CARNIVAL BATTLE OF THE BEANS
The Carnival season, held all over Italy with many local variations, includes a focus on typical regional foods, and winter staples like beans feature prominently in many areas. The small town of Santhìa (Piedmont) claims to stage the oldest annual Carnevale bean cook-up in Piedmont, dating from the 17th century.
This year the traditional bean feast involves 20,000 portions of beans bubbling in copper cauldrons set out in a line along the town centre.
However, Santhìa has a rival. Chiavazza, a hamlet on the fringe of Biella (Piedmont) at the foot of the Alps, cooks a hundred pans of beans for the Carnevale annual feast. Although the tradition is relatively new, (dating from the early 19th century), it managed to get a nomination in the Guinness Book of Records in 2022.
This did not go down well with Santhìa which tries each year to upstage its rival. This year, however, Chiavazza has a new trick up its sleeve . It is offering “chocolate beans” as a crowd puller. This has nothing to do with the dragèe chocolate sweets that supermarkets and confectioners sell. Instead, the secret recipe launched by Chiavazza involves adding Ecuador bitter cocoa powder to the beans' cooking water. Organizers claim that this addition adds greatly to the flavour and makes the cooked beans more digestible
Info: https://prolocosanthia.it https://www.comune.biella.it
