Umbria…Todi to Torgiano

Olive trees

Crocuses?

We ride through the Tiber River Valley.  Groves of trees peppered with tiny green olives.  Clusters of purple grapes dangle from vines.  Fields and fields and fields of sunflowers.  We stop to gather walnuts from the ground, marvel at the sunny yellow crocuses growing under an olive tree in September (!?) and admire the bursting figs a man is collecting in a leaf-lined basket.  He calls out from the top of his ladder, “Mangia, mangia,” and climbs down to peel them for us.  We eat them with juice running down our chins.

Our new friend with figs

Juicy figs

Susan eats a fig

We stop for lunch and we buy sausage, cheese and capers for our antipasti cooking class.  I asked Antonio if he would put fennel in the sausage and he gives me the unlike-in-Tuscany-in-Umbria-we-know-better-than-to-do-that look.  When I point out that there was fennel in the salami we have just eaten for lunch, he just shrugs.  This must be a fluke.  He doesn’t know how this can be.

Sausage maker and cook

Everyone wants to know about Umbrian sunflowers.  Why are they grown?  Why are black?  Have the seeds been collected yet?  What do Umbrians do with the seeds?  We get our answers from Lorenzo who joins us for lunch.  Sunflowers are grown for their seeds and the oil produced from them.  The plants are left to dry naturally in the sun until they’re black, then they’re harvested, leaving only the stalks in the ground. The ones we have been seeing have not yet been harvested.

Drying sunflowers

Chef teaches Chef

Our evening includes a class before dinner on how to make torta al testo—a griddle bread.  I love watching the Bike Rider excitement at the uniquely satisfying feel of kneading dough.  We learn to make a simple yeasted dough with flour, salt, water, a drop of olive oil and a one-hour rise that they use to make all their breads—free-form loaves, schiacciata in a sheet pan with tomato and onion toppings, and the torta al testo they split, fill with cheeses, meats and vegetables, and heat.  It’s an Umbrian quesadilla.

Mis en place

Ron, Dan Gary and Chip…I know how to knead

Collen, Kathy, Susan, Jim, Kay and Lena…how much flour?

Kneeding

Stretching

Baking

By this time we’re all old friends and spend hours laughing around the table at the family-style Umbrian feast the restaurant cooks for us.

Our biggest adventure of the day is the ride home.  The restaurant is down a remote road and our poor sweating driver, who happens to be a police officer, is unable to find his way out.  After a false start, we turn around and start over.  Then we do it again.  And again.  We see a sign for forest fires.  We joke that we may have to camp out overnight.  Haha.  Then an Umbrian wild boar dart across the road.  Hahaha.  Maybe we’ll pass on the camping.  We arrive back at the hotel 45 minutes after the others.  The driver is the happiest to see it.

Grape vines