Sorrento Local Customs

On Good Friday there are two processions that take place on the streets of Sorrento. Early in the wee hours of the morning (at 3 am) is the Processione Bianca when people walk through the streets chanting "Miserere" representing the Blessed Mother searching for her Son, who has been condemned to death.

At 7:30 pm is Processione Nero, when people dress in black and mourn the death of the Savior.

You can watch the processions on the Sorrento Webcam:

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14th February may be St Valentine's day for the rest of Europe, but in Sorrento it's also when they celebrate their own patron saint, St Antonino.

By the evening of 13th the whole of Corso Italia was crammed with market traders setting-up their stalls, and street sellers from Naples arrived on the early Circumvesuviana train the next day. The vast majority of stalls were for sweeties of some sort or another........Haribo and nougat seeming most popular.... closely followed by all types of nuts and dried fruits. Other stalls sell everything from tools and toys to (very cold, poor things) baby hamsters and live fish.

There are processions during the day (I missed them, sadly) and the whole town seems to turn out to wander the stalls........probably all the nearby villages too. It was certainly a crush, made even more Italian in the evening by the cars crawling through the crowds; none of this fancy health & safety stuff, just make sure you get out of the way! Fireworks too.....the day seemed to start off with huge bangs!

And, of course, people visited the Basilica de S. Antonino, and his statue in P. Tasso was garlanded with flowers, oranges and lemons.

Well worth a wander if you happen to be in the area at the right time (thpough parking will be a nightmare, so get the bus or train).

In Sorrento (actually, everywhere I went this trip) I learned that lots of people have dogs. And lots of people seem entirely happy to let their dogs wander around by themselves, and the dogs are entirely brilliant at avoiding cars/scooterini. I'm used to seeing cats in Italy (and elsewhere) but encountering so many dogs was a new experience (resulting in not many cats too!).

I like dogs, but am very wary of those I don't know. However, it soon became apparent that these wandering canines were not in the least bit interested in me (apart from a rather lovely one in Amalfi, who attached himself to me for a walk along the prom). Even the 'stray' dogs in Pompeii/Oplontis were not bothered; they just pootled around doing their usual doggy thing regardless of visitors.

How many dogs were 'strays' and how many simply having a good time looking after themselves I couldn't tell. Certainly not one of them looked underfed, and most of them looked pretty clean too. The dog in the photo, gazing longingly at the closed door of the butcher's shop, was just trying it on, imo!

As far as I could tell, the only thing to be wary of is what they leave behind them on pavements.

The origins of this product date back to the introduction of the buffalo in Italy. There are many hypotheses on the period of intoduction and start of the tradition of Italian breeding. The buffalo has origins in eastern India although the hypothisis of a native Italian Buffalow is reinforced by the retrieval of fossils in the roman countries.
The term "Mozzarella" derives from the operation of "stumping by hand" practiced in the final phase of the working of the mozzarella. The Borboni dedicated themselves particularly to the breeding of the buffalo, in particular in the real estate of Carditello, where in the middle of 1700 they started a cheese factory

In the zone of Volturno and Sele, today the ancient bufalare (buffalo graze) dating back to those times can still be found.
The characteristic of buffalo mozzarella is of course the raw materials employed, the fresh buffalo milk, of which approximately 4,2 liters are necessary in order to produce a kilogram of mozzarella, and the particular working that consists in the operation of the spinning. The spinning by hand consists in working the paste of the cheese till end of maturation with hot water until making it "spin", in order to obtain the particular consistency of the final product.

For the spinning a cookware and a wooden stick are used, raising and continuously spinning the fused paste until obtaining a homogenous paste. At the end there is the mold preparation, that still today, many, execute by hand with the traditional "mozzatura", that the cheese producer carries out with the thumb and the index of the hand. The mozzarellas therefore produced are then left to cool in bathtubs containing cold water and finally salted. It’s also allowed the smoking, an ancient and traditional natural process of working, but in such case the denomination of origin must be followed by the wording "affumicata" (smoked).

Ingredients:

500g buffalo mozzarella,
500g tomatoes,
extra virgin olive oil,
fresh basil,
oregano,
salt.


method:

Choose - if possible - mozzarella and tomatoes having equal dimensions, and slice at the same thickness. Season slices of tomatoes with a pinch of salt and alternate with slices of mozzarella. Add lots of fresh basil, a pinch oregano (optional) and pour on some extra virgin olive oil.

This onion is very widespread in Campania, with over one thousand hectares of cultivation area in 2002. The Pompeii white onion, which is suitable for fresh consumption, is a typical crop of the Sarnese-Nocerino countryside and the Stabiese-Pompeiano countryside. It has a flatfish-round white bulb, which is uniform and homogeneous in size (from 80 to 120 grams) and is of excellent preservability.

The traditional cultivation techniques of this crop involve sowing broadcast, which is mostly done from August to September, on well-prepared plots of land that serve as seedbeds. The seedlings are subsequently transplanted in autumn into single, or more frequently, multiple rows. The onions are harvested when the bulb is barely formed (spring onion), in winter, or when fully ripe, between winter and spring. The varieties get their name from the period in which they terminate the cycle: febbratica (February), marzatica (March), aprilatica (April), maggiaiola (May) and giugnese (June).

Ingredients:

320g linguine,
300g small tomatoes,
60g black olives,
30g capers,
30g salty anchovies,
1 and 1/2 decilitre extra virgin olive oil,
2 cloves garlic,
chopped parsley, red hot pepper, salt



Method:

Frizzle garlic and ret hot pepper in oil, add anchovies (unsalted and filleted) melt at low heat. Add chopped tomatoes and cook rapidly at high heat, mix with pitted olives and capers. Boil linguine and drain slightly undercooked, pour into the sauce, mix and complete with chopped parsley.

Ingredients:

Notice that this recipe is for 10 serves in order to have a best result, since it's a traditional dish commonly prepared for some festivities.

600-700g pasta for lasagna,
450g meat balls,
500g ricotta cheese,
450g well dry buffalo mozzarella or fior di latte cheese,
500g "cervellatine" (thin sausages),
abundant ragù,
250g parmesan and pecorino cheese,
ground black pepper (small quantity)



Method:

Boil pasta, drain and season it with some cheese, salt and pepper. Fry meatballs; frizzle sausages, cool and cut them into slices. Cut mozzarella in pieces and dissolve ricotta with part of ragù. Lay ragù on the bottom of a greased wide baking pan, superpose with a layer of lasagna in order to cover the bottom and borders (let pour out enough lasagna from the borders to cover at the end). Lay ragù and ricotta cheese, fior di late or mozzarella, meatballs and slices of sausage, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, a pinch of pepper and add some more ragù. Repeat lasagna layer and filling. At the end complete with the layer of lasagna (the one pouring out from borders), ragù and Parmesan cheese. Bake until a brown crust comes out and lasagna is compact. Cool down, pull out of the baking pan and serve with pecorino flakes and some more ragù.