A vacation in Umbria is incomplete without tasting the local cuisine. The excellent food and wine is just as attractive as the charming forests, castles and frescoes. Enjoy the wonderful cuisine and wine in our holiday homes in CorcianoFabro and Paciano. The traditional dishes of Umbria are connected with the identity of each city or village using fresh and natural flavors taken from locally grown products and farmed animals. Local agriculture produces fresh fruit and vegetables, high quality olive oil, pork products and tender beefsteaks, whilst the rivers furnish mullet, pike, carp or trout. The outstanding black truffle of Umbria is gathered from around the trunks of oak, holm oak and walnut trees in the hills and mountains around Norcia and Spoleto. It is heated and added to sauces, pasta and pies without losing its delicious flavor.
The main cooking appliances are griddles and spits, while aromatic herbs, marjoram and fennel lend an unmistakable flavor to the food, and olive oil is an exclusive dressing. The region's specialties consist of wood pigeons, wild boar stuffed with fennel, guinea fowls and quails followed by the ewe's milk cheese, Pecorino. On the menu at the restaurants in the small towns around the Lake Trasimeno, you can eat roasted freshwater fish such as trout, carps and eels. The main fish specialties of Lake Trasimeno, are the "regina in porchetta"-carp cooked in a wood oven in the same way as "la Porchetta", and "tegamaccio" combination between a fish soup and a rich stew, made from all types of fish,cooked in best quality olive oil, white wine and aromatic herbs. Among the favorite dishes roast suckling pig stands out. Cooked on the spit in a wood oven, it is stuffed with liver, heart and lungs diced with pepper, garlic, salt and wild fennel. The pork dishes are accompanied by flat-loaf stuffed with ham or sausage preserving the sweet flavor of sage and onion; liver or minced truffles canapés with anchovies or pancakes eaten hot and sprinkled with salt or sugar.
From the countless delicious desserts you should try out torciglione – a dish that looks like a turban made of ground almonds, flour and sugar. Bru- stengolo is simple maize pudding with chopped apples, pine nuts, walnuts, lemon rind and sugar. The Christmas sweet specialty is homemade pasta served with sugar, cinnamon, ground almonds and lemon. Ciaramicola – is a dessert with flour, eggs, lard, sugar and liqueur, baked and decorated with whisked egg-white and sugar.
Umbrian Wines
Since the ancient times, Umbrian wine makers have cultivated with remarkable ease their vineyards. This part of Italy is blessed with a favorable climate, perfect soil and rich spring waters that facilitate the production of high quality wines. Sagrantino di Montefalco is the heavyweight competitor of Umbrian reds, a purple-dark liquid of long flavors with a rounded mouth feel and a strong, lasting hold. Other good local reds are Colli Altoberini, Colli del Trasimeno, and Colli Perugini. Umbria's mighty white is the Orvieto Classico, an ancient wine that was once a semisweet wine until general tastes led to the mass production of Orvieto Classico secco, a dry white that fills wine store shelves across the world. In Orvieto you can still find the old varieties, a straw-colored wine that not only goes well with food, but actually holds its own distinctive flavor. Another good white made in many zones across Umbria is Grechetto. The most prestigious Umbrian wine is the red Torgiano Rosso Riserva. It has been known to age to unique splendor for two decades or more. This ruby red dry and harmonious wine is produced around the town of Torgiano, on the right bank of the Tiber River.
