5. Mountain Ricotta and Ferragosto Fun

S1 E5: Ferragosto is the day Italy lets its hair down. They’ve been doing it since the emperor Augustus decreed it a holiday in 18 B.C. In the middle of the traditional August break, it coincides with the religious festival of the Feast of the Assumption. It’s when Sarnano comes alive and people take to the streets in their Sunday best. Traditionally Sunday lunch is pasta dishes and roast meat, but at the height of a sweltering summer Lia prefers something lighter. Today’s starter is sformatini di zucchini, small cakes of courgettes and egg, flavored with onion, basil and two kinds of cheese. Light, delicious and very more-ish. Lia chose a light pasta dish for a main course. It’s called pasta Sibillini after the mountains that overlook the Cookucina kitchen in Sarnano, and it makes use of ricotta cheese that’s made right before our eyes in Maria’s country kitchen. Tamsen and Lia get a double lesson - in making not just ricotta but also the pecorino cheese that’s part of the same process. And out in the farmyard they get to meet the sheep that produced the milk for both. Today’s dessert is a home-made semi-freddo alla crema di nocciole – a kind of do-it-yourself ice cream that’s as easy to make as it is delicious to eat. And this edition rounds off with a trip to a Sagra. They hold these open-air parties in just about every village in Le Marche. And throughout the summer you’re never far away from a Sagra. Like most other things in Italy they have a bit of a religious history, but really they’re about celebrating a particular kind of food – from prawns to polenta to pizza. Tonight it’s Pancetta, and another opportunity to sample the Marchigiana way of eating – simple food, beautifully cooked. All to the traditional sound of Massimo and his organetto.