If you are one of those people that races home to eat a weighty bowl of pasta before sleeping and laments on why Italians can remain skinny when eating so many carbohydrates you’ve probably not heard of Abruzzo’s ‘Lo Sdijuno’!
Lo Sdijuno was the traditional, hearty meal eaten in the fields and groves between 10.30 and 11 am that would consist of bread, cheese, ham, salami, eggs, omelettes with peppers, a simply dressed homemade pasta, and calorific wine. Most of the rural population would have been up by 5.30 in the summer and 6.30 in the autumn and winter, had a small nibble for breakfast before making their way out up to the ‘land’. They didn’t own it but rented it being subsistence farmers. They would eat what would appear to many a frugal dinner of either vegetables or salad, a soup or a dish like ‘pizza and foje’, a super light corn thin pizza crust cooked in the fireplace under a lid accompanied by lots of refried wild chicory, mixed vegetables, and herbs and go to bed.
For those that follow the now popular intermittent fasting 16/8 hr diets of today, which have been so successful in reducing Diabetes 2 for those that suffer, you will no doubt see the similarities and realise your ‘fasting diet’ is nothing new. The word ‘Sdijuno’ stems from the word for fast in dialect. It’s a style of intelligent eating that recognises the rhythm of our metabolism and activities over the day and ensures we eat accordingly. Why eat a plate of carbohydrates last thing at night, that our bodies will not burn off as we sleep on and rather turn to fat! Its influence on when to eat particular foods today remains in place today you would find it a hard task to find many Italians eating large bowls of pasta at home in the evening!
Most of those aged between 90 and 100 in Abruzzo today still follow this style of eating as outlined by Professor Mauro Serafini, Professor of Food and Human Nutrition at the Faculty of Biosciences of the University of Teramo in his‘Centenari’ Study. His model showed the high rates of longevity within villages in Gran Sasso, Majella and Marsica Parks were not just due to environmental and genetic factors but nutrition and the rite of eating what is known as Lo Sdijuno.
Routes and More have shared two typical seasonal recipes from the area around Lanciano (CH) that would be eaten for Lo Sdijuno, including one that was traditionally eaten when harvesting the olives.
Sagne e Fagioli
Ingredients
- 400 g 400 g of Durum Wheat Semolina Flour
- 400 g Borlotti beans, fresh or dried
- 700 g Passata
- 1/2 Onion
- 1 Stalk Celery
- Salt to Taste
- Olive Oil to Taste
Instructions
- Soak the beans the day before if they are dry. Boil them for an hour, drain andset them aside
- Pour the flour on the pastry board and create a dough with warm water and a pinch of salt, until a firm dough is obtained.Once the dough is made, make thin sheets; roll out the pasta by hand and cut the sagne into the shape of strips one cm wide and five in length. Put them on a tray, dust them with flour to prevent them from sticking, and let them rest.
- Slice the onion and coarsely chop the celery, put together with the oil and tomato and saute for 20 minutes till thick. Add the beans and a ladle of water; leave to gently simmer for 10 minutes before leaving to sit.
- Once the sauce is cooked, bring the water to a boil, add salt, and cook the sagne for 4/5 minutes, stirring often.Drain, reserving the pasta water, and add the sauce to the sagne pasta in the pan, Add up to 2 ladles of the pasta cooking water to ensure the sauce is light and fully dresses the pasta. Serve hot with peperoncino
Pizza e foje
Ingredients
- 200 g Corn Flour used for Polenta
- 2 Cloves of Garlic
- 6 Salted Sardines
- 500 g Green leaf vegetables: rape, chard, chicory, borage, sow thistles or cabbage.
- 3 Potatoes
- Boiling Water
- Abruzzese Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Coarsely chopped Altino sweet chili pepper
Instructions
- Pour the cornmeal into a bowl, add the boiling water a little at a time and mix to avoid the formation of lumps; knead gently so that you have a soft consistency.
- Pour the mixture into an earthenware pot lined with parchment paper and bake at 180 ° for 20 minutes.
- Clean the vegetables and blanch them for about 20 minutes. In a pan add oil and add 2 whole cloves of garlic and chilli, sauté without letting the garlic burn and add the previously blanched vegetables, leave to infuse for about 10 minutes. In another pan pour some oil, lay the sardines and brown for 1 minute, remove from heat and leave to rest on a plate.
- Cut the pizza and serve it separately or crumbled into the dish with the vegetables.
Author: Sam Dunham
Sam is a very lucky midlife 'mamma' to A who is 11 and juggles her work as a self-employed freelance travel and food web content manager and copywriter and EFL teacher - she is the founder of English in the Woods. She is the co-founder of the social enterprises: The Abruzzo Blogger Community and Let's Blog Abruzzo. She is currently writing the book 'Abruzzo: Folk and Food.