I spent the weekend in the Abruzzo region of Italy, which is kind of in the middle of the peninsula, both north-south and east-west. L’Aquila, the seat of the provincial government, is a couple of hours’ drive east of Rome. One of the places we visited was Santo Stefano di Sessanio, which is actually in the Gran Sasso National Park. It’s a pleasant enough medieval village, very well restored, though it has a whiff of Disneyland about it these days, especially in the summer.
Anyway, one of the many interesting things about this place is that it is famous for a particular kind of lentil — very small, tasty and apparently not needing to be soaked before cooking. And expensive. I don’t think the Lenticchia di Santo Stefano (photo below) has been protected like France’s Puy lentil, though.
Incidentally, I came across that last link purely by coincidence today. I was going to talk about the Santo Stefano lentil anyway, but then a Google alert sent me to a posting in the Cookthink blog which mentions an article in The New Yorker about the place where I work, and refers back to the earlier piece about lentils.
The lentil of S. Stefano di Sessanio is described in a 2004 book on “Genetic resources of the Region Abruzzo”, published by Region Abruzzo.
12 populations have been collected. Land cultivated to this lentil in the area of S. Stefano is about 30 ha, with a production of about 30t per year. Not much more than 12 farmers are growing it. There is the intention to give DOP status to this landrace.