Abruzzo must be one of the only areas of Italy where a restaurant’s table setting often comes complete with a pair of scissors. Their purpose? To snip little pieces of locally grown chillies over dishes just before eating – an ingredient that’s integral to the region.
Diavolini (‘little devils’) have been the subject of a culinary obsession in this beautiful part of central Italy for many years now. Also known as peperoncino – the more general Italian word for chilli – they have become an icon of Abruzzese cooking and can be found year-round in various forms. They’ll be fresh and ready to snip in the summer and early autumn during their harvest but appear either dried or preserved in oil during the other seasons. They’re also crushed into flakes so they can be used in cooking or sprinkled over dishes alongside like salt and pepper. Visit the area at the right time (usually late summer) and you’ll see bunches of these little chillies threaded together and hung up outside houses, drying in the sun. Come winter, they’ll be used to add plenty of warming heat to meals to stave off the chilly weather and snow, which often blankets the more mountainous areas of the region.
But what is the reason behind this local love of chilli? It all comes down to the geography of the region. As a sparse and quite rural part of Italy, many of the traditional, historic dishes of Abruzzo are – out of necessity – focused around seasonal local produce. In Abruzzo, that generally means lamb or seafood (depending on where you are) with whatever vegetables are being harvested at that time. To make mealtimes a little more interesting, however, the Abruzzese add locally grown aromatics to their food – the most common of which are rosemary and chilli (although saffron is another, more luxurious seasoning).
