Pappardella pasta festival

, Game

Original name: Sagra della Pappardella

Place: Montespertoli, in Florence province.

First year of the festival: 1980

Period: last half of August - first days of September

2023 scheduled on: from Friday 25 August to Sunday 3 September

Opening times: at dinner, every evening from 7 pm; also at lunch on Sundays

Local Specialties:

  • First courses - pappardelle alla lepre, pappardelle pasta with hare sauce;
  • Second courses - lepre in dolce e forte, sweet and strong hare; lepre in salmì, hare stew; arista di maiale, roasted pork; salsicce e fagioli, bistecca and bistecca di maiale, rostinciana di maiale, pork rib
  • Side dishes: fagioli all’olio, beans with olive oil; fagioli all’uccelletto, beans with tomato

There is a precious dish that stands absolutely out this great list of Tuscan classics here, it’s the lepre in dolce e forte, and we warmly suggest you not to miss it! You won’t have many possibilities to find it elsewhere. One of the peaks of the Tuscan and Italian cuisine, the “dolce e forte” was and still is, a rare dish, reserved for few occasions.

Translated in English, it’s “dolce” sweet and “forte” strong, where strong means salty. In this recipe indeed, the flavors are mixed: the dolce e forte sauce has usually ingredients such as sugar, raisins, pine nuts, chocolate, vinegar. It’s a particular sauce which Tuscan peasants used only with game, especially hare, and that’s absolutely what you’ll have the possibility to taste in this festival, hare with sweet and strong sauce - as a Sunday peasants’ lunch, one hundred years ago, say, around 1917...

This doesn’t mean that the other menu’s recipes will be less good and delicious; the pappardelle, a sort of Tuscan big tagliatelle, with hare sauce are unmissable, and the lepre in salmì, a classic second course, with hare, is as difficult to find nowadays as resounding.

Other famous, great recipes, arista di maiale, the grilled meat, veal t-bone steak and pork steak, sausages, beans with olive oil or with tomato (fagioli all’ucceletto) will add to the value of this fabulous menu, a true tribute to the glorious past peasant cuisine.

sagra-della-pappardella

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