Excellences from the soil: truffles, chestnuts, hazelnuts &co

Irpinia is well-known also for the excellent black truffle of Bagnoli, and it is exactly in this village that a dedicated festival takes place each year during October, where it’s possible to taste dishes and products with truffles – as for example pasta with pancetta and truffles – truffle-flavoured cheeses and liquors, caciocavallo impiccato („hanged caciocavallo“) and bread with truffles.
Another speciality of this area is the chestnut of Montella, which is the refined chestnut variety called „palommina“ (this is the unique product perteining to the category of fruit and vegetables that obtained the DOC certification in 1987 and the IGP certification in 1996).
Also the chestnut of Serino DOP is worth mentioning. It is used as a fundamental ingredient for the production of sweets but it can also be boiled or roasted.
In Irpinia you will find also a lot of hazelnut cultivations. A great number of festivals and events are dedicated to hazelnuts, during which, one can taste the so called „‘ntrite“, that is to say shelled hazelnuts, toasted in the oven and putted in a thin hamp’s thread. Particularly famous are the festivals of Baiano during the month of September – where one can taste the traditional hazelnuts’ spaghetti– and the festival of Domicella, during the first week of September – particularly dedicated to dried fruit.
Among the traditional sweets of Irpinia, one of the most famous is torrone. Grottaminarda is a town where the production of this speciality has been recently introduced, while Dentecane is the most ancient producer of torrone. This last one is a small district of Pietradefusi, surrounded by hazelnut trees and woods, from which the village gets hazelnuts and a particularly perfumed honey used for the production of torrone. Dentecane is the village where the filling of torrone took place for the first time. This filling can be with chocolate or with sponge cake dunked in typical liquors such as Strega or limoncello.
The tradition of torrone has been exported from Dentecane to another village of Irpinia, which is Ospedaletto d‘Alpinolo, located at the base of Mount Partenio, where a lot of pilgrims go in order to visit the Sanctuary of Montevergine. Here, in a little square called Piazza Mercato, there’s a permanent open-air market where people can find the principal varieties produced in the neighbouring areas.
If we move towards the cultivated territories of Salerno, we will find extended productions of vegetables, such as tomatoes, aubergines, atichokes, potatoes and above all a particular variety of onion called ramata di Montoro.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning the refined olive oils obtained from the variety of olive “ravece”, cultivated in the area of Ariano, in the Valleys of Ufita, and Calore. The DOP oil of Ufita is the result of a perfect harmony between nature and tradition.
The DOP oils of Irpinia are famous and exported all over the world, capable to give a special quality to all dishes and cookings.