You might think that a grain is a grain is a grain. You would be wrong.
It is difficult to define what makes something a uniquely Italian experience. It is so much more than any one thing – maybe it comes down to the bounty and place, where people care about and protect the land and create a culinary history that is deep and wide.
Out of that history are ancient Italian grains: the black chick peas, farro, millet, new grain flours and they are generations old and unique in flavor. Quite simply, there is nothing like them. Whether used to create a simple pasta, or mixed with vegetables of the season, these grains carry a story that you will remember long after you have taken your last bite.
These ancient grains will be sold in Via Umbria, re-opening this fall in new form with a full market, prepared food, and a demonstration kitchen.
Part of our past Food and Wine tour this October included lunch made right on the Il Molino farm, where guests savored pastas made from the farm’s farro and senatore cappelli grains, both ancient grains that have been rediscovered and popularized (for a reason) of late. Both pastas served were full of a distinct and cut above in flavor, mouthfeel and satisfaction.
After lunch guests toured the mill and watched the ancient grains be milled into fine or coarser flour and an exposition of beans and legumes, most of them tracing their roots (literally) to ancient forebears and unique to small, particular areas in Italy.
And Via Umbria is bringing it all to you so you can cook it for the people you love. You will also find them used in the prepared foods you can purchase at Via Umbria to bring home and serve the people you love.
Interested in the daily means and special dinners? Send an email to events@viaumbria.com and we will send you menus and updates this fall.
After a thorough tour around the Il Molino grove, and speaking with Annalisa Torzillion everything that goes into the final product, we were able to sit down as a group and enjoy the fruits of the labor.
There is something magical about walking through the storied trees that produce olive oil that goes into almost every dish. To be able to share new flavors with new friends, and eat olive oil in the very place it was just pressed, is part of what makes Umbria so special. Here are our photos from lunch at the Il Molino farm.
Annalisa Torzilli is the reason we are in this business. Well not literally, but the charming owner of il Molino farm just outside the village of Montefiascone is emblematic of all the things we love about being in the business of discovering, savoring and sharing experiences. She’s got a great smile, too.
We have been customers of il Molino products for a number of years, having been introduced to them by our friend and supplier Andrea Tosolini who raved about and vouched for the quality and authenticity of il Molino’s organic olive oils, olive oil-based cosmetics, sauces, condiments, pastas and more. So this year at the Fancy Food Show in New York, Suzy decided to take the opportunity to meet Annalisa, the owner-operator of il Molino and as fate would have it, Andrea happened to wander by as she approached the il Molino stand, to make a proper introduction. It was love at first sight. Suzy returned to the hotel that day, beaming, and carrying on about how we were going to visit il Molino on our Food and Wine Experience tour. Fate often smiles on us like this and we are grateful.
Montefiascone is not exactly close to our farmhouse, but our tour guests seemed as excited as we were when we boarded Simone’s taxi for the nearly two hour drive from Umbria to Lazio. Along the way the scenery changed and transformed from verdant wild hills to rolling, rocky terrain. But the villages that dotted the countryside, perched on impossibly steep craggy hilltops seemed to spring from the same source, each speaking of a long unbroken chain of history and housing cultures and habits as old as the hills themselves. Montefiascone itself is such a walled hilltown, with its enormous duomo squeezed over to one end of town so massive that it feels like the whole place may tip up and slide off the hill. One could say that it is a place of legend, the home of Est! Est! Est! white wine that those legends tell us was the exuberant exclamation of a papal emissary from long ago sent out to find good wine for the Pope on his journey from Rome to Orvieto, signaling his discoveries by posting a note on the doors of taverns with good wine saying ‘est’ (here it is). No offense intended to the emissary, but he should have tried our trebbiano spoletino in Umbria. The Pope would have found the detour completely worthwhile.
Our visit with Annalisa at both il Molino and the nearby Fornovecchino mill lasted the whole day, and started with a visit to the olive mill, where Annalisa was already harvesting and producing new oil. The excitement of seeing fresh, ripe olives being stripped from the tree, the acrid smell of polyphenols that burn your throat as the olives are being crushed into paste, and the glorious stream of almost phosphorescent green oil that trickles out of the stainless steel spigot, bound for a bottle or can, never gets old. And in this setting of over three hundred hectares of beautiful, natural, organic farmland, lovingly maintained by Annalisa and her caring staff it meant even more.
Lunch was served as though we had been friends forever, which after an hour in her company is how we all felt. There we discovered and savored pasta made from the farm’s farro and senatore cappelli grains, both ancient grains that have been rediscovered and popularized (for a reason) of late. There was much discussion over whether farro and spelt were the same thing (it’s complicated) and the difference between and relative advantages and disadvantages of grano duro (the hard wheat family that senatore cappelli belongs to) versus grano tenero. There was no arguing, however, that both pastas are something different than your ordinary pasta, a distinct cut above in flavor, mouthfeel and satisfaction. (My favorite is the senatore cappelli and I am on a mission to spread the word.)
It tastes even better than it looks!
After lunch and a stroll around the beautifully maintained property we were off to Fornovecchino, the nearby organic mill where Annalisa’s (and other local organic farmers’) grain is transformed into flour and then into bread, pasta and other finished products. As we arrived, some local customers were negotiating the purchase of several huge sacks of different flours and after they left Annalisa introduced us to the owners who took us on a tour of the mill, hustling us into the inner sanctum where we were shown how the grains are milled into finer or coarser flour. An exposition of beans and legumes, most of them tracing their roots (literally) to ancient forebears and unique to small, particular areas ensued, with our new Chef in residence, Vickie Reh, soaking up this information more readily than the ceci nero would soak up water that evening.
Saying our goodbyes to Claudio and Romina and to Annalisa, laden with purchases and gifts from both, we boarded Simone’s taxi, for the long drive home. Home to Umbria, having spent the day in Lazio. A day that enabled us not just to understand the connection between man and la terra but to experience and feel it. And that, after all, is the reason we are in this business.
