Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Between the Mountains and the Sea

In October 2018, the Vaia storm struck the alpine forests of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in northeast Italy for hours. Winds that blew at the speed of a hurricane and in a few days, millions of trees were lost. Locals were faced with a challenge: what to do with the fallen trees so as not to waste them? 

Among the several projects, that of chef Stefano Basello concerned using spruce tree bark to produce flour, inspired by a historic anti-hunger recipe from the last century. He realized this brilliant and successful idea at his restaurant Il Fogolar in Udine. Basello first serves his pancor, a fragrant bread mixed with bark flour to spread with salted butter from Carnia, that's the crossroads of the Veneto and Austria, and varhackara, a pesto made from lard and speck scraps, smoked bacon and aromas made in Timau, a small mountain community of German dialect.