6. Cooked Wine and a Wild Boar Hunt

S1 E6: The final edition of this first series of Cookucina takes us high into the mountains again, to the beautiful Lake Fiastra, a shimmering carpet of blue nestling among towering peaks. We’re here because this is the natural habitat of the wild boar – a local delicacy that Lia has chosen for today’s main course. She’s making a salmi di cinghiale, a sort of wild boar stew made to a special Sarnanese recipe. This follows a very special starter – special because it was actually made by Tamsen as the culmination of part one of her cookery course with Lia. It’s an onion soup and a recipe she borrowed from Silvano Scalzini, the food history expert from program two. And to put it to the test, she invites a few friends round to dine al fresco in Lia’s orto perched on the city wall. It’s sure to get past the English, but what will the ever-demanding Lia make of it? And after Tamsen’s onion soup, and a supremely local salmi (or stew) of wild boar, Lia’s dessert takes us deep into the gastronomic history of the area. It’s a torta di mele con zabaione. That’s a deliciously soft apple cake, with a very special type of zabaione. Special because it’s made not with fortified marsala wine, but with an ancient favourite in Le Marche, vino cotto, literally “cooked wine.” And that gives Lia and Tamsen the chance to meet Tonino who takes us into his laboratorio to show how vino cotto is still made the old-fashioned way – everything by hand, everything cooked in copper and stored in barrels made of different types of wood according to the taste desired. And, of course, vino cotto gives us a fitting send off to the series as we travel to nearby Loro Piceno for the annual Sagra di Vino Cotto, where we meet a barrel of wine that’s been on the go for over a hundred years and finish the series with a spectacular fireworks display lighting up the night sky in honor of cooked wine!