On Saturdays, after the bread, the village oven still had work to do. In Slow Food’s account of Cortereggio, families brought their beans in terracotta pots to cook in the heat left by bread baking. The cooked beans would then flavour other meals throughout the week. Each household had its own pot, made by craftspeople in nearby Castellamonte.
Before the oven came the field. Traditionally, the same source explains, piattella beans were sown alongside maize. The climbing plant wound around the maize stalk for support; at harvest, people walked between the rows picking the pods individually by hand. A standing stalk supported the plant, and an oven already warm cooked the harvest: these practices place the bean within the rhythm of everyday work.
The piattella itself is white and medium-to-large, with thin skin and a flattened, kidney-like shape. Its name appears in Piedmont’s traditional foods register. Slow Food locates the Presidium’s production area in Cortereggio, a hamlet of San Giorgio Canavese.
The seed’s preservation also has a person and a date attached. According to Slow Food, in 1981 farmer Mario Boggio entrusted a few kilograms of beans to the University of Turin’s germplasm bank to conserve the seed. Maize stalks, Castellamonte pots and that deposit at the university give the piattella’s story several places to lead: into the fields, kitchens and working lives of Canavese.