I never thought of closing the April issue of Sale & Pepe from my home desk. Likewise my editorial staff. Today, our workstations resemble those of a widespread hotel, where everyone has a room in a different place. Certainly possible to work in smart working, but strange, above all silent and invisible, very distant from editorial life.

We will work equally hard for send Sale & Pepe to newsstands with an editorial line close to the one we are used to, because in this moment of emergency it is not easy to organize photo shoots.

We know ours is a beautiful job, even more because it deals with an important topic such as food, which is necessity, pleasure, history, economy, culture. Not only that, it is also that comfort that just these days, relieves tension in the family and creates moments of sharing. So sit in an armchair, open Sale & Pepe and I will take you to Mugello to taste the Potato tortelli. Why? Simple, they are good and can be easily prepared at home: the puff pastry is delicate but not too much, the filling is naturally made with Mugello tubers and little else and the seasoning is a duck ragù to be deposited well over each tortello. A beloved, but not too well-known dish, which hit the headlines when Annie Féolde, chef of the Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence (3 Michelin stars) many years ago put it on paper, according to a personal version.

Its history is ancient, the original filling was made of chestnuts, fruit of which the whole area is rich, not by chance the brown of the Mugello got the IGP. Then, coincidentally because of a crisis, the famine due to the Napoleonic wars, came potatoes. It was the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando III, returned from exile, who for feed the people, sent seed potatoes to the landowners. In 1817 the prior Olmi sowed the first 400.

To reconstruct the history of the tortello, theItalian Academy of Cuisine with the Mugello delegation, with a study that lasted from June to October 2016 which allowed us to define the recipe and the origins. So it is known that in the 1950s it was prepared especially in the families of mountain areas, while the inhabitants of the valley floor moved to taste it towards the restaurants of the Upper Mugello. Starting from the 70s, the tortello spread a bit throughout the valley, bringing knowledge of it up to the Arno.

Today this dish is a classic of the valley's catering and beyond, so much so that in 2019 the first Challenge of the Tortello Mugellano took place (9 chefs in the competition plus the show cooking of two Tuscan stars). As soon as you can make a trip to the valley, you will discover a beautiful area of ​​our Apennines full of woods, villages, lakes and castles, home of Giotto he was born in Fra Angelico and … of our tortello: a small masterpiece born from the indissoluble union between product, territory and tradition, like many others that are part of our food and wine heritage. To be proud of.

Laura Maragliano
on Sale & Pepe of April 2020