Click for a Venerdi photoessay
Click for a doughy video
ubdued
excitement hums through the streets surrounding the Palazzo Pubblico.
Local shop owners stand by makeshift wooden stalls, laden with pasta, grains,
and bread. Glasses of wine and samples of olive-oil drizzled bread tempt
hungry mouths. It's Friday in Cagli, the fourth in a five-Friday festival
of regional food known as Venerdi di Cagli-- literally "Fridays
in Cagli." 
Plunging
his spoon into a skillet of fragrant tomato sauce, Santoni Gieumlieu scoops
up and hands over a bowl of hearty fusilli made from unbleached faro.
"Next I'll make you pasta with chocolate," he teases. Beside him at their
stall, Lea Luzi explains that faro is an ancient grain consumed by generations
of Italians, extending as far back as the Etruscans. Lea and Santoni of
the Monterosso pasta company are among the dozens of shop owners, restaurateurs,
and specialty food producers in the town center promoting their products
and sharing a passion for pane.
Venerdi di Cagli
is a new festival with ambitions to become a biannual tradition. Each
Friday event features a typical local food. From May 31 through June 28,
the Cagli community hosts weekly cooking demonstrations and tastings of:
- mushrooms
- herbs
- snails
- bread
- whole foods
Many
store owners collaborated on Venerdi di Cagli. It emerged as a way
to make Cagli a more popular shopping destination for out-of-towners. Luanna
Santi, owner of the furniture store Mobilie Santi and co-organizer
of the Friday festivals, said they developed the idea as an added enticement
to visit Cagli during extended store hours; all stores participating in
the event stay open until 10 p.m. on the designated Fridays. A festival
showcasing traditional foods seemed, to local vendors, a good way to promote
Cagli as a supplier of high quality regional products. All featured ingredients
are grown in Le Marche region, of which Cagli is the heart. Simple
wheat appears in such forms as faro pasta, organic bread, and macrobiotic
focaccia. At organic restaurant
Un Punto Macrobiotico's table, owner Gabriela Mancini kneads flour,
water and salt into a soft dough. The result is an outstanding loaf for
Le Marche, which usually bakes saltless bread--and to an American palate,
bland. Saltless bread is a tradition, dating back to a time when the Papal
State's tax on salt made it too expensive to use. "It's a tradition
that we have kept," says baker Giuliano Pediconi. "It makes the bread lighter."
Tastes may vary,
but all vendors at the festival share an enthusiastic commitment to simple,
locally grown food. 
Written
by Kerri-Ann Jennings, Photography and Video by Marissa Norkus & Deirdre
Mullins,
Graphic Design and Design Production by Deirdre Mullins