Scarpinocc

What it is

A meatless stuffed pasta from Parre, a former shepherds' village at the mouth of the upper Val Seriana near Bergamo, shaped like the cloth shoe that gives it its name. In the high pastures meat was a rarity and fasting days ran past 110 a year, so the holiday filling was built from what the malghe gave in plenty, grana cheese, stale bread, and eggs. The disc of egg dough is folded into a half-moon, the edges sealed by hand, and the center pressed down with a finger so the parcel curls toward the form of a wrapped candy. They remain the dish of Parre's patron feast of San Pietro on 29 June and of the village's Scarpinocc festival each August. The name Scarpinocc de Par is protected by a production disciplinare administered by the Bergamo Chamber of Commerce, and the pasta is listed among Lombardy's traditional food products.

From the Bergamasque dialect scarpinocc, the cloth shoes that shepherds of Parre wore until the mid 20th century, which the pinched parcel is said to resemble. The root is scarpa, footwear, which Treccani traces to a Germanic form skarpa. Local sources also record a second account tying the name to scarpassa or scarpaza, a savory cheese-and-herb tart documented in 18th century papers.