Agnello brucialingua

One year in the dead of winter, I toured the Abruzzo with a group of travel agents. We stopped for a tasting at a winery, and in the front garden, I noticed a bush thick with small, red lantern-shaped peppers despite the bitter cold. They were diavolilli (oddly, a term used for candied almonds elsewhere in the country), sometimes called diavoletti, the incendiary chile peppers much beloved by the Abruzzese and used in a local condiment called olio santo, “holy oil,” tha