Seafood Dishes
From the coast come delicacies such as brodetto alla vastese, grigliate, fritture di paranza, octopus salads and seafood, stuffed mussels and stewed snails; while the inland area expresses the full strength of a millennial tradition made of pastoralism, breeding, viticulture (Trebbiano and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Cerasuolo and many other DOC wines), and horticulture.
Typical dishes of inland Abruzzo
Starting with pasta, often still homemade, one cannot fail to mention maccheroni alla chitarra or ceppe (a type of rustic fusilli) with lamb ragù. Characteristic for the maccheroni is the particular type of frame, called chitarra, over which the rolling pin is run, pressing the pasta dough and producing a cascade of delicious golden vermicelli.
The chapter on cured meats and meats is very rich, with sausages not only from pork (capocollo and Abruzzo ham and many others, also flavored with herbs or chili pepper); but also from sheep, and a rarity: micischia, dried and salted sheep meat, which shepherds carried with them during transhumance and cooked in a stew with tomato.
The main dish are also arrosticini, very thin skewers on which cubes of sheep meat are threaded; roasted castrato; preparations made from meat of barnyard animals. Typical of May Day are Le Virtù, a spring soup prepared with 40 different types of legumes and vegetables cooked separately.
Finally, unmissable are the cheeses, led by Pecorino di Farindola and Canestrato di Castel del Monte, both Slow Food Presidium. Among the addresses of good eaters, we mention: the Enoteca Centrale, in Teramo; Borgo Spoltino, in Mosciano Sant’Angelo, in the province of Teramo; Angolino da Filippo, in San Vito Marina, in the province of Chieti; the restaurants New Evo and La Bilancia, in Loreto Aprutino, in the province of Pescara.
