Carunchio Part 4: Forgotten Tastes

The palace in Carunchio had long been abandoned when Cristina’s father, Gerardo, came across it. (And you better believe there’s more to the story than that!) Upon his retirement, he visited the small village and walked up to the top of the hill, mystified by the magnificent structure. He rang the bell. A woman answered. Everyone in Carunchio, by this point, had wanted to sell their houses, leave to be closer to their children and grandchildren, but here he was, buying an abandoned palace in a dying hilltown. Gerardo tells me, everyone in town thought, Who is this madman? With the palace, he bought an old vineyard that needed restoring; now, along with a restaurant and guest suites, culinary tours and a demonstration kitchen, he has a flourishing vineyard with 7,000 plants.

I met Gerardo the day Cristina first took me to visit Carunchio. We’d arrived there in the early afternoon, and I needed to get back that night, but the one bus that returned to Vasto had already departed—at noon. And only one bus left each day. So I was fortunate to get a ride back with Gerardo, to hear his stories. Cristina had grown up spending time in Malta, Mozambique, Yemen, and Greece; Gerardo was an Italian ambassador, which is why they both spoke great English.

As Gerardo and I head out of town in his SUV that day, we stop at a turnabout. “There he is,” Gerardo says, pointing his chin in the direction of a man pushing a wheelbarrow. “Who?” I ask, realizing it did seem a bit odd, a busy road, a man pushing a wheelbarrow, but perhaps just leaving the city limits of Carunchio, the site wasn’t so unusual.

“Primitive man.”

Gerardo tells me he “refuses everything.” That primitive man needs to do everything “all his own way.” He lives without electricity, without bread even; he hasn’t let a single euro (or lire) pass through his fingers in countless years. Though Gerardo tells me he is a rich man. The government deposits his pension into a bank account. He has over 200,000 euros in it, but he doesn't even know it, doesn't care. “One pair of trousers will last him three or four years,” Gerardo explains. His son had tried on numerous occasions to provide him with electricity, but primitive man refused, not wanting to deal with money, not wanting to have to pay anybody for anything. The son offered to pay. Still, primitive man refused.

“His wife left him long ago,” Gerardo says. “He lives like a cinghiale (a wild boar).”

“Do you know the story of Spoon River?” Gerardo asks. He likens it to Carunchio. “The children leave and don’t come back,” he says. But things—traditions—in Carunchio are changing. “Now they have TVs, so they know they can buy bread in the store. They don’t have to grow the wheat, buy the flour.”

As we drive, Gerardo speaks animatedly. Sometimes both hands off the wheel, swerving a bit. A couple in the car next to us honk. “Hey!” he says to them through his window, “I’m talking!”

The Carunchese, Gerardo explains, like to keep their own pigs. They know what they've been fed and they provide them with much sustenance. They’re allowed four pigs per family. In January, during the town-wide slaughter, the pigs are killed with knives (not guns, as most in Carunchio don’t own one). You can hear the screams of pigs throughout the hills.

Ventricina, typical of Molise, is stored in the “sac” of the pig (its stomach or bladder is used as casing). Red peppers (many of which hang to dry in the sheds of the Carunchese) are cleaned, then ground to a fine powder. (Spanish first used these and brought them back to Europe; before that, Indians in Peru and Guatemala used the peppers medicinally.) The powder is added to the sausage.

According to one source, (Cucina Italiana: Salamis and Sausages) the process of making ventricina is quite an exhaustive ritual:

“It is said that in southern Abruzzi, at the moment of the butchering of the pig, it was necessary to have ready a sturdy chair and a glass of wine at the ready. In fact, the head of the family--it is often his responsibility--after having dealt the mortal knife-wound to the pig, may feel quite faint. He collapses onto the chair and gulps down a good dose of Montepulciano wine to help restore himself up again. This happens because the pig lives in the family’s house almost for a whole year, eating their leftovers and, in the end, it almost becomes part of the family.”

Later, Gerardo talks with pride and clear passion about his first wine, which he has given me a bottle of. He calls it Caberlot (a cab-merlot blend) and tells me about how his grandmother used (mosto) a syrup taken from the squashed grapes to be made into wine. The first use for the killed grapes was a kind of marmalade rolled into a pastry, and the second, a syrup created after boiling the grape remains and letting the liquid evaporate. To see if it’s ready to jar, it’s lifted with a spoon and drizzled to check its consistency. “It was used for everything,” Gerardo tells me. “As an ‘energizer,’ when you had a sore throat, or for pasta sauce.” The mention of this pasta sauce sends Gerardo into a nostalgic gaze.

“When I was a child,” he starts . . . “I grew up like this, eating only one dish.” He tells me about the pasta sauce his grandmother made from the mosto. He says he doesn't think he could replicate it, but he still remembers the smell. “Like Chanel no. 5,” he says. He laughs a bit, still with that look in his eyes. “Yes,” he says, “Those are forgotten tastes.”