Your essential food guide to Abruzzo

• The must-make recipe from Abruzzo
• What are the traditional ingredients in Abruzzo?
• What are the famous dishes from Abruzzo?
• The best cheeses to try from Abruzzo
• The best wines to try from Abruzzo
• The delicious. team’s top food experiences in Abruzzo

Get to know the food of Abruzzo

Abruzzo tends to fly under the radar for tourists and, in fact, a lot of the rest of Italy – until around 100 years ago the region was quite an isolated, remote part of the country. While it’s still mostly wild countryside (brown bears, wolves and golden eagles all call Abruzzo their home), Abruzzese cuisine is now famed for offering an untouched, ‘pure’ example of Italian food.

With hills perfect for rearing sheep and an abundant coastline for fishing, where you are in Abruzzo will dictate what’s on the menu. Whenever you see a trabocchi (a basic wooden fisherman’s hut built on stilts), a steaming bowl of brodetto will never be too far away. Further inland, lamb is cooked every which way – over fire on skewers, slowly roasted, chopped and simmered into ragù for pasta or even braised with eggs, cheese and lemon for Easter.

For a land that’s been traditionally isolated and full of shepherds and fishermen, Abruzzese dishes are actually quite luxurious – especially when compared to the cucina povera found further south. Pasta has always been heavily produced here, often containing egg, and specialist crops like saffron and liquorice have been harvested for centuries (although most of this didn’t stay in the region). Abruzzo is a green heartland where abundance doesn’t come from wealth or power – it comes from a deep-rooted tradition of animal husbandry and aeons of artisanal production.

Our hero recipe from Abruzzo

Chitarrone alla teramana by chef, content creator and event host Danilo Cortellini

“This is one of my favourite pasta dishes of all time. The recipe is close to my heart and traditionally abruzzese: square spaghetti dressed with intense mini meatballs in a tomato sauce. This funnily shaped spaghetti (Rustichella d’Abruzzo is the best brand) is made with an egg-based dough and has an incredible texture, which helps each strand hold the sauce magnetically well. It’s the perfect embodiment of abruzzese cuisine.”

Danilo comes from Abruzzo, a region rich in culinary traditions, and he’s been the chef at the Italian Embassy in London since 2012. Before that, he trained professionally at renowned restaurants including San Domenico in Imola and the three-Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester. Danilo was a finalist on MasterChef: The Professionals and in his first cookbook, 4 Grosvenor Square: The Menus of the Italian Embassy in London, his mission is to share as many traditional Italian recipes as possible.

Cook chitarrone alla teramana

What are the traditional ingredients in Abruzzo?

• Meat Abruzzo is a region of meat-eaters, but lamb that takes top spot. Its hilly landscape is perfect for rearing sheep, with lamb, mutton and mountain goat featuring heavily in local dishes. Pork is important for salumi (particularly ventricina, flavoured with dried peppers and fennel) and beef is used in cooking too – but the real flavour of the region lies in its lamb.
• Pasta Abruzzo has both plenty of durum wheat fields and fresh mountain water from the Apennines – which makes it the ideal location for pasta production. There are lots of unique pasta shapes and dishes from Abruzzo, but the most famous is spaghetti alla chitarra or chitarrone – it’s like spaghetti but square instead of round. It’s made by pushing a sheet of pasta dough through the strings of a guitar-like contraption to separate them into strands (chitarrone was a type of lute).
• Saffron The Abruzzese province of L’Aquila is home to Italy’s – and possibly the world’s – finest saffron. Only around 40kg of it is produced each year, and it doesn’t really feature in the local cuisine (as a very expensive spice, most of it traditionally was exported north to richer cities like Milan and Rome).
• Peppers Peperoncino (locally known as diavoletto) is a common seasoning for Abruzzese dishes, made from sun-dried peppers which are sweet and mildly hot. In September they’re often harvested, dried and snipped into a bottle of freshly pressed olive oil to create ‘olio santo’ (holy oil) for the winter ahead.
• Liquorice Along with Calabria further south, Abruzzo is where you’ll find liquorice fields – particularly around the province of Atri. It’s used to flavour all sorts of sweets, bakes and liqueurs locally.

What are the famous dishes from Abruzzo?

• Arrosticini Abruzzo’s ultimate street food, these barbecued lamb skewers are cooked over wood in a gutter-shaped barbecue called a canala. They’ve been prepared in the region since sheep and shepherds roamed the hills – which is a long time – and generally flavoured with nothing more than salt and pepper, with bread dipped in olive oil on the side.
• Crostini alla chietina The town of Chieti is only 10km from Abruzzo’s coastline, and if you sit down for aperitivo in its charming streets you’ll no doubt get a plate of the local crostini. Bread is dredged in egg and fried until crisp, before being slathered in butter, topped with anchovy fillets and sprinkled with capers. There are few mouthfuls more delicious.
• Pallotte cacio e ova An example of the local cucina povera (peasant cuisine), these ‘meatballs’ are actually just bread, cheese and eggs, formed into dumplings and fried, then served in a simple tomato sauce, which they absorb and soften in.
• Timballo teramano You’ll find variations of timballo – savoury pies or layered bakes – all over Italy, but this one from the city of Teramo is extra special. What looks like a lasagne is in fact layers of thin crepes (called scrippelle) hiding a ragù peppered with tiny meatballs. It’s traditionally associated with Christmas and New Year, but these days is enjoyed year-round.
• Confetti di Sulmona Sugared almonds are a common sight at weddings and celebrations around the world, but they originated in the town of Sulmona back in Roman times. They’re still produced there today, with different brightly coloured nuts often formed into flower shapes and bouquets.

The best cheeses to try from Abruzzo

The abundance of sheep in Abruzzo naturally influences the local cheesemaking. Pecorino di farindola is a unique sheep’s cheese that’s made with pig rennet (instead of the usual cow), while canestrato di castel del monte is a firm, spicy cheese perfect for grating. You’ll find great cow’s milk caciocavallo locally too, as well as ricotta (both fresh and salted).

The best wines to try from Abruzzo

Abruzzo produces a great range of white, red and rosé wines. For reds, montepulciano d’abruzzo is by far the most famous, all spice and dark berry flavours. The rose of choice is cerasuolo d’abruzzo, which is a strawberry red colour (as opposed to the pale pinks of Provence) and full of bright, lively fruitiness. If you’re going for a white wine, then trebbiano d’abruzzo is crisp and zesty, while pecorino is more tropical and mineral tasting.

Browse wine editor Susy Atkins’ pick of the nine best Italian wines to buy right now.

The delicious. team’s top food experiences in Abruzzo

Thea Everett, Deputy digital editor
“I loved visiting the Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta factory near Pianella just before the region gets properly mountainous. The factory makes 12,000kg a week in their production plants, and exports all over the world. To see how my favourite dried pasta was made from start to finish was a dream come true. Read more here.”

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