7x7 = 49

Davide Di Fabio has been Massimo Bottura’s sous-chef in the kitchen of Osteria Francescana for years, but he still feels very much connected to its Abruzzese roots. His family traditions often remind him that when it comes to food the solution to some of the most pressing issues of our time, can be found hidden away in popular knowledge and culture.

In Teramo, Abruzzo, every year on the 1st of May people prepare a dish known as Le Virtù - after the Easter celebrations, people clean out their pantries of whatever hasn’t been used in winter to make room for the new harvest. What to do, then, with the different legumes, mixed pasta cuts and dried herbs that are left? Everything becomes a single dish which combines in-season ingredients from the new harvest with scraps of ham or leftover pork cuts that had been preserved in salt all winter. The result of this formula is a soup able to use up the ‘old’ by adding it to the ‘new’.