Wild Boar, Cows on the Loose and Rabbit Stew

It’s mid August and my vegetable garden is rewarding my earlier summer efforts with copious amounts of cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, green beans, eggplant, basil and parsley. I asked my neighbor down the hill how her garden was doing and she told me the Cinghiale got her garden! Cinghiale (pronounced: Chen-gall-aye) are wild boars that roam the forests using their snouts to forage for grubs in the soft soil, “The Cinghiale destroyed your garden?!” I gasp while asking increduolously. “The Cinghiale are around here?” “Si”, she responds with eyes wide open “A BIG one with nine babies!” “What?!?” I start thinking about my garden just up the hill from her, I imagine a enormous wild boar with big tusks rummaging through my garden followed by her nine babies. I ask her if the wild boar can be hunted because I also started to imagine a big bowl of steaming pasta in a rich Cinghiale Ragu. “No” she replies, the season for boar is closed but in the fall it will reopen.

She eyes me sideways as I say “I really like Cinghiale Ragu….” She claps her hands, throws her head back in laughter and exclaims in delight that the American likes Cinghiale Ragu. “Ok, this fall I will make you Cinghiale Ragu” She says with a big smile on her face. That’s something to look forward to, open season for Cinghiale.

Well, it turns out I didn’t have to wait so long to eat Cinghiale because the next week I saw signs for the Cinghiale festival in my very own town of Itri! So we invited a couple of friends to join us and we had a night out in Itri at the Cinghiale Festival! It wasn’t my first time eating Cinghiale because in Tuscany it is a regional dish and is so tasty in a Ragu. I was surprised though, that in Itri, in August, they served the Cinghiale Ragu on polenta. If you have read my blog before, you know that I had created quite the scandal last year when I made polenta in July. It was completely unheard of to make polenta in Summer and everyone was talking about the crazy American who made polenta in July.

So as we dug into our plate of polenta with cinghiale (as was served at the cinghiale festival in my town of Itri, in August) we thought of our Italian friends who has chastised us for the forementioned “Polenta in July” Incident. We snapped a picture of ourselves publically eating Cinghiale and Polenta in August and sent it to them. They replied “Maybe we were wrong….” Well, anyway, it’s always fun to harrass your Italian friends….Either way it was delicious! But I still look forward to eating Cinghiale again in the fall, especially if my neighbor catches her garden intruder.

Wild boar with her babies, but not the one in my friends garden…

Then one day in the cool of the evening, I was working in my garden as the light turned to twighlight and I heard the sound of a cow bell clanking. I had been hearing this sound lately as I sit on my upper deck and hear the sound of clanging cow bells as the cows nibble on the grass in the valley below. But this time it sounded very close. I look up from my gardening and see several large cows nibbling the grass at the base of my olive trees!

This is the cow in the upper garden, just after she ate the grapes!

“What?!!”, I look up into the large brown eyes of a huge cow and she looks back at me, just as astonished! We have cows in California but normally they are far, far away from me. They look like the domesticated cows on a carton on Daisy sour cream, but these cows look far from domesticated. They are large white beasts with horns! But as soon as they came face to face with me they scattered down the hillside. “Hmmmm….I think to myself, they shouldn’t be this close to me” but I figured they were gone now.

That night as I slept in my bed I was awakened in the early morning hours by the sound of cow bells clanking again! “Am I dreaming?” I think to myself. Then I get out of bed and open the door to find my large horned friends surrounding my house! This time there is one next to my car, one has climbed the steep stone steps to the upper garden and one is munching my landlords grapes! “Yikes!” I yell out “You can’t be here! Go on, get out!!!” I wave my arms frantically, jumping up and down and clapping my hands, all in my jammies. Jeff also stumbles out of bed saying “What’s happening…..?” I grab my phone and take a few pictures because I am sure my landlord will want to see this! (He was currently on vacation). The cows scatter again into the olive groves below and I dont see them again. Wow, this is really country living! I got cows getting loose and cinghiale eating my neighbors garden!

These are the stone steps the cows climbed!

A few nights later we were invited to another neighbors house for dinner. I was delighted when after the orecchiette (pasta shaped like ears) pasta course we were served Coniglio Cacciatore! For those of you who don’t know, that’s Rabbit! It was delicious and tasted like chicken. Chicken that had been deliciously cooked in rosemary, wine and olives! I don’t know why I like to eat these meats that are repulsive to most Americans, but I think it makes me feel like I’m living in the time of the peasants, that I’m eating true rustic cooking like they did when the man of the house had to catch the families meal. It just seems so authentic to me. Also, for those of you that want meat that isn’t so full of hormones and antibiotics, this meat is the real deal. I’m sure it’s why the beef is good and lean, because not long before they were slaughtered they were probably nibbling on the tender grass between my olive trees and my neighbors grapes and garden!

So I have definitely been given an initiation into living in the country, I’m learning about a whole new set of critters that can destroy a garden and I’m learning how to live off the fat of the land… Italian style.