Gubbio and its territory
Food and wine
Here, as well as in other areas of Umbria, pork is the main dish under the form of both just butchered rare meat - such as grilled "puntarelle" or pig's pieces of liver cooked on a spit with bay leaves and covered with the net - and of flavoursome different spicy meats.
One of the events that marked farmers' life was the killing of the pig, an annual rite the whole family participated to and that was important for their living during the winter. With the pig's breaking into pieces, first, and then with the salting that represented the beginning of meat's maturing, the butcher's crafty hands kneaded and still knead today the meat with great skill by salting and peppering them and making them into sausages. Sausages, some of which are eaten rare and some are dried, salami, hams, "spalletta" and "capocolli" were and are still made today.
They are eaten for breakfast on Easter morning together with cheese cake and hard-boiled eggs to propitiate the Spring. In this area, the delicate and fragrant white truffle is a local product along with the "poorer" legumes that grow particularly full of flavour because of the right soil. Chickpeas are delicious with home-made pasta, such as the "quadrucci", with broad beans in the "scafata" or "bagiana" fashion that is a very appetizing rural complete dish and with the "cicerchie", that were long considered poor peoples' legume and that have been rediscovered today thanks above all to biological farming.
There is a wide production of honey of different qualities, colours and flavours to be matched with pecorino cheese and walnuts produced on the mountains of this part of the Apennines.