A sweet “fig salame” from the Vallesina hills of the Marche. Dried Dottato or Brogiotto figs are pounded with almonds, walnuts and aniseed, bound with sapa (cooked grape must) or the anise liqueur mistrà, then rolled into a firm cylinder, wrapped in fig leaves and tied with string like a cured sausage. Left to season through the winter, it is sliced thin and eaten at the end of a meal with aged pecorino and a glass of passito.
The lonzino belongs to the cucina povera of the Vallesina, the middle Esino valley near Ancona, where fig trees once grew abundantly and their late-summer fruit was preserved before the grape harvest. Poor farming families dried the surplus figs, pounded them with home-grown nuts and aniseed, and shaped the paste to imitate the pork lonza they could rarely afford, setting a sweet on the poor table that looked like a cured meat. Figs grew rare in the Marche through the 20th century, and in 1999 Slow Food founded a Presidium to protect the fig groves and the lonzino; it is also a recognized Prodotto Agroalimentare Tradizionale. The Dottato and Brogiotto varieties, prized for sweetness and thin skin, remain the fruit of choice.
Dense and chewy like a fruit paste, deeply sweet with the jammy concentration of dried fig, threaded with the crunch of almond and walnut and a warm, liquorice-like lift of aniseed; the fig-leaf wrapping leaves a faint green, coconut-like perfume.
Sun-drying removes most of the figs' water, concentrating their sugars until the water activity falls low enough to inhibit mould and bacteria, the same osmotic preservation behind jam. The sugar-rich sapa reinforces this while adding acidity, and the fat and protein of the nuts round out the texture. Fig leaves contain coumarin, which lends the sweet-hay, coconut aroma that perfumes the surface during the slow winter cure, while gentle moisture loss firms the paste into a sliceable cylinder.
Variations
Some Vallesina families bind the paste with the anise liqueur mistrà instead of sapa, or fold in candied citron and a splash of rum; the wrap may be a single fig leaf or several overlapped. Related sweet fig “salami” appear across the Marche and neighbouring Umbria and Abruzzo under names such as fico secco or salame di fichi, with varying nuts and spices.
On the Palate
Where Lonzino di Fico sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
7 steps · 45 min
- 110 min
Toast 100 g almonds and 80 g walnuts lightly, then chop them coarsely.
- 215 min
Stem 500 g dried Dottato or Brogiotto figs and grind or pound them to a sticky paste.
- 310 min
Work the chopped nuts, 1 tbsp aniseed and 3 tbsp sapa into the fig paste until evenly bound, or use the mistrà liqueur in place of the sapa; fold in a little chopped candied citron if you like.
Watch outWork the nuts and sapa in until the fig paste is evenly bound and glossy — dry patches mean it won't hold a firm cylinder.
- 4720 min
Cover and rest the mixture 12 hours at room temperature so the flavours marry.
- 510 min
Shape the paste firmly into a compact cylinder about 20 cm long, pressing out any air pockets.
Watch outPress the cylinder tight and squeeze out every air pocket — trapped air lets mould creep in during the long cure.
- 615 min
Wrap the cylinder in fresh fig leaves and tie it snugly along its length with kitchen string, like a small salami.
- 743200 min
Hang in a cool, airy, dry place to cure for at least 30 days, then slice thin to serve.
