Fermo
Nowadays, we have a lot of recipes belonging to the
pasts that have become traditional ones. Nothing was
wasted, everything was exploited to the maximum
and “le vergare” (the matriarchs) worked hard to crea-
te mouth-watering dishes also from raw materials they
utilized to the maximum. Our recipe responded to the
need not to “throw anything away”, the need to use
everything. The female rabbits, at the end of their “ca-
reer”, when they were no longer able to care for their
offsprings, were eliminated, but not “thrown away”;
in other words, they had to be consumed. Anyway, a
three/four-year-old animal, that had repeatedly given
birth to so many rabbits, had leathery meat, so they
were not suitable for consumption. They were lean,
hard, “stoppacciose” (gristly). That is why some “verga-
ra” thought to bone the animal, stuff it with meat and
pork fat, flavour it with garlic, rosemary and wild fennel,
and after wrapping it on itself, they sew it and put it in
the oven. The result was a recipe that was going to be
part of our tradition, the “coniglio in porchetta”. Nowa-
days, female rabbits at the end of their “career” are no
longer used, but the process is for a stuffed rabbit is the
same and gives us a moment of great pleasure. Poultry,
such as rabbit, is classically employed in the dishes of
the Piceno territory, motivated by the need to survive.
The pigs, ever-present, were slaughtered in the winter
and processed with the use of salt and spices; the bovi-
nes, where present, were used to haul carts and plows.
The farmers used to eat poultry meat and the prepara-
tion “in porchetta” was a normal practice to flavour the
