The Stage

Today the Giro started in Veneto, not too far west from Venice, and made its way across several challenging mountain passes to the town of San Valentino. A war of attrition led to major shakeups in the GC today. During the first half of the day very rainy conditions led to a few crashes and, most notably, Primož Roglič abandoned the race. While no major injuries were reported, he may have his eyes set on recovering fully for the Tour de France which starts in a bit over a month.

Today was a hard stage, with only 50 meters less climbing than the stage with the most climbing, and only 2 km shorter than the longest mountain stage. Both those stages (longest mountain and most climbing) are coming up this week — so there’s still a lot of action to come. Today’s stage, featuring the only proper mountaintop finish left in the Giro (with 4,900 meters of climbing!), was exceptionally challenging.

There were four total climbs, and three were category 1 climbs (the hardest classification except the “Beyond Category” climbs, of which there is only one in the final mountain stage on Saturday.) The climbs claimed many riders who just didn’t have the legs today, and critically Juan Ayuso was dropped in the second to last climb making del Toro the proper leader for team UAE Emirates. The joy of becoming his team’s leader was short lived when in the final climb del Toro was dropped after a number of attacks from Richard Carapaz and Simon Yates. Del Toro lost time but managed to stay in the pink jersey, with only 26 seconds over Yates. At the end of the day this is what the GC looked like:

1. Isaac del Toro (UAE Emirates)

2. Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) +0.26

3. Richard Carapaz (EF Education Easypost) +0.31

4. Derek Gee (Israel Premier Tech) +1.31

5. Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) +2.40

While it was a bad day for UAE Emirates, it was a good day for Italy. The breakway was given real time to get away today, perhaps aided by the rain early in the day. Christian Scaroni won the stage from the breakaway, crossing the line hand in hand with his teammate and King of the Mountains leader, Lorenzo Fortunato. Not only did their wins help bring the team even further away from the relegation zone (read more about their incredible season and tactics here) but they ended the longest drought since an Italian won a stage in the Giro.

The Dish

The Giro is definitively in northern Italy now. This is because northern Italy is home to the major mountain ranges. Starting this past Sunday, the Giro began making its way across the Dolomites in the Northeast of Italy, and the peloton will meander westwardly towards the Italian Alps, ending in Sestrière on Saturday before heading down to Rome for the final stage on Sunday. So over the next week there is a little less variation in cuisine than we have had so far, since we are staying in a few regions around the mountains, featuring a lot of buckwheat pasta, polenta, game, meats, and cheeses. I am going to try to cover each of these major elements of the cuisine over the next week.

Over Memorial day weekend I smelled people lighting up the barbecue and grilling burgers and hot dogs. It smelled so good, it smelled like summer. So I was excited to do something summery. But this recipe was very wintery. However, I did end up enjoying it a lot, maybe because it also cooled down significantly in DC today.

The recipe was a pan roasted sausage, traditionally soppressatta. I couldn’t find soppressatta that wasn’t dry cured so I went with a bratwurst thinking it would make a good substitute (because it’s a pork sausage, and maybe because I had the grill in the back of my mind.) The recipe book recommended pairing the dish with polenta which is very common in the region, so I went with that as well.

It was my first time making polenta and I struggled to get all the lumps out of it, next time I would pour the cornmeal in more slowly and use a whisk instead of a spoon. It also came out a bit too salty — I should have tasted the water after adding in my salt. But overall I enjoyed the polenta and it definitely helped the dish come together and feel filling.

The sausage was cooked with some bay leaf and a sprig of rosemary (cut from the little potted herb plants I have on my balcony.) It was topped off with some sautéed onions and vinegar which I had prepared in another pan. Overall this dish was really delicious and felt very hearty — mountain fare for sure. It reminded me of being in the Alsace region of France. The bay leaf mellowed out the sausage a good bit, as did the vinegar — the acidity cutting through the fattiness of the sausage. I had a glass of a Barbera d’Asti to go along with the dish. Asti is a region in northwest Italy, so a few days ahead of its time in terms of the Giro route.

It’s going to be an exciting final week! Stay tuned as we finish up our tour of Italy. Ciao!