the nose, it reveals all its flavor and spiciness in the mouth. The name finds its roots in sixteenth-century cookery treatises, when this term identified the leg and therefore the leg of the animal, essential ingredients of this product.

Cured meats

Pork meat has always been used for the production of salami and sausages, to be dried or cooked fresh.
Very important to make this dish appetizing is the characteristic seasoning consisting of salt and plenty of black pepper.

Sausages can be cooked in many ways: fresh they can be prepared with roast potatoes, with grapes, stewed, but also cooked on the grill or crumbled to create excellent winter sauces.
They can also be consumed seasoned; similar to other cured meats, they are tasted by eating them ‘in bites’ or by cutting them into thin slices; they go very well with bland bread and Spoleto Trebbiano.
In Trevi, in October, during the Black Celery Market Exhibition, there is the Sausage Festival, during which various producers and butchers display their products and make tasty sandwiches cooked on the grill.