Sapori di Primavera

Strolling, lost in conversation or in thought, in a piazza in Italy, this can happen: you suddenly find yourself surrounded by mountains of food.

As it happens, this is Piazza Fiera in Trento, and we discover it it holds for a few days stalls from all over Italy to celebrate the imminent spring.

So the ‘insaccati’ from Umbria

are just in front of cheeses from Piemonte:

notably Castelmagno. Remember? We had a risotto with this cheese even in London.

There are some monstrously sized breads:

provided by a Sicilian stall:

It looks excellently made inside too:

And there is plenty more bread:

Now, we wonder, what could go with bread?...

We turn around and we find 'porchetta from Ariccia’:

This is a speciality from Lazio (and, in a different version with fennel, from Tuscany), a whole pig boned and oven cooked,

stuffed with herbs and spices.

(again, we had a refined version of it in the Michelin starred Arbutus in that world emporium, London.)

What about desserts? Mmmh, we think we’ll turn back to the Sicilian stall…

So it is that we Italians, divided on everything, even in these tough times find national unity in food.

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