If you like pork or lush Italian landscapes – or both – you probably enjoyed the latest installment of Stanley Tucci’s CNN series, Searching for Italy. Now in its second season, the show, which has one more episode to go, finally seems to be striking a decent balance between its food focus and tossing in a “pinch” of Italian history. Better late than never!

As with last week’s episode on Piedmont, it’s impossible to overlook the history of Umbria, a region settled by the original Umbri people, who were in turn eventually absorbed into Roman Italy. Although not quite: Tucci and his crew either ignored or were unaware of the Iguvine Tablets, housed in a museum in the Umbrian hill-town of Gubbio. They are written in an Umbrian dialect which, to this day, remains incomprehensible to archeologists.

(Sidenote on Gubbio: It is also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for its annual Christmas display – a stunning, gigantic Christmas tree comprised of lights strung up for miles on the tops of other trees. Italian creativity always reaches toward the heavens, literally.)

The show opened with Tucci in his car, where he explained the region’s nickname: “Il cuore verde d’Italia,” (the green heart of Italy). As verdant as any Irish countryside, the hills and mountains of Umbria also reflect the austere majesty of its more famous border-sister, Tuscany. The region has attracted filmmakers George Lucas and Terry Gilliam, both of whom have homes there. It also attracted people like Tucci’s first guest, Giorgio Barchiesi, a Roman who moved to Umbria in 1997 and never looked back. Barchiesi, called “Giorgione” (Big George, because of his height and presence), now has a popular cooking show in Italy. He showed Tucci how to cook a complete piglet, and ended the segment by toasting, “Viva il porco!”

Next stop: Assisi, the tranquil birthplace of St. Francis, the patron saint of the nation (which Tucci and crew also did not note). Tucci related that he visited its famous church when he lived in Italy as a twelve-year-old, accompanying his art-teacher father on a year-long sabbatical in Florence. It is a fascinating idea – old memories vs. new perceptions – but it wasn’t explored all that much beyond a few quick cuts of the frescoes inside the basilica. The segment ended with Tucci going on a hunt for cinghiale (wild boar), a staple of the region. He managed to find an all-female hunting crew, thus allowing his progressive side to peep through again. Ditto his preference for highlighting female chefs, both in this episode and others.

On to Norcia, where he mentioned both its 2016 earthquake – from which it is still recovering – and visited Brancaleone da Norcia, a famous marcelleria (butcher shop). A pork-smith named Maestro Peppe explained the ins-and-outs of the beast, never taking a minute to rest while Tucci followed him around the place. We then met farmer Carlo Capricci and his daughter Alice, who run a plantation where they harvest truffles – yes, truffles, that buried-beneath-the-trees delicacy that looks like a cross between a mushroom and a badly-beaten golf ball, but whose delicate shavings are worth a pretty penny.  Capricci noted that his planted truffles are just as good as Mother Nature’s. And in Italy, Mother Nature is like any other Italian mamma – she makes sure you’re well-fed.

You can’t mention Umbria without mentioning its famous main city: Perugia, home of chocolate, an annual jazz festival, and two major universities, all of which Tucci did mention. He related Pope Paull III’s infamous salt tax on the city in 1540, which forced protesting bakers to refuse to use it in their bread, a tradition still followed today. Tucci visited La Proscuitteria, a meat shop run by a group of thirty-something friends, where he piled various meats upon unending slices of that unsalted bread. Tucci praised the bread, which left me confused: In his initial episode in Florence, he went out of his way to voice his displeasure at that city’s own unsalted bread. Are the tastes truly different? He didn’t elaborate.

Tucci rather hurried through the final segment, a visit to Orvieto. He did visit Etruscan tombs, kind of, in this case, an underground dove-cote, which the locals still use to house pigeons, their beloved delicacy. He ended with a visit to twin brothers Alessandro and Nicola in Citta’a della Pieve, where the two left comfortable city jobs to run a farm where they “cross-pollinate” foods and vegetables. This is another theme from the series: how traditional Italian food is being re-worked via modern culinary interpretations.

Tucci’s next stop: London, his current home. He claims that the Italians have revolutionized British cooking. If they have, this would be yet another culinary miracle. Speriamo!–BDC