Sulmona with Daniela Maiorano Saturday 7 November

Saturday 7 November

For our Year of Living Well, Daniela returns to Moonacres to take us inside the food, family and community of her hometown and explore what generations of Abruzzese families have understood about nourishing a good life.

Together, we will cook dishes connected to Daniela’s childhood, her family restaurant and the people who taught her. Along the way, she will share stories of Sulmona’s markets, its famous red garlic, its mountain food traditions and the family table that has sustained four generations of cooks.

We will finish as Daniela’s family always has: gathered around the table, sharing the meal we have made.

This is a day about beautiful food, but it is also about something larger—knowing where our food comes from, keeping useful skills alive, cooking with the seasons and making time for the people around us.

Come to Sulmona for the day.

Know where food comes from - her family knew the farmers, butchers and cheesemakers supplying the restaurant.

Let the seasons decide - the menu followed what was ready, not what could be demanded all year.

Learn useful skills - rolling pasta, baking bread, preserving vegetables and feeding a crowd. Use less, but use better. A few excellent ingredients, handled carefully, can make an extraordinary meal.

Share the work - the kitchen was filled with generations of family and the commarucce—not one person cooking alone.

Protect time around the table - eating together was how stories, values and knowledge were handed on.

This is where this experience becomes completely aligned with Moonacres.  It is asking what have families such as Daniela’s understood about living well that our modern lives may have forgotten—and what can we begin doing again in our own homes?

This class begins at 10am with an intimate conversation with Daniela, cooking around the bench and a beautiful lunch.

Daniela and the team at Moonacres look forward to seeing you soon.

Daniela Maiorano

Daniela is a fourth-generation chef from Sulmona in Abruzzo. Her family has run Ristorante Clemente since around the Second World War, and Daniela describes growing up in a family where the restaurant was not separate from life—it wasfamily life. Her cooking is grounded in seasonality, close relationships with growers and producers, minimal intervention and allowing a few excellent ingredients to speak for themselves. 

She learnt alongside her grandmother, rolling gnocchi and shaping sourdough for the restaurant’s daily service. Around them were the commarucce—the lively, formidable women who made up the kitchen team and carried its knowledge from one generation to another. Daniela’s father Clemente and her brother are also chefs, making food a continuing family language rather than simply a profession. 

After leaving Sulmona and building a life in Australia, Daniela returned with a deeper appreciation for its farmers, cheesemakers, artisans, mountain traditions and connection to the land. She now leads food and wine journeys through the region, introducing guests to growers, markets, natural wines, seasonal harvests and the people keeping old skills alive. 

Daniela’s great-grandfather was a farmer and a norcino—a specialist in butchering pigs and making salumi and cured meats. He began serving his produce in a small cantina, which grew into a trattoria and eventually became Ristorante Clemente. Daniela’s father, Clemente Maiorano, learnt to cook from his mother Wanda and continued the restaurant across the next generation. 

The cooking is deeply Abruzzese: lamb, pork, vegetables, pulses, durum wheat, fresh ricotta and pecorino. A recorded meal at Clemente included liver sausage and prosciutto, bruschetta with olive oil, grilled zucchini, fresh ricotta, eggplant filled with ricotta and spinach, lamb and onion stew, baked pecorino, lentil and chestnut soup, handmade pasta, and lamb braised with spring vegetables. 

The restaurant is not built on luxury ingredients or unnecessary complication. It is built on using what the land provides, cooking it properly and feeding people generously.

Sulmona

Sulmona sits in the Peligna Valley, surrounded by the Apennine mountains. Its identity has been shaped by farming, mountain life, preservation, markets, pastoral traditions and strong local food cultures.

Its food story includes:

Red garlic of Sulmona - This local variety has small white bulbs and red-skinned cloves, with a distinctive, aromatic flavour. It is grown on the Sulmona plateau, planted in late autumn and harvested in summer. The shoots are also preserved and eaten, often in agrodolce. 

Confetti - Sulmona is internationally known for its sugared almonds, traditionally given at weddings, baptisms and family celebrations. Their production dates back centuries, and they are still arranged by hand into colourful flowers and bouquets throughout the town. 

Handmade pasta and grains - Abruzzo is home to pasta alla chitarra, cut across a stringed wooden instrument to create square-edged strands that hold sauce beautifully. Durum wheat, bread, gnocchi and pasta remain central to the region’s food culture. 

Sheep, lamb and mountain cheeses - The mountains have created a strong pastoral tradition: pecorino, ricotta, lamb, cured meats and simple dishes developed from the seasonal movement of animals and people.

Markets and producers - Sulmona’s market is still a meeting place for growers, cooks and families. Daniela’s own tours begin there—with local fruit, olives, porchetta and produce—before guests cook with Daniela and her father. 

The food in Sulmona has never been simply about eating. It has been how families worked, celebrated, survived winter, marked important moments and remained connected to one another.