Wine and food
Land of flavours, Piacenza has always had a great culinary tradition: on one side simple recipes taken from country folks made with pulses, potatoes, sweet corn, poultry and pork meat; on the other side recipes taken from the nobility and clerical cuisine characterized by stuffed pasta, game, spicy beef meat, jellies and cakes with almonds.
Our stuffed pasta courses are among the best Emilian ones: ‘anolini’ (egg pasta filled with stewed meat), and ‘tortelli con la coda’ (a very thin sheet of dough filled with ‘ricotta’ cheese and spinach). Once just served during religious festivities, they were also mentioned by Valente Faustini, a famous vernacular poet, as follows ‘anolino is a land-holder and tortello is its farmer’. A refined and tasty recipe is ‘bomba di riso’ (rice and meat), while simple but delicious are ‘pisarei and fasö’, once made to use stale bread. These little dumplings, made of flour and grated stale bread, are dressed with a lot of tomato and bean sauce (seven beans for each dumpling).
Other first courses are: ‘chicche della nonna’ (small dumplings that can be dressed with many different sauces: tomato, mushroom…), ‘passatelli in brodo’ (kind of noodle soup) and ‘panzerotti’ (thin pancakes filled with ‘ricotta’ cheese, Parmesan cheese and herbs and dressed with mushroom sauce).
For what concerns the second courses, the most important ones are ‘picula ad caval’ (stewed minced horsemeat with tomatoes, onions and peppers), ‘coppa arrosto’ (roasted pork meat) and ‘tasto’ (stuffed beef meat). You can also taste boiled and then stuffed chicken, guinea-hen baked in clay mould, roasted duck, turkey stuffed with chestnuts, liver baked with onions, ‘polenta’ (thick corn porridge) served with pork cracklings, stewed donkey meat, tripe with beans, stewed eel, fried frogs, ‘stricc in carpion’ (very little pickled fried fishes), ‘rustisana’ (sweet and sour peperonata), ‘polenta consa’ (‘polenta’ dressed with cheese or pork cracklings), ‘pista ad grass’ (lard stirred with parsley and garlic), ‘frità cui bavaron’ (onion omelette) and ‘chisola’ (‘focaccia’, kind of flat bread, with pork cracklings).
Both ‘chisolini’ (fried, crunchy bread dough) and ‘burtleina’ (omelette made of water and flour) are delicious if tasted warm together with cured pork meats or soft cheese.
A wide choice of desserts will satisfy everyone: zabaglione, buslanei (ring-shape biscuits), buslan (ring-shape cake), layered cake made of puff pastry and zabaglione, ‘spisigona’ cake, turtlit (fritters stuffed with chestnuts, chocolate and dried fruit), pumpkin bread, pear puff pastry, grape, fig or cherry tart, and Monticelli ‘spongata’ (puff pastry stuffed with apples, walnuts, pine-seeds, raisins and almond macaroons).
In the Apennines area, you can taste other delicacies: risotto or noodles with pore mushrooms, truffle risotto, dumplings made of Mareto potatoes, ‘maccheroni alla bobbiese’, braised boar or jugged hare. As dessert: hazelnut brittle, ‘patuna’ (chestnut cake) and wild fruit tart.
Piacenza, like the neighbouring cities in Emilia Romagna, has always been famous for cured pork meats. As a matter of fact the mosaics in St. Savino’s church in Piacenza and St. Columban’s abbey in Bobbio represent the pork slaughter ritual. Piacenza has three D.o.p. cured pork meats: ‘coppa’, ‘pancetta’ and ‘salame’.
The Piacenza ‘cacio’ cheese has been famous since the XVI century, when the merchants of Milan and Parma bought it to resell it in Florence and Lione. Nowadays the local dairy farms produce two D.o.p. cheese: Grana Padano and Provolone Valpadano.
The local cuisine has to be tasted together with some of the eighteen D.o.c. (Controlled Denomination of Origin) wines, produced in the four valleys.
Awarded in 1987 as ‘ International City of Vine and Wine’, Piacenza has been appreciated for its wines since the Roman Ages. The most important wine is ‘Gutturnio’ (made out of Barbera and Bonarda grapes), whose name comes from a Roman silver cup discovered along the Po River bank at the end of XIX century. Other red wines are: Barbera, Bonarda and Novello. Concerning white wines, the oldest ones are: Ortrugo, Malvasia di Candia, Trebbianino Val Trebbia, Monterosso Val d’ Arda, Bianco Val Nure, Vin Santo and Vin Santo di Vigoleno. Also more ‘international’ wines are produced in our territory: Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Nero (red wines), Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon and Chardonnay (white wines).
Following the ‘Wines and Flavours Trails of the Hills of Piacenza’, you’ll discover our wine and food traditions together with art, culture and hospitality.