Sunday Lunch in the Mountains

The small community of houses built hundreds of years ago was tucked into an elbow of the Alps; the French border a mere ten minutes away as a well-fed Italian crow flies. Invited for Sunday lunch, we found Rosi’s cottage planted firmly on the side of a wooded canyon; up, up, up a series of tiny, winding roads lined in conifer and wild ramps.

The dining room, formerly a horse stable, was crossed with ancient beams and iron braces, and heated by a large iron stove set in the corner, a cast iron kettle sending plumes of steam into the air. A wooden table was laid with variously-sized jars of fermented and pickled vegetables, like edible floral arrangements decorated with tiny, deeply tarnished forks. Cow and sheep milk cheeses were set on ancient wooden boards, early spring mountain flowers buried in their flavors. Bottles of cheap beer and expensive wine languished on a nearby table. Grissini and loaves of shitty white bread in a straw basket the size of a Fiat 500 were passed around, followed by a glass flask filled with fruity Taggiasca oil, harvested from gnarled trees along the Ligurian coast. Piemonte’s famed prosciutto, made nearby in the town of Cuneo and feathered onto a platter like a 70’s haircut, melts on the tongue, its sweet-salty notes rivaling even the finest hams cured in Parma.