AUNTIE PASTA: Farmer's Market Saronno

SARONNO, Italy - There was a good crowd at Saronno’s newest street market last Saturday. Unlike the weekly street market, which sells everything from produce to meat and fish, shoes and underwear, and the bi-monthly street market where you can buy antiques, paintings by local artists, regional products like olive oil from Liguria and crusty bread from Puglia, and keep the kids happy with the kiddie rides, the Mercato Contadino only sells food and plants.  

 Saronno's newest market

I like farmer’s markets.  I like that sense of community you get talking to the people who produce the food  you are going to put on your table. It’s comforting to me, part of my personal history.

My mother’s parent’s had a farm with chickens and cows and all the other storybook farm animals, and my father always had a large garden. He grew everything from sweet corn and string beans to broccoli and beets. Every afternoon he would go through the garden and pick whatever was ripe on the vine and that would end up on our dinner table that night.  

The market is a success

That’s the feeling I had walking through the farmer’s market on Saturday. It was as if my father had gone through the garden and picked what was ripe that morning and brought it to Saronno. 

On offer were patty pan and yellow squash, red cabbage, potatoes, peas and green beans, zucchini and zucchini flowers. Crispy green lettuce and garlic, blueberries, raspberries and gooseberries, which I haven’t seen since I was a kid. 

 The Cheesemaker, Matteo Moretto  (photo from LeCamosciate website

The stalls selling goat cheese were the most interesting to me. With the paltry selection of goat milk products offered by our local supermarkets, I was amazed to see, in addition to the large variety of soft cheeses,  goat’s milk yogurt, mozzarella and ricotta. 

Gianni and Tiiana Moretto, the Cheesemaker's parents

There were two cheese stalls that I found particularly interesting. The first was LeCamosciate, a small goat farm in the area of Lake Como. The cheesemaker is Matteo Moretto, a young agricultural expert who specializes in organic farming.  With a helping hand from his parents, Gianni and Tiziana, he produces a surprising variety of goat’s milk cheeses using just the milk that comes from the goats he raises on their farm. Their web site is: http://www.ilformaggiodicapra.com/

 Cheesemaker of Pian del Lares

  The second stall was that of L'azienda agricola "Pian del Lares, located near Lake Maggiore. This is a large operation with cows and pigs, in addition to goats, and they also produce a large variety of goat milk cheeses in addition to other products including sausages of various types. 

 Sausage and Cheese from Pian del Lares

The longest line was at the market stall selling apricots and peaches. Like most fruit and produce for sale in Italy, when it hits the market it is ready to eat. With husbands and kids standing nearby to carry off the bounty, housewives were buying in bulk, which here in Saronno means a flat of 18 peaches and 4 lbs of apricots. The second longest line was at the stall selling zucchini flowers. They too were being sold by the flat. 

 See You in July

It’s a new initiative so for now the farmers are only here twice a month. But I’m hoping the market will be a success and that there are enough people in Saronno interested in buying farm fresh products that it will eventually become a weekly event.

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AUNTIE PASTA: Peachy Keen

SARONNO, Italy - Wednesday is market day in Saronno. With more than 80 market stalls, it is the biggest market in this area and people come in from all the smaller towns around Saronno just to shop here. It can get very crowded, and with good reason: the prices are good and the food is fresh.

Saturine Peaches

They sell everything at this market, stuff to eat like fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, cheese, cookies, breads and spices, plus clothes, tablecloths and other household linens, pots, pans, plants and flowers, underwear, clothes, shoes, handbags, yarn and thread, just about anything you can think of.

Yummy Peaches

It’s always interesting to see what the local housewives are buying, and every once in a while I discover something new. My new discovery last week it was Saturnine peaches. “You know where they’re from?” the fruttivendolo asked me as I was taking a picture of the peaches on display at his stall.

“Yep,” I said. “Sicily.”

He smiled. “Not just Sicily,” he said, “but from the area around Bronte in the province of Catania, near the slopes of Mount Etna. They love that volcanic soil. Here, go ahead, try one.”

While they may have a strange shape, like a mini-donut, the flavor is so sweet and delicious they literally melt in your mouth. Mr. Fruttivendolo says they are the original peach, how peaches used to be back in the day of Adamo and Eva and cautions me not to fall for the Saturnine knock-offs called “tipo Saturnine”. They are not the real thing.

Summer Bounty

Well, we were both wrong about where they come from. Saturine peaches don’t grow in Sicily but in le Marche, the province that borders Emilia-Romagna and the Republic of San Marino. And they don’t date back from the days of Adam and Eve, well, maybe they do but they have only been grown in Italy since the early 1980’s. The squashed peaches that grow in Sicily are called umbilico di Venere or pesche tabacchiere, and while they look the same they are technically different. If you are very imaginative you might be able to see how they resemble Venus’ bellybutton, but pesche tabacchiere totally escapes me.

A Cornucopia of Fruit

On http://www.pesca-rosalia.com/ a site dedicated to these special peaches, they claim the peaches are called tabacchiera because of their snuff box like shape, but I don’t get it. I’m not an expert on snuff boxes, far from it, but the snuff boxes I looked up on the internet do not look particularly squashed.

The name pesche comes from the Latin persica as the Romans thought this fruit came from Persia. The Romans then went on to develop several other varieties of peaches as the fruit was incorporated into the Italian diet. In Sicily they still call all types of peaches persiche.

Pretty as a Peach

The pesca-rosalia site also has some interesting peach recipes, and you can substitute regular peaches for the Saturine, although the results probably won’t be as sweet. If you are further intrigued by these beauties and find yourself in Sicily in the summer months you can visit the orchards and who knows, they may even hire you as a peach picker. That’s a step up from what Peter Piper did, and I bet it’s a whole lot more fun too.

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