Tasty Tales from the Italian Ham Highway: November Porc

From the heights of the snowcapped Dolomites to the verdant Valle del Cibo, I recently had the delicious pleasure of visiting a number of the finest food and drink producers in northern Italy, taking in lots of pretty countryside along the way and getting to known some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met.

Now on the last leg of my Ham Highway tour (get it?), the rest of the trip was all downhill so to speak as I headed east from alpine Piemonte to the Emilia-Romagna lowlands for a pig out of provincial proportion.

Celebrating a decade since its inception, November Porc is a month long foodie festival held every weekend during (yep you guessed it) November with each weekend seeing the party move to a different village in the Province of Parma. If the idea of visiting Torino was the impetus to planning my trip, the possibility of attending one of the November Porc weekends was what led to designing my actual itinerary and coming up with its broad “Ham Highway” theme.

Although a modern contrivance, I think the founders of the festival have tapped into local tradition and heritage in a rather profound way that seems to have filled a gap with respect to acknowledging the importance of autumn harvesting. From what I saw during the final day of the festival, November Porc was a hit – very Thanksgiving-y and extremely down home.

Roccabianca

The last weekend of November Porc brought a throng of folk to the village of Roccabianca, home of the world’s largest cicciolata, a sort of pressed meat “cake” made from pig lard, ears, and tongues mixed together and cooked over a low flame for several hours. It’s pretty tasty stuff as long as you don’t think too long or hard about what it consists of. During the festival, local volunteers had assembled to make a mega-cicciolata to beat their own record. Slices of it with a generous gob of polenta were being handed out to any and all.

I loved Roccabianco. There’s a cool castle (complete with drawbridge and moat!) in the heart of the village that’s used these days as a grappa distillery … and little else. But being there – especially during an occasion as folksy as November Porc – afforded me a peek into yet another “other” side of Italian life beyond what’s seen by the typical tourist. With the live music, the carnival atmosphere, people from near and far coming together to eat and drink homegrown treats in the streets, it all felt (if I may be permitted an overused term) incredibly authentic.

Food Valley

Now if you’re questioning my pork-dar for having made it all the way to Parma without organising a visit to a prosciutto factory, let me assure you I’ve done that … along with the Parmiggiano Reggiano thing too. Both of which I highly recommend and would have been top priority on this trip if I hadn’t already had the experiences.

Of course gaining access to factories and working farms isn’t necessarily all that easy, particularly if you don’t speak Italian. If these gourmand galavants I’ve been blogging about sound like your sort of thing, have a look at Food Valley Travel and Leisure. Food Valley is a Parma-based tour operator offering foodie tours and more in Parma and across the Emilia-Romagna region as well as other destinations throughout Italy. In Roccabianca, I met Food Valley’s director, Andrea Aiolfi. He helped me scope the scene more thoroughly and provided me with a better understanding of what was happening at the festival as well as what to seek out during the rest of my time in Emilia-Romagna.

For more about Parma and the region of Emilia-Romagna visit emiliaromagnaturismo.it.

I would like to thank the fine folks at boutique digital agency, The 7th Chamber, for helping sponsor this trip.