PEANUTS & BEAN TO BAR

Peanuts, also called “spagnolette”, or “” (which means ‘ground cocoa’), are known in Ferrara as “bagige”; they had arrived in our province after the Second World War and had been cultivated until the beginning of the seventies mainly for the production of oil.
By the elderly they were called “Tripolini” and the name already evokes the region of origin, the area around Tripoli in Libya. But they were also eaten roasted and, according to those who ate them at that time, they were much tastier than those on the market today. It was from the memory of that flavor that Mauro Tonello, from Ferrara, president of the Italian Seed Society, set out to try to recover the ancient production.
“In the Ferrara area – explains Tonello – peanuts had found a suitable soil because they grow well in peaty and sandy soils. It is no coincidence that they were grown in the municipalities of Iolanda, Mezzogoro, Codigoro.”
With a painstaking research, Tonello identified an elderly farmer who still had a bag of pods and managed to obtain a handful of peanuts from which the S.I.S. they set out to recover, in the space of almost five years, sufficient seeds for open field production.
Having learned about the rediscovery of ancient seeds and the recovery of this Excellency, Marco Gruppioni, who since 2013 in Sant’Agostino, in the province of Ferrara, manages “the Teatro del Gelato”, where fresh, natural and simple gelato is made, he decided to take possession of said peanuts, and having ascertained their effective quality and goodness, as recalled by past generations, he is trying to come up with new products, perhaps peanut butter, sweet or savory spreads, ice creams, as he already has successfully experimented with the cocoa beans with which it produces Rukèt, a chocolate of excellence. Whether cocoa beans or peanuts, Marco Gruppioni’s philosophy is always the same, the Bean to Bar, the result of a simple but careful and patient processing with a few highly selected ingredients, processed as little as possible to preserve the distinctive qualities of starting raw materials! We don’t know about you but we are curious and eager to discover and taste Marco’s creations!