It has been a busy season here. I have met so many wonderful people from all over the world on my food and wine tours in Abruzzo. Everyone loves the local cuisine and sings praise to the region’s wines and hearty dishes. But there is one experience on my Pescara food tour that everybody is crazy about: getting a small glass of wine at the Don Gennaro wine shop and dipping pieces of tarralucci al vino, ring-shaped biscuits, in it. In Italian it is called “inzupparli”. For most of my clients, it is a new culinary experience and they often look at me as if waiting for an approving nod before dunking their biscuit in the wine, the gesture that somehow feels naughty and unfamiliar nowadays. It is an old tradition that takes us back to the days when locals drank wine not only to be merry but relied on it for extra calories. Farmers would pack tarallucci al vino or some other humble carb and plenty of home-made wine to re-fuel during a quick break while working in the fields.

I learnt about the dunking tradition from a friend’s nonna, who said that it was the best way to eat tarallucci. And she was right. The slightly sweet dense dough combined with a no-nonsense table wine tastes rustic and good. It won’t work with a fancy wine from a bottle, you need “vino sfuso”, or bulk wine, sharp and strong, to fully immerse in this authentic taste of Abruzzo.

Tarallucci al vino are easy and quick to make. It is one of those very old Abruzzese recipes that only calls for a few simple (vegan!) ingredients: flour, wine and olive oil. I added some sugar but in the past mosto cotto, or slowly cooked grape must, was a go-to sweetener. Use the ancient grain solina or wholegrain flour to achieve the slightly coarse, rustic texture. Tarallucci al vino can be made with white or red wine.

Tarallucci al vino

Makes 15-20 biscuits

Ingredients:

150 ml white wine (pecorino or trebbiano d’Abruzzo)

150g sugar

150ml EVOO

500g solina flour

Pinch of salt

Few pinches of fennel seeds

Preparation:

Mix the wine and olive oil with a fork in a bowl, add the sugar, then the flour, salt and fennel seeds mixing the ingredients thoroughly to create homogenous dough. If the dough is still too sticky, add more flour until it is elastic, soft and easy enough to handle with your hands. Do not overwork it or the biscuits will be too hard. Make a ball and leave the dough to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C.

Take small amounts of the cooled dough, roll them slightly to make short thick cords. Connect the ends to make a fat ring. Bake for 25-30 mins until golden. If your rings are thin, reduce the baking time to 20 minutes.

When they cool down, dunk away in a glass of simple Montepulciano d’Abruzzo!

On a grey wet afternoon, I arrived to Lama dei Peligni on a mission: to taste one of famous Abruzzo desserts the authentic local sfogliatella di Lama dei Peligni, or “sfuiatell” in the local dialect. There are many imitations of this delicious pastry in Abruzzo, but to find the real deal you have to go to the village.

Traditionally, sfogliatelle, shell-shaped pastries filled with cream, came from Napoli. However, at the end of the 19^th century Donna Anna Guglielmo-Tabassi, the baroness of Lama dei Peligni, decided to adapt the famous pastry using only the ingredients from the area with spectacular results. However, the recipe was kept secret for a long time and only about 50 years ago it became public. I love the delicate crunchy shell of the pastry and the rich filling made with grape jam, amarena cherries, grape must, walnuts and cacao. It is not a treat for vegetarians, though, as before baking the dough is often smothered generously in lard. It gives the pastry a beautiful golden colour and, I reckon, makes it more addictive. Eating one just never seems enough!

Every year the village organises a sfogliatella di Lama dei Peligni competition among the locals where the best among the best (“La più buona fra le buone”, as the festival’s posters declare) pastries is chosen and the winner gets a trophy, a silver sfogliatella.

There are a few bars, cafés and pasticcerie in the village and each of them makes their own version of the sfogliatella. I tried one in the bar Diamonds near the central piazza. It was generously dusted with icing sugar, tasty but sweeter than I expected. Then I bought another sfogliatella (one is never enough!) from a swanky pasticceria I Segreti di Donna Anna and it was perfect: crispy layered pastry, a delicious filling with a slightly sour note of the amarena cherries. Exactly the way I wanted it!

Rain didn’t stop the locals from celebrating the festival of sfogliatella: benches were lined up in the piazza, folk music was playing and a few men, well into their 80s, whirled a few young ladies around.

Where to buy sfogliatella di Lama dei Peligni:

I Segreti di Donna Anna, Via della Resistenza, 6

Pasticceria di Emilia Pasquale, Via Frentana, 120

The other day I bought some celli pieni, soft biscuits filled with rustic grape jam called “scrucchjata”, cocoa, lemon zest and almond. Their name derives from “uccelli ripieni” (“stuffed birds”) and in old days the biscuits were shaped as birds. Traditionally they were made for Christmas but nowadays you can find them in small traditional bakeries in the province of Chieti.

Until recently celli pieni were also made for young women who were getting married and leaving their family homes as symbols of fertility. Today it is hard to find them in elaborate bird shapes, more often they look like simple fat rings but they still taste delicious. The dough is very simple, with just a few ingredients: flour, sugar, olive oil and white wine. Here you will find a good recipe (in Italian) if you decide to make these sweet birds at home. If you are visiting Abruzzo, check out these small bakeries where fresh delicious celli pieni are every week:

Alla Chitarra Antica, Via Sulmona, 2, Pescara

Forno Zulli, Via Mazzini, 12, Rocca San Giovanni

L’arte del pane, Via Nazario Sauro, 31, San Vito Chietino

Pasticceria Lidia, Via Paolini, 31, San Vito Chietino