Cena in Piazza (dinner in the square)

Associazione Corsa della Brocche Cetona hosted a big supper in Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi last Saturday night. with the following menu (with apologies for my spelling!):

Antipasto del Viandante

Zuppa del Priore

Umbrichelli di Braccio da Montone

Filleto di Porco con Verdure

Dolci

25 euro pp

Not to mention unlimited red table wine and water (sparkling or still)!  For those (like me) whose Italian is near non-existent, the meal consisted of:

Appetizer plate of crostini (little toasted bread slices) - one with a kind of liverwurst, one with cooked cabbage, one with just olive oil, salt and garlic (that was my fave - YUM!!), plus a scoop of cold chick pea salad.

Soup, a really thick soup named for the Bishop (Priore) of Toscana, and made of faro, beans, dried porcini mushrooms, seasonings.

Pasta with a white meat sauce...I found out that montone translates as ram, so not sure if that means the meat was ram, or if this is just a special dish originating in Montone!  Either way it was very delicious and intensely flavoured!

Pork slices with cooked greens on the side. The pork was very tender and had a divine sauce poured over it.

Dessert was a plate of grapes with toffee drizzled over them and a sweet roll same shape as our doughnuts, but more of a bread consistency.

By the time we got to dessert, I was basically bursting at the seams.  Mom and I walked back to our house, and I popped on facebook for a few minutes to say goodnight to Dave and the girls and tell them that I ate myself into a coma and had to go sleep it off!

What a fabulous evening!!  We also enjoyed a pageant of people in medieval costume, who sat at the head table, and also made the rounds at the tables, stopping to talk with the diners throughout the evening.  And the festivities were topped off by fire breathing entertainers, also dressed in medieval costume.  Seated around us at our section of the table, were folks from Cetona, a couple from France who had recently bought a new build house just outside the town walls (her father had lived about 5km from Cetona, and had turned the family home into an agriturismo, so she has been visiting the area for years and decided it was time to have a place of her own), and a family from Holland who also own a house close by and come here as often as possible, this was their 4th time of attending the Cena in Piazza.

I took what photos I could, but only had my cell phone and it doesn't do well in the absence of light...but I think these will give a sense of the evening...