Salon Wanderlust | Passages: Enchanted Liguria, page 2

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Pop goes the cathedral
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ENCHANTED LIGURIA | PAGE 2 OF 2
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Paradoxically it is this leanness and sobriety that led to the extreme inventiveness of Ligurian cooks, particularly those from the entroterra. Narrow mountain valleys linked only by footpaths, mule tracks and winding roads forced those living there to depend almost exclusively on local foodstuffs. Where chestnuts grew in the mountains of Levante, for instance, the so-called Chestnut Civilization developed, in which the trees provided shelter, fuel and food for animals and people. Any number of chestnut-flour dishes were invented, from fresh picagge matte pasta, originally dressed only with vegetables and lard (pressed between slabs of marble), to naturally sweet castagnaccio cake with pine nuts and fennel seeds. While most of Liguria produces no cheese, high pastures where goats and sheep could be raised allowed shepherds in the Ponente, and in areas in the Levante behind the seaside town of Recco, to produce limited amounts of it. This led in turn to recipes for barbagiuai ravioli or focaccia al formaggio, a succulent flatbread with fresh cheese sandwiched between paper-thin crusts. Cheese focaccia is now Recco's flagship dish, the object of gastronomic pilgrimages from far and wide; the local ducks have become fat and unable to fly from feeding on it and are a tourist attraction themselves. Another highly localized specialty comes from Dolceacqua, near the French border: crava e faxeu. It is made with tough but tasty milk goat which, at the end of its productive life, is sautéed with onions and white beans and spiced with hot peppers.
The mountainous land imposes severe limits on farming and ranching. Though for centuries returning sailors hauled sacks of prized manure and compost back from Tuscany not much of it made it inland and the soil there is uniformly rocky. The climate on the coast is mild year-round, but in the entroterra it becomes progressively colder the deeper the valley and the higher the elevation. Vegetables that grow well in the lowlands do not necessarily thrive on the mountains. Ligurian valleys, inhabited for millennia from sea-level to three or four thousand feet, yield a number of different kitchen-garden crops in a single growing season. This means that for every micro-climate there is a micro-cuisine.
It is easy to see why fresh seafood was unavailable in remote areas only miles from the sea. Elderly fishmongers I know recall how they once met boats on the shore and carried basketfuls of fish on their heads up thousands of steps to coastal hamlets, some of which remain accessible only on foot. Those living in the entroterra had to make do with salted anchovies, dried or salted cod and other easily transportable preserved fish. Because of these long-standing traditions, even today you will not find fresh fish on an authentic entroterra menu, though you may drive on a good road to a comfortable restaurant and be served on a panoramic terrace with sailboats on the horizon and the smell of sea in the air. Similarly you will rarely find wild mushrooms or game on seaside tables, though wild boar, hare and porcini are seasonably plentiful only minutes away in the interior.
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Inevitably the region's intricate history has shaped the cooking too, though it would be fanciful to trace most of today's particularities to ancient roots. Except for generalized references to leanness, no documents relating to local food exist before the Middle Ages. Yet the Ligurian tribes of antiquity almost certainly had distinct eating habits, some of which may have left a mark. For example, cooking on hot slabs of slate -- ciappe in Ligurian dialect -- was a common technique used until recently wherever the stone was available, particularly in the Val Fontanabuona behind Chiavari and Lavagna. A handful of restaurants still offer mutton, goat or tuna cooked in this way and seasoned with aromatic herbs. Similar stone-cooking techniques appear in parts of southern France, formerly within the territory of Ligurian nomadic tribes. In the Sarzana area, on the edge of Tuscany, locals have been using flat, earthenware disks to make a variety of grain and pasta dishes (panigacci or testaroli, for instance) since pre-Roman times. The disks, called tèsti, are still sold in specialty shops in the area. Utensils similar to contemporary ciappe and tèsti were employed in antiquity for making breads, focaccia and possibly chick-pea farinata in other parts of the Mediterranean basin. A thousand years later, in the 10th century, the Emperor Berengarius II divided Liguria into three units following ancient boundaries. That division corresponds roughly to the linguistic, administrative and culinary zones of Levante, Genoa and Ponente still evident today. Some contemporary Ligurian cookbook writers, including Bruno Bini, split the region's recipes into three distinct groupings following this tri-partite plan.
While scarce resources fostered inventiveness, it was neglect by the outside world that preserved the authenticity of Ligurian food down the centuries. Culinary historians point out that few Ligurian recipes appear in the world's first modern cookbooks, which were compiled and published in Italy in the late Middle ages and the Renaissance. While anonymous chefs in Tuscany, Piedmont and Naples busily turned out their region's libri di cucina the Genoese remained aloof. Liguria's first comprehensive regional cookbook, La Cuciniera Genovese, was written by Giovanni Battista Ratto in 1865. Largely unaltered since, it is the bible of Genoese cooks and is currently available in its eighteenth edition at every Ligurian bookstore worth its salt and pepper, though Ratto's book remains relatively unknown outside the region. This is due in part to the fact that at the turn of the century much of Italy came under the sway of celebrity cookbook author Pellegrino Artusi (1820-1911), whose "La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene" ("The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well"), published in 1891, sanctified the cuisine of Artusi's native Emilia-Romangna and that of Tuscany, long considered Italy's aristocratic cuisines (along with that of the House of Savoy in Turin). Artusi essentially created an "Italian cuisine." Anyone who has experienced Italy more than superficially, however, knows that no such cuisine exists beyond the restaurants of famous chefs and international hotels. In any case Artusi did not approve of what he doubtless considered impoverished, meatless, creamless Ligurian food and gave only a few recipes from the region in his book. They include ravioli and rolled veal scallops (tomaxelle in Ligurian dialect). Not suprisingly these comforting dishes have long been popular throughout Italy, though no one thinks of them as Ligurian.
Neglect, poverty and reticence have been a blessing in disguise. You can count dynamic Milan's authentic regional restaurants on the fingers of one hand; legions of self-styled trattorie Toscane and pizzerie Napoletane have colonized the world with standardized Italian food. On the contrary Ligurian cooking remains distinctive and not always to everyone's taste. I recall dining with a group of well-traveled Americans, Canadians and Australians at a restaurant in Sestri Levante where we sampled numerous local specialties. None was recognized by my fellow diners and while most of them enjoyed their meal, several were dismayed by the heady aromatic herbs, the whole baby squid and octopus, and several spiny fish. "This isn't a fish," exclaimed one, "it's bait."
SALON | Dec. 22, 1997
Copyright © David Downie, Alison Harris. Reprinted with permission of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +
Select this link for a
recipe for fresh peasant-
style pasta with pesto
from "Enchanted Liguria."


All titles may not be immediately available. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K Experienced travelers discuss the legal ins and outs of travel to Cuba in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Chicken soup with matzo balls for the soul (12/19/97) Passages By John Krich "Won Ton Lust": The best twice-cooked pork in China (12/18/97) Pop goes the cathedral By Laura Miller New book reveals architectural triumphs (12/17/97) The Yukon Quest By Laura Johnston Mush! Racing 1,000 miles by dog sled (12/16/97) Road Warrior By Mary Beth Maslowski Expat's guide: Cost-cutting and culture-exploring in Tokyo (12/15/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Passages archive		ENCHANTED LIGURIA \| PAGE 2 OF 2 \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| Paradoxically it is this leanness and sobriety that led to the extreme inventiveness of Ligurian cooks, particularly those from the entroterra. Narrow mountain valleys linked only by footpaths, mule tracks and winding roads forced those living there to depend almost exclusively on local foodstuffs. Where chestnuts grew in the mountains of Levante, for instance, the so-called Chestnut Civilization developed, in which the trees provided shelter, fuel and food for animals and people. Any number of chestnut-flour dishes were invented, from fresh picagge matte pasta, originally dressed only with vegetables and lard (pressed between slabs of marble), to naturally sweet castagnaccio cake with pine nuts and fennel seeds. While most of Liguria produces no cheese, high pastures where goats and sheep could be raised allowed shepherds in the Ponente, and in areas in the Levante behind the seaside town of Recco, to produce limited amounts of it. This led in turn to recipes for barbagiuai ravioli or focaccia al formaggio, a succulent flatbread with fresh cheese sandwiched between paper-thin crusts. Cheese focaccia is now Recco's flagship dish, the object of gastronomic pilgrimages from far and wide; the local ducks have become fat and unable to fly from feeding on it and are a tourist attraction themselves. Another highly localized specialty comes from Dolceacqua, near the French border: crava e faxeu. It is made with tough but tasty milk goat which, at the end of its productive life, is sautéed with onions and white beans and spiced with hot peppers. The mountainous land imposes severe limits on farming and ranching. Though for centuries returning sailors hauled sacks of prized manure and compost back from Tuscany not much of it made it inland and the soil there is uniformly rocky. The climate on the coast is mild year-round, but in the entroterra it becomes progressively colder the deeper the valley and the higher the elevation. Vegetables that grow well in the lowlands do not necessarily thrive on the mountains. Ligurian valleys, inhabited for millennia from sea-level to three or four thousand feet, yield a number of different kitchen-garden crops in a single growing season. This means that for every micro-climate there is a micro-cuisine. It is easy to see why fresh seafood was unavailable in remote areas only miles from the sea. Elderly fishmongers I know recall how they once met boats on the shore and carried basketfuls of fish on their heads up thousands of steps to coastal hamlets, some of which remain accessible only on foot. Those living in the entroterra had to make do with salted anchovies, dried or salted cod and other easily transportable preserved fish. Because of these long-standing traditions, even today you will not find fresh fish on an authentic entroterra menu, though you may drive on a good road to a comfortable restaurant and be served on a panoramic terrace with sailboats on the horizon and the smell of sea in the air. Similarly you will rarely find wild mushrooms or game on seaside tables, though wild boar, hare and porcini are seasonably plentiful only minutes away in the interior. \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| Inevitably the region's intricate history has shaped the cooking too, though it would be fanciful to trace most of today's particularities to ancient roots. Except for generalized references to leanness, no documents relating to local food exist before the Middle Ages. Yet the Ligurian tribes of antiquity almost certainly had distinct eating habits, some of which may have left a mark. For example, cooking on hot slabs of slate -- ciappe in Ligurian dialect -- was a common technique used until recently wherever the stone was available, particularly in the Val Fontanabuona behind Chiavari and Lavagna. A handful of restaurants still offer mutton, goat or tuna cooked in this way and seasoned with aromatic herbs. Similar stone-cooking techniques appear in parts of southern France, formerly within the territory of Ligurian nomadic tribes. In the Sarzana area, on the edge of Tuscany, locals have been using flat, earthenware disks to make a variety of grain and pasta dishes (panigacci or testaroli, for instance) since pre-Roman times. The disks, called tèsti, are still sold in specialty shops in the area. Utensils similar to contemporary ciappe and tèsti were employed in antiquity for making breads, focaccia and possibly chick-pea farinata in other parts of the Mediterranean basin. A thousand years later, in the 10th century, the Emperor Berengarius II divided Liguria into three units following ancient boundaries. That division corresponds roughly to the linguistic, administrative and culinary zones of Levante, Genoa and Ponente still evident today. Some contemporary Ligurian cookbook writers, including Bruno Bini, split the region's recipes into three distinct groupings following this tri-partite plan. While scarce resources fostered inventiveness, it was neglect by the outside world that preserved the authenticity of Ligurian food down the centuries. Culinary historians point out that few Ligurian recipes appear in the world's first modern cookbooks, which were compiled and published in Italy in the late Middle ages and the Renaissance. While anonymous chefs in Tuscany, Piedmont and Naples busily turned out their region's libri di cucina the Genoese remained aloof. Liguria's first comprehensive regional cookbook, La Cuciniera Genovese, was written by Giovanni Battista Ratto in 1865. Largely unaltered since, it is the bible of Genoese cooks and is currently available in its eighteenth edition at every Ligurian bookstore worth its salt and pepper, though Ratto's book remains relatively unknown outside the region. This is due in part to the fact that at the turn of the century much of Italy came under the sway of celebrity cookbook author Pellegrino Artusi (1820-1911), whose "La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene" ("The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well"), published in 1891, sanctified the cuisine of Artusi's native Emilia-Romangna and that of Tuscany, long considered Italy's aristocratic cuisines (along with that of the House of Savoy in Turin). Artusi essentially created an "Italian cuisine." Anyone who has experienced Italy more than superficially, however, knows that no such cuisine exists beyond the restaurants of famous chefs and international hotels. In any case Artusi did not approve of what he doubtless considered impoverished, meatless, creamless Ligurian food and gave only a few recipes from the region in his book. They include ravioli and rolled veal scallops (tomaxelle in Ligurian dialect). Not suprisingly these comforting dishes have long been popular throughout Italy, though no one thinks of them as Ligurian. Neglect, poverty and reticence have been a blessing in disguise. You can count dynamic Milan's authentic regional restaurants on the fingers of one hand; legions of self-styled trattorie Toscane and pizzerie Napoletane have colonized the world with standardized Italian food. On the contrary Ligurian cooking remains distinctive and not always to everyone's taste. I recall dining with a group of well-traveled Americans, Canadians and Australians at a restaurant in Sestri Levante where we sampled numerous local specialties. None was recognized by my fellow diners and while most of them enjoyed their meal, several were dismayed by the heady aromatic herbs, the whole baby squid and octopus, and several spiny fish. "This isn't a fish," exclaimed one, "it's bait." SALON \| Dec. 22, 1997 Copyright © David Downie, Alison Harris. Reprinted with permission of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. + + + + + + + + + + + + + Select this link for a recipe for fresh peasant- style pasta with pesto from "Enchanted Liguria."