La Cipollata

A recipe for savory onion stew from Ristorante La Bilancia

Last month, my family and I had dinner at La Bilancia, a few kilometers down the hill from Penne in Loreto Aprutino. The hotel-restaurant has been serving locals and out-of-towners for nearly five decades and is known for its Abruzzese country cooking. You won’t find fish or seafood here, except, perhaps, baccalà (salted codfish), because the Adriatic Sea is a 40-minute drive away. Instead, the traditional menu offers local cheeses and salumi, homemade spaghetti alla chitarra al ragù, roast and grilled lamb and veal, pork sausage, seasonal vegetables, and a host of other piatti tipici like fried scamorza and pallotte cace e ove (egg and cheese meatless meatballs).

A few days ago my daughter (who is now back in the U.S.) texted me that she was still dreaming of the meal we had, which included many of the dishes mentioned above. But what she was especially dreaming of was the cipollata, a rustic stew of sweet