Teramo, Abruzzo
Teramo's extraordinary May Day soup — a once-a-year preparation assembled on the first of May from the last of the winter dried legumes (seven types: lentils, chickpeas, borlotti, cicerchia, fave, fagioli di Lamon, piselli secchi) combined with the first fresh spring vegetables and pasta. The preparation takes an entire day; tradition held that the dish must contain precisely seven types of legumes, seven pasta shapes, seven types of meat, and seven vegetables. A ritual dish that marks the transition from winter stores to spring freshness.
Complex, deeply earthy from seven legumes, brightened by spring vegetables, enriched by pork — a soup that tastes of the entire year compressed into one bowl
Each dried legume is pre-cooked separately (they have different cooking times and the longer-cooking ones would destroy the shorter-cooking ones). Each pasta shape is added at a different time based on its cooking requirements. The meats (traditionally including pork rind, lard, and cured meats) are added early to create the broth base. The fresh spring vegetables (asparagus tips, peas, artichokes, new onions) are added in the last 20 minutes to preserve freshness.
The dish takes all day and is served at lunch — begin the dried legume pre-cooking the evening before. The broth quality is everything — use real pork bone broth as the base. For modern service: the completed soup improves overnight and is best reheated the next day when the seven flavour streams have fully merged into one.
Cooking all legumes together — the different cooking times mean some will be mush while others are still hard. Omitting the separate cooking stage means the flavours don't develop individually before merging. Using fewer than seven legume types misses the ritual and practical point. Making it outside of spring when fresh vegetables are unavailable produces an inferior dish.
La Cucina Teramana — Accademia Italiana della Cucina