Celebrate: San Antonio Abate
The Blessing of the Animals. January 17th.
Part 1 in my new series on Italian Celebrations. There always seems to be something to celebrate. Living in a Catholic country, there are of course so many holidays celebrating saints. Many of them inspire parades or festivals. Often, local culinary specialties are made which you can buy only at the festival. Each region will have their own specialties. I adore researching and collecting these recipes and will be sharing them for my premiere subscribers.
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San Antonio Abate - January 17
There are two Saint Anthonys. San Antonio, Abate and San Antonio di Padova. Today is the first one, the abbot. He is always depicted with a pig at his feet and surrounded by farm animals in holy cards. The other Anthony is for lost objects.
What’s not to love about a holiday where everyone brings their animals?? Our cats don’t like to travel, so we went alone to the blessing in a nearby village. Over the years, we have visited different towns for the event. Our village now has added a simple blessing in front of the church in the main piazza.
This year, we returned to Poggio a Caiano, a town about an hour from home. It is famous for the Medici villa.
This year, there was also a market. A flea market,food stands and some other “specialty stands”, selling household items. There as a display of vintage tractors and the fire department and the forestery guards also had stands. A real celebration.
I was surprised at how calm all the animals were. Dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, cattle, donkeys, and no fights. It was so much fun.
We returned to this festival as they prepared a special dish, which is almost impossible to find anymore. In January, most families raise a pig or two to provide food for the year. From the pig, they use everything, nose to tail. Nothing is wasted. They would prepare two prosciutto (hips), two spalla ( shoulder), pancetta ( belly), guanciale (cheeks), and from the rest of the meat, salami. The fat is turned into strttuo(lard) to be used in cooking. When the pig is slaughtered, they also save the blood and there is a local salami called burista.
Today, they sold migliacci also called roventini, a crepe made from the pigs blood. You can have them savory or sweet. We bought some blessed rolls and two crepes, one with parmigiano cheese and one with sugar. There was a wait of over an hour to get the crepes. Most people ordered 10 to take home.
At the stand for the local club, which does fundraising, there is a menu with several items. A full meal of crostini, pasta all amatriciana made with pancetta, and mixed grilled meats, all pork: ribs, pancetta, and sausage.
We had to wait so long, the gentleman gave us an extra one for free.
I am not going to give you a recipe for how to make the crepes. It is almost impossible even for me to find them being made anymore. I chose a recipe for a fun cookie from the Abruzzo area. It is similar to a Sicilian cookie for Christmas called Cuccidati.
The cookies from Abruzzi use jam as a base instead of figs in the Sicilian cookie, and I find them easier to make and delicious. I made mine, which started off looking more like birds, but there was another version I liked, which looked like the medieval dragons in illustrations. There are so many versions in different regions of Italy. I hope you enjoy the one I chose.
