Castelluccio Lentils

Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia is a protected geographical indication, granted in 1997, covering lentils grown on the high plateaus around the hamlet of Castelluccio, part of the commune of Norcia in Umbria: the Pian Grande, the Pian Piccolo and the Pian Perduto.

It is a local ecotype rather than a commercial variety. The seed is very small, two to six millimetres across and mostly under four, and the colour is deliberately inconsistent. A single handful contains pale green, olive, hazel and mottled seeds, and that variegation is part of the specification, not a sorting failure.

The real distinction is the seed coat. It is fine enough to be almost imperceptible between the teeth, and that has two consequences that explain how these lentils are used: they need no soaking, and they hold their shape in the pot. Anyone who has cooked supermarket lentils knows both problems. Here they do not exist.

The cause is altitude. At 1,300 to 1,500 metres the season is compressed, the seed stays small, and the ratio of surface to volume leaves the skin proportionally thinner. Nothing is done to the lentil to achieve this: it is height, cold and a short summer.

Earthy but clean, with a mineral edge and a nutty finish, and far less of the muddy heaviness people associate with lentils. The flavour is concentrated rather than loud, and it does not need rescuing with bacon or tomato.

Texture is where they win. Properly cooked they stay whole, and the skin gives way without any of the papery resistance of a brown supermarket lentil, while the inside is creamy. Eaten warm with raw olive oil poured over and a grinding of black pepper, they need nothing else. In a soup they stay lentils; in a salad they behave; under a piece of fish they keep their bite.

Do not soak them. This is the one instruction that overrides everything you have read about lentils: the skin is fine enough that soaking splits it and turns the whole batch to mush. Rinse, check quickly for the occasional stone that escaped hand-sorting, and put them straight in the pan.

Start in cold water, roughly three times their volume, with a peeled garlic clove, a bay leaf, a celery stalk and half an onion. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook 20 to 30 minutes depending on how recent the harvest is. Fresh-crop lentils are done under 25 minutes; two-year-old ones take longer.

Salt goes in at the end, in the last five minutes, and so does anything acidic. Tomato or vinegar added early will toughen the skins and add twenty minutes to the cooking.

The classic pairing is with Norcia sausage or cotechino on New Year's Eve, where the round lentils stand in for coins. But the dish that shows them off best is the plainest: cooked with a few aromatics, served warm with raw extra virgin olive oil and black pepper. No sofrito, no tomato. They also work in a farro soup over garlic-rubbed toast, warm in a salad with red onion and vinegar, or under river trout. Keep the cooking water: it is stock.

In a closed glass jar, dark and dry, they hold about two years. The date is not really the point: as they age they lose water, the skins toughen, and the cooking time stretches. Lentils from the latest harvest cook in twenty minutes, while the same lentils two years on can ask for forty. That is the argument for small packets and for looking at the harvest year where a producer prints it, which tells you more than a best before date does. Keep them out of the fridge, because damp is the thing that starts mould in dried pulses, and a cool cupboard shelf is enough.

If the kitchen gets very hot in summer, two days in the freezer at minus eighteen is the standard way to deal with bean weevil eggs, after which they go back to the cupboard completely dry. Cooked lentils keep three or four days in the fridge sitting in their own liquid, and freeze in portions for about three months. They are better on the second day than the first: resting lets them absorb the seasoning, and the texture firms slightly as the skins take up liquid.

Size first: under four or five millimetres and noticeably flat. A lentil the size of a fingernail did not come from Castelluccio. Then colour, which should not be uniform. A bag where every seed is the same shade of green has been sorted industrially; a mountain ecotype mixes pale green, olive, hazel and mottled seeds in the same handful. Then the label. The rules require sealed packs carrying the European IGP logo, the full name Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia, the consortium reference and a lot number, so loose lentils from an open sack cannot be IGP by construction.

Abroad the nearest neighbour is the French lentille verte du Puy, small, mottled, AOP protected, and a genuinely good substitute. Generic green or brown lentils from Canada or Turkey are the ones sold under borrowed place names. Price is the plainest test: real ones run around $12 to $20 for 500 g, and the cheap sacks at a roadside stall are something else. The last check happens in the pot, where after twenty five minutes they should still be whole, skins intact and centres creamy.

In the US, Italian specialists such as Gustiamo, Eataly and Market Hall Foods carry the certified product, and it turns up in better cheese shops and delis. In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online grocers stock it, usually in 400 or 500 gram packs.

Expect 12 to 20 dollars per pound in the US and 22 to 35 pounds per kilo in the UK. In Italy at source it is 12 to 18 euro per kilo, rising to 18-25 in specialist shops.

Check three things on the pack: the full wording Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia IGP with the EU mark; a lot number, since the specification requires sealed packaging; and the lentils themselves through the window (small, flattened, visibly mixed in colour). A uniformly green, uniformly sized lentil has been graded industrially.

Price is the most reliable test. Certified output is a few hundred tonnes a year for the entire world market, so anything cheap under this name is something else. Loose lentils at Apennine roadside stalls least of all.

Castelluccio di Norcia and the Pian Grande, with one honest caveat: the hamlet was destroyed by the earthquake of 30 October 2016 and rebuilding is still under way. You will eat in temporary structures and in farms down on the plain, not in an intact village. The plateau itself is undamaged and the drive in, down from Forca di Presta or up from Norcia, is reason enough to go.

The flowering, between late June and mid-July, is the spectacular window and also the crowded one. On peak weekends access to the plateau is managed with shuttle buses and traffic restrictions, so check before setting off.

Norcia, twenty-five kilometres below, is the practical base. Lentils there are eaten with the town's celebrated pork butchery, with black truffle, and in soups, and the old shops in the centre sell them loose and packed. The Valnerina valley beyond (Preci, Cascia, Sant'Anatolia di Narco) rounds out the trip.

Late August, just after the harvest, brings the village lentil festival: the most direct way to taste them cooked the way people here actually cook them.