Foreword

The tradition of Venetian cicchetti that Emiko writes about so wonderfully

in this book is not one made for long, leisurely meals but for a food culture
on the move. It is about stopping in for a drink, a snack or a small plate at a
hole-in-the-wall bar while walking around the city on the way home from
work or while shopping for groceries; it’s about pausing to meet friends, do
business, exchange news. While it can be brisk, it is inherently sociable.
Over an ombra of wine and a cicchetto, great conversations ensue whether
you are perched on a stool or a canal-edge, standing at the bar or walking
from one bàcaro to the next.

Going out for cicchetti is also a surprisingly cheap and unpretentious way to
eat and drink in a city that can be eye-wateringly expensive – as I
discovered to my great delight when living in Venice as a graduate student
researching the city’s Renaissance history. Even the fanciest establishments
will usually serve you a drink or a coffee and a quick bite at a very
reasonable price if you are willing to stand at the bar. A great many paths
cross in this way: old ladies in fur coats enjoying a spritz at eleven in the
morning; university students on raucous bar crawls; meandering foreigners;
and locals in a hurry. The same bars that we frequented during late-night
cicchetti rounds when we were younger, Emiko and I have returned to more
recently, chatting over a drink while our kids played around a shady campo.

The evolution of this bar culture is partly a function of Venice’s unique

topography and its history as one of the largest, most densely populated and
cosmopolitan metropolises in pre-modern Europe. The shortage of space to
sit and settle in also reflects the anxieties of the aristocratic Renaissance
government, who sought to prohibit working-class Venetians from
gathering to eat and drink, fearing this would lead to conspiracy, immorality
and disorder. At the same time, these authorities acknowledged that wine
was a crucial staple, particularly in a city without a good supply of drinking
water, and that many people without the space or equipment to cook in their
homes would be out looking for a meal.
And so, despite official attempts to control where food and drink
establishments were located, what and whom they could serve, a thriving
culture of hospitality sprung up in the city in the Middle Ages. A cluster of
large centrally located inns (osterie) offered more elite international visitors
elaborate food, expensive imported wines and comfortable bedrooms
upstairs (these evolved into the luxury hotels that welcomed the rising tide
of tourists in the eighteenth century). In more peripheral neighbourhoods,
humble taverns sold wine – theoretically meant to be taken away and
consumed at home – and simple snacks to locals going about their everyday
lives. Everywhere, Venetian barkeepers were inventive, managing to carve
out a little more space by adding a roof terrace (altana) here, or a courtyard
there, encroaching onto the surrounding streets and squares and even onto
boats moored alongside them on the canals.

All of this was complemented by a vibrant tradition of street food.

Wandering pedlars and street stalls sold crabs, oysters, scallops, salted
sardines, polenta, tripe, cooked fennel, pumpkin and broad beans, to be
eaten on the run, day and night. Their ephemeral presence and street cries
were captured in Gaetano Zompini’s series of etchings Le Arti che Vanno
per Via (1746–1754), though many of them could still be seen and heard in
the early twentieth century.

The food and drink traditions that survive in Venice’s backstreet bars also
reflect the city’s past as a global crossroads, initially for trade and
pilgrimage, later increasingly for tourism, at least since the beginnings of
the Grand Tour tradition in the sixteenth century. Located in a strategic
position between Europe and the East, Venetians realised early that their
fortunes lay in making the city an unavoidable nexus of transit and
exchange. Foreigners arriving from every direction were welcomed, as long
as they brought something that might benefit the city. Even if Venice also
pioneered oppressive forms of control and segregation, most famously with
its Jewish ghetto, the mixing of so many people from so many different
places in the close confines of the lagoon city inevitably led to creative
exchanges, adaptations and inventions. Refugees, foreign merchants and
migrant workers brought with them ingredients, tastes and customs that
melded together in the crucible of Venetian urban life to produce this ‘local’
food and drink tradition.
Celebrating and cultivating this tradition of food and sociability, as Emiko
does in Cinnamon and Salt, can and should be an important part of Venice’s
recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, and of making it a vibrant city for
residents and visitors into the future. Learning the art of cicchetti means
exploring the backstreets and lesser-known areas, and encountering some of
the city’s more obscure histories. Despite the formidable challenges it now
faces, Venice at its heart is a model of a sustainable city – since its
foundation it has learnt to survive in the midst of difficult environmental
conditions and, on more than one occasion, come back to life after plague
brought its global traffic to a halt and wiped out large parts of its
population.

Whether we visit it in person or virtually through a marvellous book like

this, Venice has a great deal to teach us about the pleasures of a life lived on
foot (and in boats!); about sustaining strong community traditions and
neighbourhood ties while also staying open to the world; about stopping to
appreciate quotidian rituals and rhythms and finding beauty in the everyday.
Over time, even a disoriented newcomer can learn to navigate the maze of
Venice almost like a local, and to recognise which narrow calle to duck
down to find a favourite place to stop for a drink, a bite and a chat.

Rosa Salzberg, Associate Professor of Italian Renaissance History,

University of Warwick
Contents

Cover Page
Title Page
Preface
Introduction
Before you start

Classici
Classic cicchetti
Moderni
Modern cicchetti
Fritti
Fried cicchetti
Piatti piccoli
Small plates
Dolci e bevande
Sweets and drinks
Resources
Eating and drinking in Venice – a brief guide
A map of Venice
References
Grazie
About the author
Copyright Page
Venice as seen from the Giudecca
— Henry James on Venice

‘An orange gem resting on a blue glass plate.’

The Doge’s Palace in Piazza San Marco
Preface
It doesn’t take long for this city to work its magic on me. Just one look at
that long, low horizon shaped by the grey-green Venetian waters as the train
pulls into the island station, Venezia Santa Lucia, and I find myself
breathing a sigh. It never gets old: the lagoon, the water-lapped maze of
streets and canals, the salt-worn, crumbling buildings and campi (squares)
hidden away like secret pockets. Whether enshrouded in winter fog with
impending high waters or under the warm, beating sun, Venice is truly
unforgettable. Although I have called Tuscany home for fourteen or so
years, Venice has long held a place in my heart. I spent four weeks on the
island of San Lazzaro as an intern restoring flooded manuscripts and
etchings from the Armenian monastery’s museum (see the rose petal jam
recipe). Since 2005 I have only missed one Biennale, making the bi-annual
visit a ritual. And I find any excuse I can to visit friends in Venice and
indulge in cicchetti: my very favourite way of eating food (to be honest, it is
almost the only way I have ever eaten on countless visits to Venice; I have
dined in a proper sit-down restaurant just twice).

The idea for this book wasn’t mine. It began, many years ago, at a
suggestion by my very good friend Rosa Salzberg, a Renaissance historian
from Melbourne who for the past decades has divided her time between
Venice, England and her home in Trento. We met by chance about fifteen
years ago in Florence, and we connected instantly over cocktails and snacks
and, as I recall, we talked all night long, like old friends, which we have
become. I often took advantage of her teaching sessions in Venice to pay
her a visit and let her guide me through the labyrinth of narrow calli to
some of her favourite places to eat: the wonderful pastry shop Tonolo, Arco
for an ombra and cicchetti after a wander through the market, Vedova for
their legendary fried meatballs, and a drink at the pretty, historic cafe Rosa
Salva, which we joke is Rosa’s namesake.

During the summer of 2020, in a moment of relative freedom from

pandemic restrictions, we met up at our favourite agriturismo in Tuscany
with our young families, and over bottles of Vernaccia and Chianti and a
plate of Cinta Senese salumi, Rosa brought up the idea of a book on Venice
again and sketched it all out on a napkin (a lot of great things start as
‘napkin notes’): ‘Food, wine and history in the backstreets of Venice’, it
read at the top, while underneath in the mind mapping that was carried out
were scribbled words like moscardini, sarde in saor, cinnamon, Vedova,
Timon, Malvasia, street food.

I took a photo of the napkin lest it get drowned in wine or used to wipe a
toddler’s face. We agreed to meet in Venice the next month and spend a
weekend fleshing out our napkin. While the children ran around campi and
back alleys, we drank spritzes and ate at our favourite bàcari. Rosa led me
around the narrow streets near the Rialto where her research on the history
of migration takes her often. I took as many photos as I could while we
gathered more ideas. I posted about our weekend full of cicchetti and oddly
uncrowded canals on Instagram in real time and by the time I got home, on
Monday morning, there was an email from my publisher, Jane Willson, who
had seen these snapshots of Venice but had no idea I was there gathering
ideas for a proposal for her: How about a book on cicchetti? It was meant to
be.
Near the Rialto market
The cuisine of Venice is utterly unique in the Italian peninsula. Refined, yet
simple, it has origins that carry the legacy of the Venetian Republic’s immense
wealth and multicultural influence. Foreign ingredients like sugar from Syria
and Egypt, dried fruit, citrus and fried sweets from Persia, spices from India
and Indonesia, then later, Norwegian stockfish, corn from Central America and
coffee from Turkey, all became part of Venice’s indispensable pantry,
influenced by the wealthy merchants importing sugar and spices ‘who strove to
eat food whose signature flavours were anything but local’, as John Dickie puts
it in Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food (2007). Yet, at
the same time, the cuisine heavily relies on the fresh and excellent but humble
ingredients that the lagoon environment and surrounding countryside offer
each season, from moeche (soft-shell crabs) and tiny grey prawns (shrimp)
collected by fishermen, to the delicate artichokes pruned early from the plant
while still small, grown on the nearby islands.

This cuisine is a bundle of opposites. It is represented in the opulent

Renaissance banquets painted by Veronese and also in the peddlers making
vats of polenta or frying sugar-coated fritters on street corners in Gaetano
Zompini’s eighteenth-century etchings. It is sophisticated but also frugal. This
dichotomy, and this history, is partly what makes Venetian food so starkly
different to that of the rest of Italy, but it is just the start. Added to it, in rich
layers, are also things like the city’s unusual topography, the impossible
labyrinth of narrow streets and canals that make it a city traversed on foot, that
it is an island that lacks fresh water (made up for in wine) and the melting-pot,
polyglot, multicultural society of Venice’s past that contributed to not only the
recipes but also the way people ate and drank, and continue to today.
Cicchetti at All’Arco
Venice sits in a shallow inland sea, a network made up of 118 islands
connected by about 400 bridges and countless canals. Its elegant palazzi, which
appear to be impossibly floating on the water, are actually built atop a
foundation of wooden piles driven into the mud, often likened to an upside-
down forest; it’s an urban environment that UNESCO calls an ‘architectural
masterpiece’, carefully linked to its surrounding lagoon ecosystem. Without
traffic, other than pedestrians and boats, setting foot in Venice feels like
stepping into another time. There are few pockets of green: gardens here and
there, a pergola of grapes, but otherwise the green areas for growing food are
mainly kept within the walls of ancient monasteries or the outlying islands of
the lagoon.

The Venice you see and taste today carries just a whisper of its prosperous and
rich maritime and trading past of the Middle Ages, but what you must know
about what made Venice so wealthy, what set it apart from the rest of the
peninsula and gave it such a prominent place in food history, comes down to
one thing: the spices. With an important early salt trade and a prestigious and
powerful navy that was even used in the Crusades, Venice collected colonies
throughout the Mediterranean, from the Dalmatian coast to Greece and Cyprus.
In the twelfth century, the Venetian Republic had so much influence that it was
given Byzantine trading privileges with Constantinople, Alexandria in Egypt
and Acre in Israel. With this access to the East and an enviable monopoly on
precious spices destined for the rest of Europe, Venice rose to become the
wealthiest, most dynamic city in Europe. It traded in cinnamon, pepper, cloves,
nutmeg, mace, coriander, saffron and many more spices that, along with sugar
– which was just as luxurious – were initially used as medicines.

The young Venetian merchant Marco Polo was one of the first Europeans to
travel to China, then under Mongul rule, where he stayed for seventeen years.
When he returned to his hometown in 1299, bringing back inspiring tales of
China, Tibet, Bengal and Java, where these precious spices came from, he
found the city was a heaving marketplace. John Dickie paints this picture: ‘By
Polo’s time, the Rialto hosted the world’s most important wholesale market: at
that famous bend in the Grand Canal, silks and medicines from the South
China Sea could be traded for Flemish cloth and Cornish tin amid a concert of
different languages.’

Curious of everything and everyone, the wealthy lagoon city attracted and was
attracted to merchants, diplomats, crusaders, bankers, heretics, pilgrims,
humanists in exile and migrants from diverse cultures all over the known
world, including Armenians, Albanians, Turks (‘dining and trading partners
rather than enemies’, Gillian Riley notes), Syrians, Greeks, Jews and Germans.
According to Luisa Bellina and Mimmo Cappellaro in their introduction to the
Slow Food book Ricette di Osterie del Veneto (1996), a Tuscan would have
been considered more of a forestiero (a foreigner) than a Syrian, a Turk or a
Greek (who made up such a large part of the community that their language
crept into the Venetian dialect).

Venice’s melting-pot culture was an inevitable source of gastronomical

inspiration, lending not only ingredients but also recipes and preparations from
abroad. In the Renaissance, in the Castello district, the ‘Slavic’ quarter of
Venice, you would find the bakeries were run by Albanians, while the butchers
were Croatian. Armenians taught Venetians how to cook rice (risotto is a great
example of the marriage of the lagoon’s traditional ingredients with a borrowed
ingredient from the East, which became one of the most iconic Venetian dishes;
take risotto with peas or quail, the traditional dish to celebrate San Marco, the
city’s patron saint, every 25th April), as well as how to cultivate produce such
as spinach, eggplant (aubergine), quince and melons. The many sauces based
on sweetly cooked onions (such as sardines in saor and Venetian-style liver),
the use of raisins and pine nuts or almonds, or cinnamon, can be traced to the
Armenians, whose presence is still important today in Venice in the Armenian
monastery on the island of San Lazzaro. In addition, Venice’s Jewish
community was in itself a melting pot, with residents coming from Spain,
Portugal, Turkey, Syria, Tunisia and the Levant. The classic foods from this
historic sixteenth-century quarter of Cannaregio (known as the ‘ghetto’ from
the Venetian word geti, referring to the nearby metal foundries in this part of
the city) are still among Venice’s most quintessential dishes.

Also playing a part in Venetian cuisine was the fact that at the height of the
Renaissance in 1470, Venice had become the printing capital of the world.
Italy’s most important aristocratic cookbooks were printed here: Platina’s De
honesta volputate et valetudine, inspired by Maestro Martino da Como’s Liber
de arte coquinaria was published in Venice in 1475 and is considered the first
cookbook ever printed; Cristoforo Messisbugo’s Libro novo nel qual si insegna
a far d’ogni sorte di vivanda, printed posthumously in 1564, and the enormous
tome of Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to Pope Pius IV and Pope Pius V, known
simply as Opera, in 1570.
It was a city where cuisines and ideas met, mingled and became diffused. But,
by the end of the fifteenth century, Venice’s decline in prosperity had begun as
Portugal became the new dominant power in international trade. The Plague
devastated Venice in 1576 and ravaged it again in 1630, when it lost one-third
of its citizens, contributing to its loss of power. However, ever the magpie
collecting things it loves, the lagoon city brought in coffee (like the spices
centuries before, coffee beans first arrived in Venice’s hands from Turkey),
which was initially considered to be ‘Satan’s drink’ but was quickly blessed by
Pope Clement VIII. Venice opened Europe’s very first coffee house in the
middle of the seventeenth century, well before Paris or Vienna, and coffee
houses remained ever fashionable as important meeting places for socialising
and political gatherings (Caffè Florian in Piazza San Marco is a good example;
dating to 1720 it is the oldest coffee house in the world and remains practically
unchanged in elegance and popularity – every important local and visitor from
Casanova to Goethe has passed through its doors).

Around this time, Venice, beautiful and tempting as ever, poised on its lagoon,
was considered an important stop on the Grand Tour – the ‘locus of decadent
Italianate allure’, as Bruce Redford calls the city in Venice and the Grand Tour
(1996) – and it was considered one of the most refined and elegant cities of
Europe. La Serenissima, as the ‘Most Serene’ Venetian Republic was known,
lasted an impressive eleven centuries, from 697 to 1797, when it was split into
French and Austrian states (and even here she found inspiration in Austrian
desserts and drinks – the spritz, that most famous Venetian tipple, comes from
the Austrian spritzer). Venice finally became part of the recently unified Italy
in 1866.
Strolling the Riva degli Schiavoni, the historical port for merchant ships (named for the merchants
from the Dalmatian coast, which was known as ‘Schiavonia’ during the times of La Serenissima,
and today as Montenegro and Croatia)
Piazza San Marco
A medieval spice emporium

The link between East and West left an undeniable mark on Venice’s cuisine,
making it unique in Italy’s regions. While food historian and adopted Venetian
Carla Coco talks of ‘Rivers of spices, kilos of sugar, gold leaf on oysters and
rice’ to entertain and seduce important foreign dignitaries in Renaissance
Venice, Gillian Riley in The Oxford Companion to Italian Food points out that
the spices were still used carefully and sparingly, and asserts that they ‘did not
fall in a cloud over every dish’, reflecting the expense of the precious
ingredients – it’s worth noting that the word ‘spices’, spezie, comes from Latin,
meaning ‘special goods’.

The Venetians were master entrepreneurs, however, creating sachetti veneziani,

‘little Venetian sacks’, of specially mixed spices in different formats to sell to
the rest of Europe: dolce, mild (for fish, especially), or forte, spicy, (better for
meat and especially game, a universal spice mix of pepper, cinnamon, ginger,
cloves and saffron). In the Libro per Cuoco (literally, ‘Book for Cook’), one of
the earliest complete recipe manuscripts, written by an ‘anonymous Venetian’
cook in the mid-fourteenth century, about three-quarters of the recipes call for
spices. Recipe seventy-four is for a dolce spice mix, which includes cinnamon,
cloves, ginger and mace.

What was the appeal of these extraordinarily expensive spices? They’re not
necessary for survival – the idea that spices were used to preserve or disguise
the taste of old or bad meat has long been put to rest by food historians. Salt is
much more useful for preservation and in the Middle Ages was not nearly as
expensive, and – as Riley noted – spices in recipes were actually used
sparingly. So, where did the demand come from? Journalist Giampiero Rorato
in Spezie, Vino, Pane della Serenissima explains that spices were considered
valuable because of their high price and therefore became a symbol of one’s
status. There was enormous request among the aristocrats of Europe for the
aptly named ‘special goods’, in particular for their medicinal, cosmetic and
pharmaceutical value. ‘Luxury in Europe fed itself in Venice’, wrote Venetian
gastronome Giuseppe Maffioli.
That so many of these spices helped in the digestion department – everything
from ginger to cinnamon to clove and anise all have digestive properties –
meant their appearance in the kitchen was only natural, suggests Rorato.
Indeed, the idea of tempering illness or discomfort in the body and mind by
balancing the four humours (which were related to the elements of earth, air,
fire and water, as well as the seasons and stages of life) dates to ancient Rome
and was well followed in the Middle Ages. Medieval doctors recommended
Asian spices, which had naturally hot and dry qualities to balance out ‘cold’
and ‘wet’ European foods.

The move away from strong spices happened in the seventeenth century. John
Dickie argues that the use of spices recounted in Libro per Cuoco was not so
much particularly Venetian as it was medieval. But there is one spice that
continues to appear in the most traditional Venetian cooking: cinnamon. Used
in savoury rather than sweet dishes, it will often appear in agrodolce, or sweet-
and-sour recipes, with stewed meat or fish (see the Baccalà al pomodoro, for
example), and in sausages or preserved meats. According to Slow Food, up
until as recently as the 1970s (some blame the omnipresent tomato for pushing
spices into disuse today), every Venetian pantry had a precious collection of
finely ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and it was not out of place to find
cinnamon and sugar on trattoria tables as condiments. You can still imagine it
easily with a humble dish of gnocchi alla veneziana, ‘Venetian-style gnocchi’,
where potato dumplings are seasoned with sugar, cinnamon and parmesan
cheese, a recipe today quite unchanged from when it appeared in Messisbugo’s
sixteenth-century cookbook.
Renaissance feasts

It doesn’t really take too much effort to imagine how the long and incredible
history of Venice has left its mark on the cuisine today. A glance at some
Venetian paintings from the sixteenth century lets us in on the food, its plating
and how it was served and eaten at the time – and there are some similarities
that haven’t changed much today.

Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana (1563) is a glorious (and huge! It is almost

10 metres/32 feet long) and quite raucous depiction of an aristocratic banquet
portraying the biblical story where Jesus, arriving at a wedding where there
was nothing left but water to drink, turns the water into wine. It was
commissioned by the Benedictine monks for the refectory wall of the Basilica
di San Giorgio Maggiore, with its brilliant white marble Palladio facade that
faces Piazza San Marco where the Grand Canal opens into the lagoon. The
sumptuous feast is represented in full sixteenth-century Venetian style and
contains more than 130 immaculately dressed figures. Guests are seated at the
table with countless plates of candied fruit, sugar-coated nuts, quince paste and,
of course, wine. On the upper levels, roast birds are being prepared – chopped,
plated and passed along – while in the foreground wine is being poured from
enormous, decorative stone vessels. There is a real buzz in this scene; you can
almost hear the noise, the chatter, as wine is being distributed rather urgently
by busy servants. It might be a patrician banquet, but you could imagine the
same kind of clamour in a Renaissance osteria.
Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana
Venetian painter Leandro Bassano’s canvas of the same scene (1579–1582) is a
relatively simple and less opulent event set in a palazzo in the Venetian
countryside. The guests sit around a single table which, rather than being
covered with platters of food, contains a plate of large, plump prawns (shrimp),
a single roast bird (perhaps duck; there are others hanging above the table), a
loaf of bread set directly on the tablecloth and a glass carafe of white wine
(interestingly, my sommelier husband, Marco, thinks this sixteenth-century
white looks like an orange wine, in other words a white wine that has been
macerated with skins on that lends the wine an amber glow and gives it a bit
more body – a traditional way of making white wine in this area, being brought
back to the Venetian lagoon in places like Venissa).

The details of the kitchen are wonderful too, as they show you the prime
ingredients: gleaming silver sea bass in a corner, and fruit and vegetables (from
all seasons) together in the other corner – winter radicchio, summer apricots
and peaches, a bursting pomegranate from autumn and spring’s spiny
artichokes. Above the basket, a young servant is about to carry out a large,
shallow basket full of Bussolai, the S- and ring-shaped biscuits beloved by
Venetians. Fresh prawns (shrimp), roast duck and bussolai washed down with
white wine sounds more or less like an ideal, special Venetian meal today too.

Veronese later painted another fantastic banquet known as Feast in the Houseof
Levi (1573), where sixteenth-century aristocratic Venetians are depicted in
another lively scene centred around the table. Never mind the storyline
(originally it was meant to depict the Last Supper, but when Veronese was
summoned by the Venetian Inquisition and interrogated about the overly lavish
setting and ‘inappropriate’ characters, ‘buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs and
other such scurrilities’, according to the manuscript of the hearing, he simply
changed the title), we are too busy looking at the details of this feast. Servants
pour wine out of beautiful rounded glass decanters, small plates of food are
passed around and guests carry long toothpicks – they were usually perfumed –
for picking up sticky candied fruit. A young soldier on a staircase, his weapon
leaning against his body to free his hands, appears to be chatting to a fellow
soldier (presumably these are the ‘drunken Germans’). He is holding a small
plate of morsels of food in one hand while the other holds a glass of wine up to
his lips. It’s not a far stretch to place them on a bridge over a canal and think
they’re enjoying cicchetti at aperitivo hour.
Bartolomeo Scappi’s cookbook Opera was published in Venice right around
the same time as Bassano’s painting and Veronese’s noisy banquet scenes, so
it’s not hard to imagine how Scappi’s banquets may have looked. Typical was a
sequence of 136 dishes over seventeen courses and, as Gillian Riley says of
this succession of these Renaissance dishes, ‘Perhaps one should think of them
as “tapas” – when a group share exquisite small portions of many things,
sipping drinks and chatting.’ Or – if I may – not tapas but, strictly and
uniquely, cicchetti.
Measurements
I always measure recipe ingredients by metric weight (with the occasional
handful or pinch, by eye, by feel or by taste). It is the way Italians cook and it
is the most reliable way to measure out ingredients in a recipe. I thoroughly
suggest doing the same for best results, particularly for baking. Cups and
spoons is where it gets a little more confusing, so please bear with me here: I
use a 20 ml (¾ fl oz) tablespoon measurement. If using a 15 ml (½ fl oz) US
tablespoon, just be a tad more generous – the 5 ml (⅛ fl oz) difference would
be a teaspoon worth. I have also measured cups where applicable with
Australian (Commonwealth) cups, i.e., a 250 ml (8½ fl oz) cup, not a 236 ml (8
fl oz) US cup so, if using US cups, again, be on the slightly generous side (the
difference, 14 ml/ fl oz, is almost the equivalent of a tablespoon, so in many
cases this won’t make a huge difference, but if you want to be precise, add an
extra level tablespoon; for 125 ml/4 fl oz/½ cup, add half a tablespoon and so
on). When measuring dry ingredients with cups, use this technique: heap the
ingredients into the cup with a spoon or scoop (perhaps over a bowl to catch
and save the excess), then level off with the back of a knife. For ingredients
such as sultanas or nuts, use an unpacked, level cup.

Cooking times
Recipes were tested on an induction cooktop and a conventional oven. You
may need to adjust cooking times slightly for gas or electric cooktops and, if
baking with a fan-forced oven, which can be hotter, you should decrease the
temperature by 20°C (35°F) to be closer to a conventional oven temperature.
Cooking times can also vary depending on the type of cookware you use – food
will behave differently in a non-stick pan versus a cast-iron pan, for example,
but use these times as an indication and note the sensory cues mentioned too.

Frying
See all my tips on frying, from oil type to temperature to how to dispose of
frying oil.
Servings
Cicchetti are at the heart of this book – small bites of food, often finger food.
But sometimes these dishes can be made as main dishes or as part of a bigger
meal. Most often, I’ve given serving sizes for cicchetti, which are, say, one
small crostino or a halved hard-boiled egg, and are normally eaten together
with many other cicchetti and enjoyed as aperitivo, before a meal, but can
sometimes take the place of a light meal.

Crostini
The perfect base for turning practically anything into cicchetti, crostini are
toasted rounds of bread or firm polenta, cut into square or rectangular slices. I
like to toast them on a very hot cast-iron griddle plate to get those nice grill
marks. Any pan will do though, just toast until they begin to warm and brown
on one side then flip them over and toast the other side (making polenta
crostini). I prefer this to oven-toasting or the toaster, which tends to dry out the
bread completely, making them a bit too crunchy.

Eggs
Where possible, use free-range, organic eggs that are approximately 55 g (2
oz), which would correspond to large eggs in the US, Canada and Australia,
and medium eggs in Europe. If using larger eggs, you will need to adjust the
timing on things such as the hard-boiled eggs, which can take 12 minutes to
cook instead of 9.

Flour
In Italy, the flour most commonly used is grano tenero tipo 00, which is soft
wheat, very finely ground – type ‘00’ indicates how finely the flour is ground
rather than protein value. It can be replaced with plain (all-purpose) flour. For
baking recipes that call for flour with the addition of baking powder, which you
will find in the Pevarini and Zaira’s fruit cake, you could try to replace the
amount of flour with self-raising flour and eliminate the baking powder, but the
results may be slightly different. In the biscuits, you don’t need as much lift as
the heavier fruitcake, for example. I personally prefer using plain (all-purpose)
flour with baking powder added to it because I can control how much lift (in
other words baking powder) I want in it, and I can also ensure that the baking
powder I am using is very fresh; it does not keep as well as flour does. In Italy,
where I live, self-raising flour is not used, so it is also a question of what I have
available, as well as the above practical reasons.

Garlic
I highly recommend smelling the individual garlic clove before using it. It
should not smell at all dusty or mouldy, but if it does, discard it and try another
– that smell is very difficult to hide later, especially in these Venetian dishes
where garlic is often liberally scattered at the end of preparing a dish, when it is
at its most pungent. When you have slightly older cloves of garlic lying
around, in Italy it’s common to split the clove in half lengthways and remove
the green sprout, if present; it is said to be bitter and indigestible.

Olive oil
I only use extra-virgin olive oil for both cooking and dressing – although I have
a slightly more special, unfiltered extra-virgin olive oil that I keep just for
dressing and finishing dishes. In the case of deep-frying, you can use a ‘light’
(i.e. refined) olive oil or another vegetable oil, such as sunflower oil, which
would be the best option (for more on frying).

Parsley
When I say parsley, I mean the large, flat-leaf kind, and it should be minced
very finely, along with the garlic, and sometimes, if needed, with a pinch of salt
– chop it all on the same board together. When added, often along with olive
oil, this is the very tasty, classic finish to any Venetian dish.

Polenta
In the Veneto, a very fine-ground pale yellow polenta (cornmeal) is often used.
If you can, choose the ‘fioretto’ kind. White polenta is often used to pair with
seafood. If you can, seek out the Biancoperla variety. See details on how to
prepare it and on portion sizes.

Preserved fish
There is a long history of using preserved fish in this region of Italy. Baccalà
is, confusingly, the term used for both air-dried stockfish and salt cod in the
Veneto. See more on dried stockfish, its storage and how to prepare it, and salt
cod. Also used in this region is smoked herring, and don’t forget tinned fish.

Salt
I use sea salt for cooking (fine sea salt for most dishes and coarse salt for
salting water for pasta or curing fish, for example). Be aware that using kosher
salt or table salt can produce very different results – in general, table salt is less
salty than sea salt and kosher salt can vary in saltiness between brands. I
recommend wherever and whenever you can, taste as you go.

Sugar
Mostly regular granulated sugar is called for in these recipes, but occasionally
caster (superfine) sugar is useful, especially in a cocktail like the Bellini, where
it dissolves quickly, or in the delicate, buttery Bussolai, S- and ring-shaped
biscuits. If you don’t have it, you can place your regular sugar in the food
processor and give it a bit of a whizz. A very clean coffee grinder can do the
same.

Fresh and frozen food

Where possible, shellfish should be extremely fresh, even live in the case of
razor clams, or schie and moeche crabs that are eaten whole. If you can only
get frozen seafood, some very good options are the octopus recipes, which
benefit from being frozen (freezing octopus is a form of tenderising), or
cuttlefish/calamari. Always choose the most sustainable local option. This
might include foregoing a more convenient option but, in some places, some
forms of fishing – for example, trawling for very small prawns (shrimp) (schie)
– mean the nets used are very tight and not the most sustainable option.
Octopus at the Rialto market
Classici Baccalà mantecato
Classic cicchetti Whipped cod

Polenta in due modi

Polenta, two ways

Baccalà alla Vicentina

Vicenza-style baccalà

Sarde in saor
Sweet-and-sour fried sardines

Radicchio in saor
Sweet-and-sour radicchio

Fondi di articiocchi
Artichoke bottoms

Scampi grigliati
Grilled scampi

Moscardini col sedano

Baby octopus with celery

Polpi in tecia
Octopus in wine

Seppie con piselli

Stewed cuttlefish with peas

Patatine condite
Dressed new potatoes

Uova sode in vari modi

Boiled eggs, a few ways
Vino Vero in Cannaregio
What are cicchetti?
Cicchetti (pronounced chi-ke-tee and also spelled cicheti in Venetian dialect)
are a way of life in Venice. The word comes from the Latin ciccus, meaning
‘small thing’. Think of these morsels as appetisers, aperitivo, hors d’oeuvres,
or (if you must) compare them to Spanish tapas (which get their name from the
word tapa, meaning ‘to cover’, as these morsels began as a slice of ham draped
over a glass of wine to keep flies out), but cicchetti are undeniably, distinctly
Venetian, with rich history behind them.

Served in bàcari, cicchetti are generally small enough to be eaten in one or two
bites. You can hold them with one hand while the other holds a spritz, the
classic, jewel-toned aperitif of Venice, or an ombra, ‘a shadow’ – a little,
rounded glass of wine, just enough for a few mouthfuls, named after the
shadow of Piazza San Marco’s lean bell tower that wine sellers used to follow
to keep their wine cool.

Eating cicchetti, perhaps leaning on a stone counter or perched by the bridge of

a canal, and hopping from one bàcaro to the next for a bite before wandering
home, has long been an economical way to socialise and is so suited to the
casual Venetian way of life, which is largely on foot. It’s also not only an
evening thing; you’ll find some of the most traditional bàcari hold opening
hours that allow market sellers or goers to stop in for breakfast and last-calls
just before dinner. Do Mori, which has been in operation since 1462, opens at 8
am and closes at 7.30 pm, for example; all they sell is wine and cicchetti to go
with it.

Typical cicchetti include both warm and cold dishes, plenty of seafood – which
the lagoon city is known for – and also meat, eggs, salumi and vegetables.
Creamy whipped cod, known as baccalà mantecato, served on crisp-fried
polenta crostini or slices of baguette, is a must, and just-out-of-the-kitchen, too-
hot-to-hold, juicy polpette di carne (crumbed and fried meatballs) are always
worth lining up for. Take your pick from the counter line-up of deep-fried and
battered calamari, folpetti or boiled baby octopus, crostini layered with punchy
pickles and gorgonzola or prosciutto, large grilled prawns (shrimp) or scampi
served with a puddle of soft white polenta, simple halves of hard-boiled eggs
topped with an anchovy, or boiled artichoke bottoms that you can pick up with
a toothpick.
When I asked some Venetian friends for their favourite cicchetti, I got similar
answers. ‘I start with baccalà mantecato’, said Manuel Bognolo, a crab
fisherman on the Giudecca, whose go-to bàcaro is Cantinone Già Schiavi. My
Renaissance historian friend Rosa Salzberg agreed, though her ideal place for it
is ‘in one of the low-lit bars on the fondamenta in Cannaregio on a cold
evening’. Edoardo Gamba, a Venetian architect, expands his favourite cicchetto
situation because, to him, ‘It coincides almost always with a moment of rest
and ciacoe (chatting), which signals that it is mid-Saturday morning. As this
often happens while towing the shopping from the Rialto market or a visit to
Mascari (a wine shop near the Rialto), my cicchetto has the appearance and
taste of the crostino with gorgonzola and anchovies of Arco, obviously
accompanied with a red ombra.’

My personal favourite cicchetto is sarde in saor: fried fresh sardine fillets

marinated in softly cooked white onions and doused with vinegar, raisins and
pine nuts – preferably prepared the day before serving. It’s a delicious, reviving
sweet-and-sour dish that is relatively unchanged from Venetian recipe books of
the 1300s. Venetians will prepare many things in saor, from grilled slices of
eggplant (aubergine) or wedges of radicchio to fried pumpkin, scampi or other
types of fish. Without refrigeration, the technique of marinating fried food in
vinegar was a well-used method of conservation for Venetian fishermen and
merchants.
Cicchetti, spritz, Prosecco, Bellini
How to make the ideal cicchetti

There is a tongue-in-cheek piece that both made me smile and gave me a

lightbulb moment in Venetian journalist Sandro Brandolisio’s book on cicchetti
of the 1950s and 60s (Cichéti: Ricettario dei cichéti preparati nei ‘Bàcari’
veneziani negli anni ’50–’60), where he describes the important tips for making
cicchetti from the point of view of the bàcaro host: make them salty, make
them spicy or make them hard to swallow, so you entice customers to drink
more wine.

The classic goto (a small tumbler that holds about 125 ml/4 fl oz/½ cup of
liquid), or ombra (glass of wine) in a Venetian wine bar is much smaller than a
standard glass, and they are cheap too, as are the cicchetti, which usually range
from 1–2 euro each. A crostino with gorgonzola, writes Brandolisio,
guarantees at least three drinks!

The lightbulb moment was that thanks to these enterprising hosts in the 1950s,
some of the most classic cicchetti that you will be guaranteed to find today
include a crostino smeared with gorgonzola, or anything with an anchovy on it,
especially half a boiled egg. Boiled eggs in general are a must, and if you’ve
ever tried to eat a hard-boiled egg without washing it down with something
after, you’ll see why things that are hard to swallow without a drink are a
classic type of cicchetto. Think polpette of all kinds and boiled new baby
potatoes, too. One of my favourite bàcari serves simple roasted potatoes,
strung on a skewer, heavy on the salt. They’re moreish and they do require that
you order another ombra afterwards.

I would add that because eating cicchetti usually involves standing rather than
sitting, and perhaps balancing a plate on the edge of a canal with one hand
holding a drink, you need to ensure that you only need one hand to eat with.
So, consider serving your cicchetti on a stick, such as a skewer or a toothpick.
It used to be that large plates, platters, or even pots were placed directly on the
counter and customers would use a toothpick to fish out the morsels, be it a
baby octopus or artichoke bottoms. Toothpicks are a great way to ensure that
nothing slides off too, especially, say, atop an egg. Otherwise, be aware to craft
your cicchetti with enough of something to help things stick – think
mayonnaise or a soft cheese (gorgonzola ticks all the boxes, or ricotta or
mascarpone for something more delicate) – whatever will ensure that when
lifting the cicchetto to your mouth the topping will not tumble.

Opposite are some of the most classic cicchetti that make up part of the
offerings you can find in Venice. They are so simple to assemble they don’t
really need a recipe, but they shouldn’t be missing from a great cicchetti
spread. Serve these combinations on a crostino of your choice – toasted or
untoasted slices of bread or baguette, or rectangles of fried polenta – or even
inside a small bun, like the perfect mortadella panini they do at Al Mercà.
Remember to insert a toothpick in the round things that may roll off.
- Gorgonzola with an anchovy
- Half a boiled egg with an anchovy
- Gorgonzola with half a juicy fig
- A slice of prosciutto, a ball of melon and a torn piece of buffalo mozzarella
or burrata, or blob of ricotta
- A halved cherry tomato, a paper-thin slice of lardo and ricotta
- A slice (or thick wedge) of mortadella and a pickled long, green pepper
- A slice of Asiago with a smear of mostarda (spicy, nose-tingling fruit
compote – try chutney instead)
- Prosciutto cotto or ham with black olive pâté
- Marinated eggplants (aubergines) with mozzarella
- A slice of salame with giardiniera pickles
- Ricotta with semi-sundried tomatoes
- Grilled sausage on polenta
- Cheese, of any kind, but especially aged ones such as large chunks of
parmesan, pecorino or provolone piccante
A water-lapped door
The Rio della Misericordia in Cannaregio
Baccalà versus stockfish and the
shipwreck discovery of a Venetian
staple

BACCALÀ IS A POPULAR, traditional ingredient found on tables all over

the Italian peninsula, although it originally comes from Norway. The Italian
term baccalà usually refers to fillets of Atlantic cod (and sometimes Pacific
cod) preserved under salt with or without the additional process of drying,
while Atlantic cod that has only been air-dried without salt is known as
stoccafisso, stockfish – the latter is only produced on Lofoten archipelago in
Norway still today and is one of the most ancient forms of preserved fish. The
Venetians, however, confusingly, call the dried, unsalted stockfish baccalà. The
confusion might be explained with some etymology: stoccafisso, or stockfish,
comes from the Middle Dutch stoc, ‘stick’, and visch, ‘fish’, referring to the
wooden frames where the cod is dried, while baccalà comes via the Spanish
(who lent some of their vocabulary to the Serenissima while they were in
control of a large part of not-faraway Lombardy from 1535 to 1707) from the
Latin baculus, or ‘stick’.

Baccalà is a protagonist in Venetian cuisine. How this dried delicacy came to

the lagoon from the polar north is an incredible story, and one of my favourites
in Venetian food history. Carla Coco in her book Venezia in Cucina (2007) tells
it as a riveting tale of shipwreck and adventure after Venetian captain Piero
Querini’s planned trip to Bruges, in Flanders, goes terribly wrong.

It is 3rd February, 1432, ten months after setting sail from Crete with a ship full
of Malvasia, cypress wood, pepper, ginger and cotton. After living off rancid
cheese and panbiscotto (hardy crackers produced in the communal ovens of the
Serenissima), Querini finds himself and what is left of his freezing, starving
crew on the Norwegian island of Røst on the archipelago of Lofoten, where
they turn to a diet of limpets foraged off rocks for a month until they are saved
by local fishermen (of the sixty-eight sailors that set sail, eleven, including
Querini, are left, adds Giampero Rorato in Origini e Storia della Cucina
Veneziana). They spend more than 100 days on the island being taken care of
and waiting for the warmer weather. Querini describes this time as like being
on the ‘sphere of paradise’, quite likely for the habits of the local women who
freely go nude to the saunas, which he recounts enthusiastically.

During this time Querini also takes many notes of the techniques of conserving
cod – stocfisi, he calls the fish – it is dried in the wind and sun without salt,
becoming as hard as wood. ‘When they want to eat them, they beat them with
the flat side of an axe until they are frayed, like nerves, then they add butter
and spices to add flavour.’ He recounts, too, how the stockfish is used to barter
other goods, from iron to legumes, in place of money. Before heading back to
Venice he leaves his island saviours with a set of six Venetian silver cups,
spoons and forks (the latter of which was extremely rare at the time) and, in
return, is given a focaccia, three large loaves of rye bread and sixty stockfish,
which are used to barter other goods on their long journey home. They finally
return to Venice on 24th January, 1433.

Coco points out that although Querini doesn’t ever mention it in his
documentation of his journey, we might assume that some of those sixty
stockfish must have arrived safely in Venice with him. But for the lagoon city,
rich with fresh seafood, it takes at least another century before stockfish
appears in regular registers noted by the church, when the appearance of a
well-conserved, readily available ingredient like stockfish would have been the
ideal candidate for lean-eating days (every Friday, plus Lent and other holy
days, a total of around 150 days where eating meat was prohibited). In fact, one
of the very first recipes for stockfish to appear in Italy was in Bartolomeo
Scappi’s Opera from 1570. The chef to Pope Pius IV and Pope Pius V, he
describes the beating of merluccie secche (dried cod) to tenderise it, and long
soaking before cooking in a stew with onions and spices (pepper, cinnamon
and cloves are mentioned), or frying pieces dusted in flour and serving with a
bitter orange sauce.

Today, stockfish is usually sold whole, minus the head, and being completely
dried it is as hard as a rock (more on that in a moment), while salted baccalà
comes already cut into fillets, and both need plenty of time soaking in fresh
water to become tender (in the case of stockfish) and palatable (as with salted
baccalà) before use.

As stockfish is incredibly hard and sold whole, it is not easy to prepare at home
– and it is also expensive considering the drying process reduces the fish by 80
per cent of its original weight; it fetches prices nearly double that of a good T-
bone steak for the highest-quality stockfish, so you do not want to waste any of
it! One trick to its preparation in the Veneto is that it is beaten to tenderise it a
little to cut down on soaking time. There is an ancient, dedicated spot for
beating baccalà on two short stone columns by the Ponte alle Guglie where,
today, you will find a gondola parked. You need a few people to help do it; one
would sit on a chair to the side and hold the fish over the column, while two
others, the ‘bati baccalà’, or ‘baccalà beaters’, standing, would take turns
beating it with a huge wooden mallet. Sometimes this was done on the marble
fountains found in various campi. Elizabeth David, in her book Italian Food,
published in 1954, writes, ‘The bashing of the baccalà along the canals and in
the marketplace is a familiar sight.’ Later, mechanical beating, known as
battitura della baccalà, could do this more quickly and in larger quantities.

Why all the energy to do this? It can take 7–12 days of soaking, changing the
water every 8 hours, to revive and tenderise the fish, and the smell can become
quite strong even when changing the water frequently – ideally, you want to
keep it in the fridge as you do this, which involves finding space as well as the
right container to keep it all submerged. In Italy, you can ask your trusted
delicatessen to soak it for you (they have special basins with constant running
cold water for this) so you only need to order it and pick it up a week later,
ready to cook, which is ideal. You can also use pre-soaked salted cod, but be
aware that it has a significantly different flavour and texture than stockfish and
is not the same thing, so is not always exactly interchangeable in recipes. In
Venice, the place to visit is the Rialto market, where you can buy it from any of
the fishmongers, already soaked, or the old-school neighbourhood shop
Gastronomia Ortis in the Castello district, where they still soak baccalà in
wooden tinozze, barrels, next to a stack of Coca-Cola bottles. (See a list of
places to find stockfish and baccalà internationally.)
Whipped cod

Baccalà mantecato

YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT Venetian cicchetti without mentioning

baccalà mantecato. Dried cod, soaked, poached and whipped into an elegant
mousse, spread on a slice of baguette or, more traditionally, grilled polenta, it’s
an obligatory taste of Venice. In The Oxford Companion to Italian Food,
Gillian Riley compares it to France’s brandade de morue, but adds, ‘Patriots
and purists see the Venetian recipe as superior in every way.’

Ready-made baccalà mantecato has become easily available and even the
fishmongers in the Rialto market sell it vacuum-packed, ready to take home
and spread onto crostini. One wonders if Venetians bother making this at home
anymore, but this is actually quite an easy preparation, especially with pre-
soaked cod ordered from the deli (see Baccalà versus stockfish and the
shipwreck discovery of a Venetian staple). Like all good but very simple
recipes, you need the right ingredients. To start with, you need the right fish:
stockfish, not salted cod but the dried, unsalted kind.

The key to making this dish is in the Italian verb, mantecare, which comes
from the Spanish word for butter and means ‘to cream’. In fact, the technique
for making a successful baccalà mantecato is much like that for making
mayonnaise: a dribble of olive oil at a time with one hand, while the other beats
like mad with a wooden spoon. Recipes from Venetian Jewish kitchens might
add some milk to the poaching liquid, which adds to the creaminess.

Makes approx. 500–600 g

(1 lb 2 oz–1 lb 5 oz/2 cups)

700 g (1 lb 9 oz) pre-soaked baccalà (unsalted dried stockfish)

2 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) extra-virgin olive oil
white pepper, to taste
sliced baguette or grilled white polenta, to serve
Place the soaked baccalà in a large saucepan with the garlic and bay leaf and
cover with cold water. Add a good pinch of salt (please be careful about this if
using salted cod, though; you may prefer to wait until the end to add salt to
taste). Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the fish flakes
easily (test a corner of the fish with a fork). Drain the fish, reserving a little of
the water for later. Remove the garlic cloves (if you like you can add these to
the baccalà) and bay leaf, and carefully remove and discard the skin and any
large bones – it will be very hot.

Break the fish into pieces and place in a bowl (or your mixer fitted with the
balloon whisk attachment, although note that using a food processor will result
in a different, creamier consistency – purists will shake their heads at the
thought of a metal blade doing the work). Then, while the fish is still quite
warm, begin whipping or pounding to ‘cream’ the fish with a wooden spoon.
At the same time, add the olive oil in a thin, slow drizzle, along with a splash
of the still-hot cooking liquid as needed, and continue whipping energetically
until you have a compact but creamy mousse-like consistency, with some
larger pieces here and there.

You may need a little more olive oil, or you may find you don’t need all of it,
and of course the cooking water will help too if the mixture is too dry or too
dense (in some parts of the Veneto a splash of milk might be added). This all
depends on the texture and quality of the stockfish and how long it was soaked
for prior to cooking.

Stockfish (as opposed to salted baccalà) is surprisingly delicate. Season to taste

with salt and white pepper and let it cool to room temperature, then serve on
thick slices of baguette or grilled white polenta, or try it as a stuffing for fried
zucchini (courgette) flowers.

NOTE If you cannot get pre-soaked dried stockfish or ask your local delicatessen to do it, you have two
options: you could substitute with salted baccalà which, although not quite the same, needs to be soaked
to remove the excess salt; cover with fresh water and keep in the fridge for 48–72 hours, changing the
water every 8 hours before using. I recommend tasting a small piece to decide if it is ready. Be aware that
the tail end/thinner parts of the fish will be saltier than the thicker parts. Otherwise, you can soak the
stockfish yourself. To do this you need to find a container large enough to fit the whole stockfish in your
fridge, ideally with a lid to keep odours at bay. Change the water after the first 2 hours. Then it takes a
further 7–12 days of soaking, changing the water twice a day at least. Pounding the fish with a meat
pounder or wooden mallet can help to tenderise it, and you may need to do this to separate the fish into
pieces to make it fit conveniently. Some suggest boiling for 10 minutes (the limitation here is the size of
your pot and the length of the fish) after an initial 1-hour soak and a good beating with a mallet to soften
it enough to cut, then soaking as described. What you are looking for is complete rehydration of the fish.
It should be firm but not rock hard; you will be able to cut it fairly easily and it should no longer have a
woody appearance.

Those who like it with a kick might like to stir in some finely chopped raw garlic at the end of this recipe.
You may also like to add some chopped parsley and freshly grated nutmeg to serve.
How not to stir polenta

IF THE IDEA OF MAKING POLENTA standing at the stove is scaring you

off doing it, don’t worry. There is instant polenta, of course, but if you’d rather
not go there (I wouldn’t), there are some shortcuts. Contrary to popular belief,
you do not need to stir the entire cooking time. The thick coating that forms on
the bottom of the pot as you’re stirring will protect the rest of the polenta and
keep it smooth, which means you can actually walk away from the stove a little
bit here and there and come back and everything will be just as you left it.

In her Classic Food of Northern Italy, Milan-born Anna Del Conte, who is
considered the doyenne of Italian food writing (and is, at the time of writing,
ninety-six years of age!) dares to suggest that cooking polenta from cold water
instead of the usual boiling water method is much easier – there is ‘no risk of
lumps, and the final result is just as good’. She points out that it is only because
of tradition that Italians still cook polenta by adding the cornmeal to boiling
water. ‘In country kitchens of the sixteenth century, the water was always
boiling in the paiolo (copper pot) hanging over the open fire, ready for the
cornmeal to be added. When the open fire was replaced by gas or electricity,
the ritual was too deeply ingrained for anyone to dream of suggesting there
might be an easier way.’ It is a revolutionary thought and so, with that blessing,
I would like to recommend some unorthodox tips on cooking polenta.

Maria Speck in Simply Ancient Grains (2016) has an excellent shortcut where
you soak dry polenta in boiling water. Cover completely with plastic wrap
(make sure it is touching the surface of the polenta so a skin doesn’t form) and
leave for at least 8–12 hours (even up to 2 days in the fridge). Then, when
ready to cook, add water to loosen, bring it to a simmer and cook while stirring
for just 10–12 minutes and it’s ready. Anna Del Conte likes to make her
polenta in a pressure cooker, which only takes 20 minutes, but she has another
low-maintenance technique that she calls polenta senza bastone (polenta
without the wooden stick). After an initial 5 minutes of stirring the polenta on
the stovetop, she transfers it to a buttered overproof dish and bakes it, covered
with buttered foil, for 1 hour. While the top retains a crust (much like the
protective crust that forms around the pot during regular stovetop cooking), it
protects the soft polenta underneath.
Polenta, two ways

Polenta in due modi

USE THIS RECIPE FOR either a pillowy, creamy bed of polenta or – ideal if
you have leftover polenta – crostini, which are perfect for grilling or frying and
using in place of bread for cicchetti. Creamy white polenta is often preferred
with seafood but isn’t the rule. You might also find polenta not made with the
usual cornmeal at all, but with buckwheat, or grano saraceno (literally ‘Arabic
grain’). Some modern cicchetti that I’ve had at Bancogiro, where you can sit
on the Grand Canal right near the Rialto, include crostini made with polenta
nera, where the polenta is tinted dramatically with squid ink. If eating creamy
polenta on its own, it is often enriched with butter and cheese too (as the
characters Rosaura and Arlecchino in Goldoni’s play do:) however, this plain
version is more versatile for different dishes and for turning leftovers into
crostini. I supply the traditional method for cooking polenta here, but if you are
interested in learning about some revolutionary shortcuts, see ‘How not to stir
polenta’.

Makes 6–12 serves of soft polenta, or 12–24 crostini

1 teaspoon salt
250 g (9 oz/1½ cups) polenta (cornmeal, preferably fine-ground ‘fioretto’
polenta)

Place 1 litre (34 fl oz/4 cups) water and the salt in a heavy bottomed pot. Pour
the polenta a pioggia, ‘like rain’, into the pot, and bring to a simmer (I know
this is unusual; most recipes call for adding polenta to boiling water and
whisking briskly to avoid lumps, but read the ‘How not to stir polenta’
section).

Keep the heat on low to avoid big bubbles of polenta splashing on you, and stir
regularly – not vigorously; you can do it slowly and you can walk away here
and there as you do something else in the kitchen – with a wooden spoon for
35–40 minutes. It should develop a protective ‘skin’ on the bottom of the pot,
and it will start pulling away from the sides as it cooks. Taste it – it should feel
creamy in your mouth with no bite or graininess.
If you are making a soft and creamy polenta, especially with white polenta, you
want to keep the consistency in check by adding 250–500 ml (8½– 17 fl oz/1–2
cups) hot water, or more if it is to your liking, to the polenta as you are stirring.
You are looking for a smooth, velvety mixture rather like very creamy mashed
potatoes. When ready, tip the polenta directly onto serving plates or one large
platter if sharing.

If making crostini, you do not need the extra water, but watch the stirring as the
polenta should get quite thick by the time the 40 minutes is up, and it might be
more tiresome to stir (employ someone to take turns with you if you can).

Tip the polenta onto a wooden board or a greased baking tray. You can use
whatever size you have but, for an idea, I like to shape the polenta roughly into
a rectangle about 20 × 31 cm (8 × 12 in) (wet hands help make a nice smooth
top). When completely cool, use a large, sharp knife to cut into crostini – these
could be any size you like. I like a more generous-sized crostino, about 5 × 10
cm (2 × 4 in) to give twelve crostini but, if wanting smaller bites, you could cut
these in half to have twenty-four squares roughly 5 × 5 cm (2 × 2 in). Grill on a
griddle pan on both sides until the surface is crisp and you can see some
browned grill marks, about 5 minutes over a medium–high heat, then top as
you wish.

NOTE On the serving sizes. Polenta is quite filling, and although some people manage to eat quite a lot
of it, I think portion size here is quite a personal (and cultural) thing, much like other staple starchy
comfort foods such as bread, rice and potatoes (I seem to have a bottomless pit for a stomach when it
comes to potatoes). I had to laugh when I was researching recipes and I noticed that many Italian recipes
will tell you that the measurements opposite will serve two people. I honestly think this would be difficult
for four people to get through if this is all they were eating. Anna Del Conte more sensibly suggests 250 g
(9 oz) uncooked polenta will serve six, and I thoroughly agree. If you are planning on serving polenta as a
smaller plate as cicchetti, I think you would even be able to stretch that to 10–12, more in line with the
portions this makes of crostini. The size for crostini simply differs depending on how small or large you
would like to cut it. It will make twelve good-sized crostini, the size that I think of as ideal for a plate of a
few cicchetti. But if you want to make them smaller, say, to go with many more cicchetti, then you can
cut each crostino in half, making twenty-four with this recipe.
Goldoni’s Venice

IT’S HARD TO READ ABOUT Venetian cuisine without being interrupted

by some scene from one of Carlo Goldoni’s (1707–1793) witty theatrical
comedies, which often revolve around the world of the common Venetians,
rather than the aristocrats. Because his works are a mirror of popular Venetian
culture in the eighteenth century, food is naturally a part of that and, in
particular, it’s home cooking and the rustic cuisine of trattorie that enter into
his theatre. One of his characters is a fritole-maker, who fries sweet treats on
the street, in Il Mercato di Malmantile (‘The Malmantile Market’, 1757); you
hear the cries of the marketplace with offerings from the mainland, ‘Who
wants cockerel, who wants hens, who wants to buy fresh ricotta? Who wants
eggs? Pull over here!’ And in Le Donne di Casa Soa (the title basically
translates to ‘The Housewives’, 1755), written in Venetian, a son is sent to buy
sardines from the market to put in saor. There is also talk of poultry of all
kinds, from turkey to pigeon to quail, beef tongue, rice and bread, chocolate,
tea and coffee. But probably the most famous passage about food written by
Goldoni, and one of the few where a recipe is described in full is, lovingly,
about polenta.

In Donna di Garbo (‘The Fashionable Woman’, written in 1743), Rosaura, the

young, humble protagonist (revolutionary for starters that Goldoni centres his
play around a commoner, but also a woman), describes making polenta to
Arlecchino, from lighting the fire to filling up the pot with water to put above
the flames. Once the water begins to ‘murmur’, she’ll take ‘that ingredient, in
powder as beautiful as gold’ and, little by little, it will sink into the pot. She
goes on to recount how they’ll take a spoon each when it’s done, and put the
polenta onto plates where they’ll throw on some butter and grated cheese and
they’ll eat like emperors, ‘And then? And then I’ll prepare a couple of carafes
of sweet, precious wine, and we’ll both enjoy it until it’s all finished. What do
you think, Arlecchino, will that be okay?’

Senti: aspetteremo che tutti sieno a letto, ed anche quel furbo di Brighella,
ch’io non posso vedere; poi pian piano tutti due ce ne anderemo in cucina. Io
già avrò preparato il bisogno; onde bel bello accenderemo il fuoco, empiremo
una bellissima caldaia d’acqua, e la porremo sopra le fiamme. Quando
l’acqua comincierà a mormorare, io prenderò di quell’ingrediente, in polvere
bellissima come l’oro, chiamata farina gialla; e a poco a poco anderò
fondendola nella caldaia, nella quale tu con una sapientissima verga andrai
facendo dei circoli e delle linee. Quando la materia sarà condensata, la
leveremo dal fuoco, e tutti due di concerto, con un cucchiaio per uno, la
faremo passare dalla caldaia ad un piatto. Vi cacceremo poi sopra di mano in
mano un’abbondante porzione di fresco, giallo e delicato butirro, poi
altrettanto grasso, giallo e ben grattato formaggio: e poi? E poi Arlecchino e
Rosaura, uno da una parte, l’altro dall’altra, con una forcina in mano per
cadauno, prenderemo due o tre bocconi in una volta di quella ben condizionata
polenta e ne faremo una mangiata da imperadore; e poi? E poi preparerò un
paio di fiaschi di dolcissimo, preziosissimo vino, e tutti due ce li goderemo sino
all’intiera consumazione. Che ti pare, Arlecchino, anderà bene così?
The arrival of maize: the so-called
‘Turkish’ grain

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT elements of Venetian cooking is the

humble accompaniment to so many – if not all – dishes: polenta. It is, as Anna
Del Conte says in The Classic Food of Northern Italy, ‘a golden thread running
through the cooking of northern Italy’, but this staple is most popular in the
Veneto, which is where it first arrived from Mexico via a brief stop in Seville –
and where the first bag of maize was sold at the Rialto market in 1495.

By 1540, it was planted as an ornamental plant and cultivated in the area. There
is a stunning frescoed ceiling in Palazzo Grimani – a gem of a museum in the
heart of Venice – where, among the water birds and native grapes, figs, olives
and oleander, you can find possibly the earliest depiction of corn in Italy,
painted around 1563 by Camillo Mantovano. The Grimani, who counted Doges
and Cardinals among their family members, owned significant land in the
Venetian countryside of Polesine. This strip of land between the Po and Adige
rivers that today would be in the province of Rovigo was abundant in corn
fields – probably the exact ones described by the Venetian geographer
Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (1554): ‘The
admirable and famous sowing of maize of the western Indies, of which there
have already arrived in Italy in colours of white and red, and above the
Polesine of Rhoigo [Rovigo] and Villa bona [Villa d’Adige] are planted whole
fields of both colours.’ There was an economic crisis after the discovery of the
Americas, and Venice found itself with a little less traffic, so they could
appreciate how useful cornmeal was at keeping hunger at bay.

Although native to the Americas, the first sack of maize arriving after a long
voyage from a distant land was assumed to have come from Turkey (‘As most
good things brought to Venice by sea came from Turkey’, along with other
treasures, from gold to carpets and perfumes). So to this day it is still called
granoturco, Turkish grain, Ada Boni points out in Italian Regional Cooking.

Polenta is used as a filling, soft and creamy porridge of sorts, often enriched
with butter and cheese (as it is in Gaetano Zompini’s etching of the Venetian
polenta street seller in his series Le Arti che Vanno per Via Nella Città di
Venezia), or supporting a rich and full-flavoured meat or fish dish. It can be left
to set and then cut into slices and grilled or fried in both savoury and sweet
treats. It can be made into gnocchi and is also used in sweet puddings, cakes
and biscuits. As Gillian Riley notes in The Oxford Companion to Italian Food,
‘Polenta is comfort food combined with visual pleasure’, and this brings to
mind Pietro Longhi’s eighteenth-century oil painting La Polenta, which is in
Venice’s Ca’ Rezzonico. Two men are seated at a table, while the focus is on
two voluptuous, red-faced (presumably from standing over the fire for the good
part of an hour) women, one holding the bastone, or long wooden stick used
for stirring polenta, the other pouring the polenta out of the paiolo (copper pot)
directly onto the white tablecloth. One of the men is staring adoringly at the
polenta.

In Venice, also popular is a delicate white polenta. A white variety of corn

known as biancoperla, with aptly named pearly white kernels on long, elegant
tapered cobs, is grown exclusively in eastern Veneto between Treviso, Venice,
Padova and Rovigo by relatively few producers, and is today a Slow Food
presidium – in other words, it is considered a native product with important
cultural significance worth protecting. Even in the sixteenth century there were
accounts of white corn grown in the region, and it was already considered
prestigious, reserved for nobility. It had its peak in the nineteenth century but,
according to the Slow Food Foundation, after the Second World War a decline
in popularity began as higher-yielding hybrid corn varieties from America took
the place of biancoperla in the fields until it was almost extinct. It is usually
made as a very, very soft polenta, served in a perfectly creamy white puddle
often paired with seafood such as fried moeche (soft-shell crabs), grilled
prawns (shrimp) or fried schie, tiny Venetian grey prawns that are eaten whole.
Vicenza-style baccalà

Baccalà alla Vicentina

THIS DISH, AS YOU MAY be able to tell from its name, comes from the
neighbouring city of Vicenza (which became part of La Serenissima in the
fifteenth century), about 80 km (50 miles) west of the Venetian lagoon. This
careful preparation with a list of punchy ingredients is often displayed in
Venetian bàcari next to the understated, elegant baccalà mantecato and I have
to admit I cannot resist either and usually order both cicchetti. It is such a
revered dish (Ada Boni calls it ‘one of the finest of all Venetian dishes’) that
there is a confraternity dedicated to it that dates to 1987 and, naturally, a
codified recipe – this one that I recount opposite – to ensure that the 400-year-
old tradition is respected. Saying that, there is an interesting recipe in
gastronomes Luigi Carnacina and Luigi Veronelli’s Cucina Rustica Regionale
from 1974 for Baccalà alla Vicentina, which includes the additions of
cinnamon, garlic and white wine – and the whole thing is cooked in double the
quantity of milk called for in the codified recipe by the Venerabile
Confraternità del Bacalà alla Vicentina (yes, the one ‘c’ is intentional, as it is
the dialect spelling).

This is typically made with the revived cod pieces tightly and neatly packed
into a terracotta dish placed over a low fire – imagine in the low and slow-
dying heat of a wood-fired cooking range – for 4½ hours. But I find in a
modern kitchen this length of cooking is difficult to maintain without drying
out the ingredients (according to an old saying, baccalà is one of the three
foods that gets harder as it cooks, along with liver and eggs). If you don’t have
a terracotta pot for cooking in, which gives a very unique flavour to the whole
dish, try this in a cast-iron casserole dish or something with a heavy bottom
and a tight-fitting lid. I very much like leftovers the next day when the flavours
have developed – you can add a splash of milk or water to warm it up; it is at
its best warm.
Serves 6–8

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) pre-soaked baccalà (unsalted dried stockfish; see Note)

2 tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
2–3 salted preserved anchovies or sardines, or anchovies preserved in oil
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) extra-virgin olive oil
1 white onion, sliced
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) full-cream (whole) milk
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
polenta crostini or soft polenta, to serve

Remove the skin and bones of the stockfish and cut into pieces. If you have
difficulty doing this, I find poaching the fish for 2–3 minutes in water makes it
much easier. Dust the pieces in the flour.

Prepare the anchovies (or sardines) as described in the note, then chop finely.
With about 60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) of the olive oil, gently cook the onion over a
low heat in a terracotta or heavy bottomed (such as cast iron) casserole dish
until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the prepared sardines, stir through and
continue cooking for a further minute, then sprinkle over the parsley.

Add the pieces of floured cod, distributing evenly among the onion mixture,
and cover with the rest of the ingredients, including a good pinch of salt and
some freshly ground pepper. The fish should be submerged in liquid; if not, top
up with a little milk. Cook, covered, on the lowest heat possible, barely
simmering, until the milk is absorbed and the fish is softer and flaking, about
1½ hours. You aren’t supposed to stir this dish at all according to the codified
recipe, but do check every now and then that the heat isn’t too high and nothing
is sticking on the bottom. Transfer to a nice bowl and break up the larger pieces
of fish, scooping out the creamy onion mixture from the saucepan. Serve on
slices of grilled yellow polenta crostini as cicchetti, or over soft polenta as a
warming, hearty meal – this dish is not usually served with sides.

NOTE Salted sardines are used in the original recipe, but if you have trouble getting these, salted
anchovies are similar – these are both fleshier than the more common preserved anchovies in oil and
require a tiny bit more effort to prepare for cooking. First, you need to rinse off the excess salt then soak
for 15 minutes in fresh water. Open the fish in half lengthways, starting from the tail end, and remove the
spine as you go. If you cannot get stockfish for this recipe, you can try this with salted cod, but be aware
it is a drastic change to the codified recipe! It will work though, and it is still delicious. You will have a
meatier consistency and the oil may not absorb as much as it seems to do with stockfish, so you may not
need as much.
Sweet-and-sour fried sardines

Sarde in saor

MY FAVOURITE OF ALL of Venice’s cicchetti is also among the most

classic on offer at any bàcaro and is one of the traditional dishes that Venetians
take on their boats with them, along with Bovoletti and roast duck for the Festa
del Redentore, a joyful festival held on the third Sunday of July that celebrates
the end of the Plague of 1576.

Preparing food in saor, the technique of marinating fried food in vinegar and
other ingredients, was a favourite Venetian way of conserving food for long
trips (Venetian gastronome and actor Giuseppe Maffioli called it cibo dei
marinai, sailor’s food) and it can be likened to Portuguese escabeche and
Japanese nanbanzuke. Although sardines are Venice’s most popular ingredient
to prepare in saor, you can also find it with scampi, sole, plump prawns
(shrimp), freshwater fish such as carp and trout, chicken, or vegetables such as
radicchio. Because it is a dish that lends itself well to being prepared in
advance, in saor is a preparation that Ines de Benedetti in her Italian Jewish
cookbook Poesia Nascosta: Le ricette della cucina tradizionale ebraica
italiana (2013) writes ‘was never missing on Saturdays in the homes of good
Jews’. Venice’s Jewish quarter is where you can find fried eggplant (aubergine)
or pumpkin in saor, with finely chopped mint.

The recipe for sarde in saor can be traced to the 1300s in one of Italy’s earliest-
known cookbooks, the Libro per Cuoco by the so-called anonimo veneziano,
the ‘anonymous Venetian’. It calls for sliced white onions cooked in oil and
vinegar topping fried sardines, kept in a terracotta dish. Although the recipe
hasn’t changed much since then, there are always variations based on personal
preferences and family traditions. My friend Valeria Necchio makes hers
without ‘much adornment’, as she says in her cookbook, Veneto, but with a
touch of sugar together with the vinegar. Another friend of mine makes it with
slices of lemon instead of vinegar and without the raisins or pine nuts. At the
well-known bàcaro Al Mascaron, the dish has the addition of fresh bay leaves,
coriander seeds and white, pink and black pepper – and they do a version with
veal liver too, which has a touch of fresh ginger in it. In Mariù Salvatori de
Zuliani’s classic Venetian cookbook A Tola Co I Nostri Veci, she supplies two
recipes, one with a marinade of onions, vinegar and sugar, the other with the
addition of sultanas, pine nuts and cinnamon. She notes that sultanas and pine
nuts are usually added in the winter, while the summer version doesn’t need
them. And sometimes – for those who truly love the sweet part of sweet-and-
sour – you’ll even find it with the addition of candied citron.
Serves 4 as a light lunch, or makes 12 cicchetti

12 fresh sardines, cleaned, heads and backbones removed, butterflied

1½ tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour, or enough for dusting
vegetable oil, for frying
40 g (1½ oz/⅓ cup) raisins
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) white wine, or water
1 large white onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) white-wine vinegar
pinch of ground cloves (optional)
1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds, crushed (optional)
pinch of sugar (optional)
1½ tablespoons pine nuts
fresh or toasted sliced baguette or grilled polenta, to serve

Dust the sardine fillets in the flour and shallow-fry in oil for 1 minute each side
over a medium–high heat until golden and crisp. Season with salt and set aside
on some kitchen paper to drain until needed.

Soak the raisins in the white wine for 15 minutes to soften them. Meanwhile,
cook the onion gently in a frying pan with the olive oil just until it is soft and
transparent, about 10 minutes on a low heat, then add the vinegar, the wine
from the raisins (set the raisins aside), some freshly ground pepper and the
spices, if using. Let it simmer gently for about 10 minutes, then remove from
the heat. Taste the mixture; if it is too sharp, stir in a pinch of sugar.

In a small terrine or deep dish, place a layer of sardines, top them with some of
the onions, some of the raisins and the pine nuts, and continue layering until
the sardines are used up, then top with a layer of onions, raisins and pine nuts,
and finish with the rest of the vinegar sauce poured over the top. Cover and
allow to marinate for at least 24 hours in the fridge before serving. This keeps
well in the fridge for up to 1 week.

These are best eaten at room temperature, removing from the fridge an hour
before you want to enjoy them. Serve the sardines on slices of toasted or fresh
baguette, or grilled polenta.
Sweet-and-sour radicchio

Radicchio in saor

THIS IS A WONDERFUL VEGETARIAN version of Sarde in saor

(opposite) using one of the Veneto’s best vegetables – radicchio. There are
several types, but I like the mildly bitter Treviso variety (from the eponymous
town north of Venice) for this recipe with its long, oblong shape in the early-
harvest version. There is also the elegant late-harvest Treviso, which has long,
curled, tentacle-like leaves and makes a striking-looking dish, but if you can
only get Chioggia, the round one from just south of Venice, it will work fine
too. Like all in saor preparation, this is best done the day before to allow the
flavours to mingle.

Makes 8 cicchetti

1 white onion, thinly sliced

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) white wine
2 radicchio di Treviso heads, quartered lengthways
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) white-wine vinegar
1 heaped tablespoon raisins, soaked in white wine or water

In a wide, shallow frying pan, cook the onion gently in the olive oil over a
low–medium heat with a pinch of salt, about 5 minutes. Initially, you want to
keep the onion soft and pale, almost transparent. As soon as there is any danger
of colouring, douse the pan with white wine, then you can turn the heat up and
let the wine bubble furiously for a few minutes.

Add the radicchio, followed by the vinegar and the raisins in their wine or
water. Turn the heat to low and let it simmer, stirring and turning occasionally
to keep the radicchio semi-submerged, until tender, about 10 minutes,
depending on how large or tough the leaves are. Remove from the heat, let cool
and then place in an airtight container in the fridge overnight to marinate. Serve
at room temperature the next day.
Artichoke bottoms

Fondi di articiocchi

YOU WILL COME ACROSS these in the Rialto market: perfectly trimmed,
round, pale grey-green discs swimming in a bucket of water, ready to take
home and be cooked with garlic and stock and eaten with a glass of wine. Or
you might be lost, wandering the dark alleyways near the market and come
across open doors revealing someone peeling crates and crates of artichokes
directly onto the terrazzo floor, more or less just as humanist and long-time
Venetian resident Giacomo Castelvetro (1546–1616) described in his letters. Or
perhaps you’ve stumbled into a classic bàcaro like Do Mori with its dark wood
interior, copper pots on the ceiling and old-school cicchetti on display and
there’ll be a plate of these humble-looking medallions of artichoke bottoms
with a toothpick through them and you’ll know you could only be in Venice.

Makes 6 cicchetti

6 globe artichokes
1 lemon, halved
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil
1 garlic clove
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) vegetable stock, or white wine
white pepper, to taste
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped

Prepare a bowl of cold water, squeeze half a lemon into it and then leave the
lemon in the water.

Peel off the outer leaves of the artichoke until they become pale and very
tender. Holding the stem, cut the artichoke about 1 cm (½ in) from the base.
Rub the cut part of the base with the other lemon half to prevent it from
oxidising. Trim the base of any green parts or extra little leaves and scoop out
the fluffy choke with a teaspoon. Place the artichoke bottom into the bowl of
lemon water and continue with the rest of the artichokes.
Pour the olive oil into a saucepan and, over a low–medium heat, add the whole
garlic clove and let it infuse the oil gently for a minute or so without letting it
brown. Add the artichokes to the garlic oil and let them sizzle a moment, then
follow with the stock. Add a pinch of salt and some white pepper and let it
simmer for 15–20 minutes, or until the artichoke bottoms are very tender.
Garnish with parsley and some of the cooking liquid.
Castraure, lagoon artichokes from
the island of Sant’Erasmo

VENICE’S HIGHLY PRIZEDcastraure are nothing more than the first new
baby artichokes of the Violetto variety (named for its violet colour), pruned or
‘castrated’ (as their name might tell you) from the top of the plant in April so
that the rest of the plant will efficiently grow more and larger artichokes
(known as botoli) later in the season, which continues until June. These little
gems, so sweet and tender, are eaten simply – raw, with the leaves dipped in
olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper, akin to Tuscany’s pinzimonio, sliced
thinly in salad or deep-fried in batter, for example. You can more easily find
the larger botoli, which might be served as cicchetti, simply boiled and served
with olive oil, salt and pepper, at their simplest, or with the addition of garlic,
parsley and vinegar.

They are mostly grown on the island of Sant’Erasmo, the largest in the lagoon
after Venice itself. It has long been known as Venice’s ‘vegetable patch’; even
Francesco Sansovino in his Venetia, Citta Nobilissima et Singolare, written in
1581, describes it as full of gardens and vineyards, abundant in herbs and fruit.
You can find a handful of producers scattered around the lagoon’s islands,
including Mazzorbo, Vignole and Lio Piccolo, too. It is the sandy, saline soil
that gets credit for creating such exquisitely sweet and uniquely Venetian
produce – once it was fertilised with scoasse, the Venetian word for rubbish, or
‘crab and other shell debris’, writes Gillian Riley in The Oxford Companion of
Italian Food, to contrast the acidity in the soil. But the other thing that makes
these castraure so rare and sought after is their availability – 10, maybe 15
days of harvest and that’s it.
Grilled scampi

Scampi grigliati

SIMPLY GRILLED SHELLFISH is a classic of Venetian cuisine and you

could do this preparation with any large prawns (shrimp) or live canocchie
(mantis shrimp) or other shellfish, such as long cappelunghe (razor clams), and
serve it the same way with this classic Venetian finish of olive oil and finely
minced garlic and parsley, the ‘ancestrale salsina’ or ‘ancestral sauce’, as
Giuseppe Maffioli called it. There is something about scampi in Venice for me,
straight from the fishmongers at the Rialto where they are so fresh and sweet
you could simply eat them raw. There is not much else you need to do to them
except ensure you have a good pot of polenta ready at hand.

Serves 4

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
2–3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 fresh, whole scampi
polenta or crostini, to serve

Combine the garlic, parsley and olive oil in a small bowl and set aside.

With a sharp, heavy knife, cut the whole scampi lengthways directly down the
middle to split them in half.

Get a griddle pan ready over a high heat. When it is very hot, place the scampi,
cut-side down first, and sear, turning once, for a total of no more than 60
seconds.

Place on a plate and immediately scatter over the herby, garlicky olive oil.
Serve with warm, creamy polenta, or crostini.
NOTE I also love serving these scampi on a platter together with about a dozen razor clams, which are
known as cappelunghe in Venetian dialect and are found readily in the Rialto market when in season. You
will need to purge the razor clams and clean them of their sand. Sandro Brandolisio in his book on
cicchetti in the 1950s and 60s describes going down the canal to get a bucket of water to purge the
cappelunghe in – today, you would be better off using tap water with sea salt added to it. I go with 35 g
(1¼ oz) salt per litre (34 fl oz/4 cups) water, which is the same salinity as seawater. Place the shells in a
wide, shallow dish, such as a baking dish, so they don’t have to go to much effort to open up, and cover
with the water. Leave them to purge for an hour or so. Rinse them well in fresh water and they are ready
to be steamed open with half a glass of wine in a very hot pan and served the same way as the scampi. I
like to serve scampi and any shellfish with all their shells on. Halving the scampi helps you eat them with
your hands, plucking out the prized meat. But, if you prefer, you can remove the shells before serving. It’s
nowhere near as fun to eat or as pretty to look at though.
Baby octopus with celery

Moscardini col sedano

THIS IS A BRIGHT AND REFRESHING dish, with a delightful crunch of

celery that I just adore with tender octopus. You could add boiled potatoes to
this, or halved fresh cherry tomatoes or marinated black olives. But I do enjoy
the simplicity of this two-ingredient salad. In journalist Sandro Brandolisio’s
charming book, Cichéti (2019), which recounts the typical cicchetti found in
Venice’s bàcari in the 1950s and 60s, the recipes, written in Italian, Venetian
dialect and English, are just a paragraph each and don’t have measurements but
are a description of how to prepare the traditional cicchetti from this period.
This is how I have interpreted his Folpeti col sèano.

Makes 6 cicchetti

3 medium-sized baby octopus (about 500 g/1 lb 2 oz)

2 celery stalks, leaves and all, finely sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of ½ lemon
grilled polenta, to serve

Bring a pot of water (deep enough to cover the octopus) to a rolling boil. Some
like to make the tentacles extra curly; to do this, dip the octopus in the boiling
water up to its tentacles, then pull it out and repeat two or three times until the
tentacles are curled. Immerse them in the boiling water, turn the heat down to a
simmer over a low–medium heat and cook until they are very tender (a fork
should easily pierce through), about 45 minutes. Remove from the water and,
when cool enough to handle, pull the skin off (which can be a little gelatinous).
Rinse, then roughly chop each octopus, separating the tentacles.

Place in a bowl. Add the celery and its leaves with the olive oil, lemon juice
and salt and pepper, adjusting the seasoning to your taste, then toss together.
Serve with grilled polenta.
NOTE The octopus needs to be cleaned before using. If bought frozen, they usually have already been
cleaned. If fresh, you can ask your fishmonger to do this or, to do it at home, simply remove the beak, cut
out the eyes, empty the head and rinse thoroughly.
Octopus in wine

Polpi in tecia

I LOVE THIS SIMPLE PREPARATION for octopus cooked in red wine,

inspired by a recipe from Mariù Salvadori de Zuliani’s book, A Tola Co I
Nostri Veci, which translates to ‘At the table with our elders’. It reminds me of
a recipe that Sandro Brandolisio describes in his book on cicchetti in the 1950s
and 60s for polipetti or moscardini (as these small octopus are known in
Venice) a scotta dito, which means ‘burn your fingers’. A large, piping-hot pot
of moscardini would be placed directly on the counter, and they were eaten
right out of the pot without any condiments, washed down with a glass of wine
to ‘put out the fire in your throat’.

You can serve these on slices of grilled polenta crostini, or just on their own
with a toothpick.

Makes approx. 12 cicchetti

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) baby octopus (about 12)
500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) red wine
pinch of ground cloves
1 bay leaf
1 garlic clove

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Sear the octopus all over and, when they turn
bright pink, about 2 minutes, pour over the red wine, adding enough water to
cover the octopus. Add the cloves, bay leaf and garlic, then cover with a lid and
simmer over a gentle heat until tender, about 45–60 minutes.
Stewed cuttlefish with peas

Seppie con piselli

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS combination of two favourite

Venetian ingredients: cuttlefish and peas. I first ate this ‘seppie in tecia’ on the
island of Torcello while visiting friends Edoardo and Krystina. They took us to
a cheerful self-service trattoria aptly called Taverna Tipica Veneziana set in a
huge garden and, with all our children running around, we had this cuttlefish,
along with sweet prawns (shrimp) in saor, fried calamari and plenty of cold
drinks. It was all just perfect.

Serves 6 as cicchetti, or 2 as a main

400 g (14 oz) whole baby cuttlefish

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil
½ onion, sliced thinly
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) white wine
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) tomato passata (puréed tomatoes)
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 slice prosciutto, finely chopped
100 g (3½ oz) fresh or snap-frozen peas
handful of parsley, very finely chopped

See note for preparing the cuttlefish.

In a wide pan or casserole dish, heat half the olive oil and gently cook the
onion with a pinch of salt over a low heat for about 5 minutes, or until it begins
to soften but not colour. Add the cuttlefish and continue cooking for 1 minute,
then pour over the wine. Turn the heat up to medium and let the wine simmer
and reduce for a few minutes, then add the tomato and about 250 ml (8½ fl
oz/1 cup) water, or to cover, salt and freshly ground pepper, and simmer,
uncovered, until the cuttlefish is very tender, about 35 minutes depending on
how large the cuttlefish are. Meanwhile, in a separate wide, shallow pan, heat
the rest of the olive oil, add the garlic and prosciutto and sizzle gently over a
low heat for a minute or so, then add the peas along with about 250 ml (8½ fl
oz/1 cup) water and turn up to medium heat. Let simmer, uncovered, for about
5 minutes, or until the peas are tender but still bright green. Set aside until the
cuttlefish is ready, then unite the cuttlefish and the peas in one pan and cook for
a minute or two so that they get to know each other. Scatter over the parsley.

NOTE If the cuttlefish are really small, leave them whole, but they should be cleaned if they aren’t
already. It sounds gruesome, but it is quite quick and easy. First, locate the beak (in the middle of the
tentacles) and just pull it out. Cut out the eyes and pull out the innards and small bone from the body
(including carefully removing the ink sac), and pull off the skin, which is like a very thin membrane and
easy to do while you pull the wings off. You should be left with just the white flesh, mostly intact. If the
cuttlefish are frozen, they are often already cleaned, or ask your fishmonger to do this for you. If you buy
them larger, then you can clean them as described and slice into strips. The tentacles can be left in a tuft
or, if they are rather long or large, cut them lengthways and/or in half. You can also use calamari for this,
which are longer in shape and generally have thinner flesh than rounder squid.

If eating as a main, serve with polenta. Leftovers are absolutely delicious, even tossed through pasta or
piled onto crostini, and the whole baby cuttlefish, served cold, make very nice cicchetti just on the end of
a toothpick.
Bovoletti

YOU’LL SEE THESE TINY SNAILS with their brown- and white-spiralled
shells, also called bovoeti, in big trays at the Rialto market, where they’re very
much live and active. They’re land snails, but they’re found near the sea and
make up a favourite Venetian dish – one you’ll find Venetians feasting on at
Christmas Eve or for the summer festival of the Redentore, on long tables
lining the esplanade of the Giudecca, or in their boats while watching
fireworks, along with sarde in saor, stuffed duck and plenty of wine.

Watching the bovoletti crawl over each other at the market one day while in
line for the fishmonger, the elderly woman in front of me ordered a kilo of
them. ‘Mi scusi’, I asked her, how do you prepare them? And she proceeded to
tell me the recipe. First, place them in a pot of lightly salted water for a couple
of hours (oh, and cover it because otherwise they’ll escape). Drain, then wash
them under running water and refill the pot with fresh water, then place over a
low heat. When you see the snails have come out of their shells (again, the lid
is handy so they don’t escape), add salt, turn up the heat and simmer rapidly for
2 minutes and they’re ready. Drain and dress the snails with abundant finely
chopped garlic and parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper. They’re best prepared a
couple of hours in advance so they take on the flavours of the dressing. Serve
them with toothpicks to pull the snails out of their shells and eat them with
polenta.

Ada Boni describes how to purge them in her book Italian Regional Cooking
as so: leave them for 2 days in a wicker basket with a few vine leaves and some
pieces of bread soaked in water, covered to prevent them escaping.
Dressed new potatoes

Patatine condite

SANDRO BRANDOLISIO WRITES THAT potatoes need washing down

with wine (see more on what makes the ideal cicchetti), and that at one point
these boiled potatoes with garlic and parsley were found in every bàcaro in
Venice for this reason – since eating them calls for ordering another round of
ombre. As a potato-lover, I am delighted that this is the case and that you can
still find simply boiled or roasted potatoes, maybe strung together on a skewer,
or on their own pierced with a toothpick, around Venice, such as at All’Antica
Mola. These, together with the boiled eggs (see opposite), as simple as they
may be, are among my favourite cicchetti to order.

Serves 6–8 as cicchetti

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) whole new baby potatoes

1 garlic clove
a few parsley sprigs
2 tablespoons olive oil

Give the potatoes a good brush in a bowl of water if they haven’t already had a
clean, and then place them in a saucepan. Cover with cold water, add a good
pinch or two of salt, then bring to the boil and cook until the tip of a knife or a
fork tine easily enters the centre of the potato, about 15 minutes. In the
meantime, finely chop the garlic and parsley. When the potatoes are cooked,
drain them, then, while hot, toss with the garlic, parsley, olive oil and a
generous pinch of salt. Serve hot or cold.
Boiled eggs, a few ways

Uova sode in vari modi

WHENEVER I SEE BOILED EGGS IN a counter full of cicchetti, whole or

halved and served skewered with a silky anchovy draped over them, or with a
boiled prawn (shrimp), with crunchy fennel or a pickled onion, or even on their
own, I will always order one – or more. Boiled eggs have an important place
culturally and historically too, being that they are so wonderfully portable and
nutritious. They were particularly useful for travellers in a place like maritime
Venice, for pilgrimages, or for those who worked long hours away from home.

Makes 6 cicchetti

3 eggs
2 large prawns (shrimp)
2 anchovies preserved in oil
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
2 thin slices fennel, plus some fronds

Bring a small saucepan filled with at least 3 cm (1¼ in) water to a gentle
simmer over a medium heat. Once simmering, lower in the eggs and cover.
Cook them for 8 minutes for an ever-so-slightly jammy yolk, or leave them for
an extra minute for a harder-set yolk. Remove with a slotted spoon and plunge
the eggs into a bowl of cold water. Let them cool for about 10 minutes. If not
using right away, you can keep whole boiled eggs at this point in the fridge for
up to a week.

To peel the eggs neatly, submerge the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl of water. Tap
them gently repeatedly while moving the egg around to crack the shell all over,
then start picking it off. While it is underwater, the water will get in through the
broken shell and separate the membrane from the whites, which is what will
give you a neat boiled egg. Peel off the shell and pat the egg dry, then continue
with the rest.

Slice the eggs in half lengthways, place on a serving plate and sprinkle with a
pinch of salt.
To prepare the prawns, bring a small saucepan of water to the boil and add the
prawns, whole, and poach them for 1 minute. Remove from the water, pat dry
and, when cool enough to handle, peel off the shell and tail.

Top two of the egg halves with a prawn each. Top another two of the egg
halves with an anchovy fillet each, and top the last two with ½ teaspoon
mayonnaise each and a small slice of fennel, decorating with a tuft of some of
the green fronds. Secure the toppings to the eggs with toothpicks where
needed.

NOTE Older eggs are easier to peel, so if you are hoping to get attractive-looking boiled eggs, buy them
a few days before you would like to serve them. The timing of these perfectly hard-boiled eggs takes into
account that you are using eggs straight from the fridge. If using room-temperature eggs, you can shave
off 1 minute.
To the vaporetto
Ombre at All’Arco
A canal in the Giudecca
Moderni Brioche di tonno affumicato, cren e crema di
carciofi
Modern cicchetti Smoked tuna, horseradish and artichoke buns

Crema di peperone e melanzane grigliate per

francobolli
Roasted capsicum cream and grilled eggplant for
little sandwiches

Tramezzini di gamberetti e rucola

Prawn and rocket sandwiches

Tramezzini di asparagi e uova

Asparagus and egg sandwiches

Crostini con crema di radicchio e noci

Crostini with radicchio and walnut cream

Crostini con sgombro, olive e pinoli

Crostini with mackerel, olives and pine nuts

Branzino marinato al cumino

Cured sea bass with cumin

Tartare di tonno
Tuna tartare

Mostarda di carote con senape e prosciutto

arrosto
Carrot mostarda with mustard and roast ham

Gamberi e lardo
Prawns wrapped in lardo
From osteria to bàcaro: places to eat and drink in
Venice
The importance of selling wine in Venice can be traced back to one simple
need: Venice had everything, but it did not have good drinking water. Water
was expensive, wells were few and wine was an affordable way to quench the
thirst of even the poorest of Venetians. Wine-selling in Venice was so important
that Renaissance wine merchants had their own guild, based in San Silvestro,
close to the Rialto.

In the preface of Osterie a Venezia (1978), Mario Stefani recounts how water
from wells was often contaminated by dead birds, or the presence of sewer rats,
cats and dogs, and how severe laws had been made to ensure people didn’t
purposefully pollute them, such as when the cadaver of a man had been found
in the bottom of a well, murdered and disposed of by his wife and her lover.

The relationship between the people of Venice and wine naturally became
entangled in the serving of food too. In fact, many Venetian food writers point
out that Venetian cuisine – and here I would stress the way Venetian food is
eaten, in particular – without the company of wine would not make much
sense. They go together. The osteria in Venice is still synonymous with a kind
of bar rather than a restaurant as it is in the rest of Italy – a place for people to
gather and socialise over a drink and a nibble, an ever-important reference
point for this pedestrian city. In medieval Venice it functioned as a place
serving food and drink on the ground floor with rooms for accommodation on
the floors above.

In 1347 there were twenty-four osterie in Venice, and still just twenty-three in
the Renaissance (the numbers were strictly regulated), where they were
concentrated around the quarters of San Marco and the Rialto – where you still
find the highest concentration of traditional bàcari. As the centuries went on,
however, the popularity and importance of these social spots was such that it
was hard to stop the rise of osterie – in the early 1900s you could count, in just
San Marco’s quarter, one osteria for every sixty-nine residents and at
Malamocco, on Venice’s Lido, there were seventy-four osterie for its 900
residents – one for every twelve residents. Today, there are about 120,
according to food historian Carla Coco, although they have now become
known as bàcari, the traditional wine bars that have been ‘practising happy
hour for centuries’, as she says.

There are numerous names for similar places that sold wine to suit all tastes
and pockets. Although, of these, just the bàcari still exist, what does remain in
Venice are the street names indicating a magazen or a malvasia was nearby.

Caneva, a bottega that sold wine (in Venice, historically, also salt). Its name
comes from the Latin for cantina, wine cellar.

Furatole, hole-in-the-wall botteghe that sold food such as soups, bread and
fried fish, generally for a poorer clientele. They were not allowed to sell wine.

Bàcaro, a name coined by a gondoliere when describing ‘vino da far baldoria

(bacara in dialect)’ or wine to make merry with. They’ve remained essentially
like the old osterie, not serving a full meal or necessarily having sit-down
tables. Frequented by modest clients who perhaps did not have the time (or the
economic means) to sit down for a full meal and were satisfied with a bite to
eat on the run.

Magazen da vin, a kind of tavern that sold wine to the public (you could even
pawn objects to be paid back in cash and wine, usually bad wine), but
sometimes also secretly functioned as a brothel with rooms out the back.

Malvasia, named for the Greek grapes that supplied the Venetians with a sweet
wine that was particularly appreciated in the lagoon – here, they only sold
imported wines and no food. They had their own guild, separate from the
regular wine merchant’s guild.
Wine from the lagoon

I got up before the sun and, camera in hand, crept down along the eerily quiet
canal lined with the low, candycoloured houses of Burano, a vaporetto ride
across the lagoon from Venice. It was traditionally an island inhabited by
fishermen, so Matteo Bisol, the director of Venissa Tenuta, explained to me as
he showed me around the day before, so the buildings are simpler, smaller and
more rustic than the elegant palazzi in Venice. Indeed, their miniature status
makes them all the more charming and ‘cute’. I later read the fishermen painted
their homes in bright colours so they could spot them from far away –
certainly, in the grey fog of the lagoon in autumn and winter, these rainbow
houses would stand out.

I crossed the wooden bridge that connects Burano island to the island of
Mazzorbo, to head to Venissa, a beautiful resort surrounded on three sides by
water with a Michelin-starred restaurant, rooms above and the walls of an
abandoned monastery enclosing a passionate project – to revive a native
Venetian grape. I found the garden gate open, and went in to find a team of
harvesters already at work picking grapes as the sun began to rise. In 2002,
Matteo Bisol’s father, Gianluca Bisol – a Prosecco producer whose family have
been winemakers in the Valdobbiadene since 1542 – came across an unusual
white grape in a garden on the island of Torcello. It turned out to be the
Dorona, an ancient variety native to Venice that was thought to have been
wiped out by the 1966 flood. Bisol and his family now cultivate a hectare of
Dorona vines inside the Tenuta’s ancient wall, overlooked by the crooked
fourteenth-century bell tower. The garden is shared with a vegetable patch and
fruit trees that cover another hectare, and are tended to by pensioners from
Burano.

The wine made from these grapes is a complex, amber-toned white wine,
which is macerated with skins on for 40 days so it has the body and structure of
a red – an age-old, traditional treatment of lagoon grapes. It is rare. They only
produce 4000 bottles a year and the bottles are decorated with just an
understated gold leaf hand-battered by a Venetian artisan and baked into the
bottle in Murano glass ovens.
It is a curious, thick-skinned golden grape, born in and seemingly tolerant of
the salty clay soil and the occasional flood – in the devastatingly high waters of
November 2019, I saw photographs of the vineyard and entrance to Venissa
submerged under thigh-high seawater, which lasted for several days. It seems
to be a really unusual location to make wine, especially in a place that, along
with spices and sugar, imported and commercialised wine in the Middle Ages
and enjoyed the reputation as the wine capital of the world. Yet, I learned from
my visit to Venissa that there are more than 2000 years of wine-making history
in Venice – on the islands of Sant’Erasmo, Vignole (aptly named after the word
vigna, vineyard) and Torcello, for example – and I discovered that vineyards
are also found even in the heart of Venice.
Harvesting Dorona grapes at Venissa
San Francesco della Vigna in the Castello district is a Franciscan church named
after the vineyard it was built on in 1253. There is still a vineyard there and its
wine is being brought back to life thanks to an association called Laguna nel
Bicchiere (‘Lagoon in the glass’) that are attempting to recover the lagoon’s
grapes and make wines from them. They’ve discovered grapes also from the
Camaldolese convent on the island of San Michele, the city’s cemetery, where
there is Malvasia and Dorona, and from a walled vineyard from the 1500s on
the Giudecca from which they produce a natural red wine. They’ve even made
wines from grapes found in the gardens and pergolas of trattorias and pizzere in
Venice’s narrow streets.

While it is expected that monasteries and convents (which often had walled
gardens) kept some vineyards, even in private palazzi, in Venice, Giampiero
Rorato writes of ancient vines scattered throughout the city too in places as
central as San Moisè, just steps from Piazza San Marco, as well as San
Silvestro, San Benedetto, Sant’Alvisem San Tomà and San Samuele – the last
two are right on the Grand Canal.
Venissa
Smoked tuna, horseradish and artichoke buns

Brioche di tonno affumicato, cren e

crema di carciofi

THIS IS A MEMORABLE combination I had while visiting my long-time

historian friend Rosa in Venice many years ago. After a foggy, late-morning
wander through the maze of laneways from the Zattere to the Rialto market, we
had worked up quite an appetite, helped on by the chill in the air. Luckily the
Rialto is the place that has had the greatest concentration of bàcari and osterie
since the Renaissance – and where you still find some of Venice’s best places
for a quick bite to eat.

We had these delicious, pillowy, miniature brioche buns filled with silky slices
of smoked tuna, a creamy paste of artichokes and a hint of mustard (this bit of
heat is really what makes this) in a little eatery opposite a fish market called
Pronto Pesce that now, unfortunately, no longer exists but was surrounded on
three sides by fishmongers. You could sit at the big windows and watch the
market at its best, fishmongers cleaning squid and oversized seagulls stealing
shimmery sardines straight from the counters when the fishmongers turned
their backs. Here, they served wonderful seafood cicchetti and a restorative,
soulful fish broth: no seafood to be seen, but a flavourful, copper-coloured
liquid tasting of the sea with tomato and sweet spices.

Makes 2

4–6 artichoke heart quarters preserved in oil

squeeze of lemon juice
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 mini brioche buns
1 teaspoon horseradish cream (or hot English mustard), or to taste
4 slices smoked tuna

Drain the artichokes well and then blend them with the lemon juice and olive
oil until you have as smooth or as chunky a paste as you would like. Season
with salt to taste.

Slice the buns in half and warm them in a pan, cut side down, until slightly
toasted and golden. Spread one side of the bun with ½ teaspoon of the
horseradish, followed by a thick layer of artichoke cream, then two slices of
smoked tuna and close the panino with the top. Make the second one the same
way and serve immediately while the bread is still warm.

VARIATIONS You could use any soft bun for these, or even try them with miniature croissants. If you
cannot get smoked tuna, you could use seared fresh tuna, in thin slices, or smoked swordfish or smoked
salmon. For a vegetarian version, substitute the tuna with slices of boiled egg, melted Asiago cheese or
mozzarella. You really need something that tingles your nose with its heat – hot English mustard or even
wasabi would be very good here too.
Roasted capsicum cream and grilled eggplant for little sandwiches

Crema di peperone e melanzane

grigliate per francobolli

FOR WHEN A BULGING TRIANGLE of tramezzino is just a bit too much,

you can find convenient francobolli, ‘stamps’, named for the shape of these
small, flat, square-shaped sandwiches. This combination puts together two
wonderful preparations that, in themselves, can make other cicchetti, paired
with halved boiled eggs or freshly cooked prawns (shrimp), on crostini or
whatever else you can think of.

This roasted capsicum cream makes approximately 175 g (6 oz/1 cup), which
you could also use on baguette or grilled polenta crostini, or as a delicious dip
with grissini. The eggplant (aubergine) recipe, too, will make more than you
need for the francobolli, but this is a preparation that we often have in our
fridge, ready to add to a salad, a sandwich or an antipasto platter. It gets better
as the days go on, thanks to the marinade.

Makes 4

ROASTED CAPSICUM CREAM

1 red capsicum (bell pepper)
75 g (2¾ oz/⅓ cup) mascarpone, or cream cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil
pinch of dried chilli powder, or to taste
1–2 tablespoons grated parmesan

GRILLED MARINATED EGGPLANT

1 medium eggplant (aubergine)
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil

FRANCOBOLLI
2 slices soft sandwich bread, crusts removed
1–1½ tablespoons Roasted capsicum cream (see above)
1 slice Grilled marinated eggplant (see above)

To make the roasted capsicum cream, first roast the entire capsicum, whole,
over a fire ideally (you can do this directly on a gas stovetop hob, sitting the
pepper right over the flame – a pair of tongs helps – or a barbecue). If you
don’t have a fire to cook this over, you can also use a dry, very hot pan (cast
iron is ideal). You want to blacken it all over and, once it looks completely
carbonised (about 20 minutes, or double that if using a pan), place the
capsicum in a bowl or container, cover with a lid or tea towel (dish towel) and
leave for about 10 minutes to sweat. It should be cool enough to handle by then
and you can remove all traces of the burnt skin in a bowl of cool water or under
a gentle, steady stream from the tap. Remove the stem, cut open and scoop out
the seeds. Then place the capsicum in a food processor and blend with the rest
of the ingredients, adding salt to taste. Store in the fridge in an airtight
container for up to 4 days.

Slice the eggplant lengthways into 1 cm (½ in) thick slices. Heat a cast-iron (or
similar) griddle pan over a medium–high heat and, on a dry pan, cook the slices
for about 10 minutes on each side, or until you have nice grill marks and the
eggplant slices are juicy and tender. In the meantime, whisk together the garlic,
parsley and olive oil with a generous pinch of salt. Pour this over the hot
eggplant slices and let them marinate until cool, then, if not using right away,
transfer to a container with all the marinade and keep in the fridge for up to 1
week.

To make the francobolli, spread a tablespoon or so of the roasted capsicum

cream thickly onto a slice of bread, add a slice of the grilled eggplant and top
with a slice of bread. Cut into four small squares for four cicchetti. These are
lovely just as is, or you can also toast them until the bread is golden brown on
both sides – an electric sandwich press is ideal, otherwise use a dry frying pan
and keep a firm weight on the sandwich (press down with a spatula, for
example, or find a slightly-too-small lid and place that on top).
VARIATIONS You can use zucchini (courgette) instead of eggplant. If you like, you can add a splash of
red-wine vinegar to the eggplant marinade, or some fresh herbs such as basil or mint.
Prawn and rocket sandwiches

Tramezzini di gamberetti e rucola

VENETIAN TRAMEZZINI ARE A SIGHT to behold. Quite different from

the classic Turin-style tramezzini, which were invented in 1926 and look more
like English tea sandwiches, the lagoon version is a carefully made work of art
where the bulging domed filling is held in with tightly sealed edges of the
softest, crustless sandwich bread.

Supposedly coined by the poet and politician Gabriele D’Annunzio, the word
tramezzino comes from intramezzo, meaning in between – in fact, a tramezzino
in Venice, which is usually sold as a triangle, not as a full sandwich, is the
perfect bite for in between meals, or as part of an aperitivo in the evening with
a glass of wine. It even makes a delicious breakfast in lieu of the sweet
offerings at pastry shops.

For those passionate about tramezzini, you should make a note to visit these
rather nondescript, humble, very simple cafes that specialise in sandwiches, in
particular the classic Venetian-style tramezzini bursting with more fillings than
you could imagine: Bar ai Nomboli (San Polo), Bar Rialto da Lollo (San Polo),
Bar alla Toletta (Dorsoduro) and Bar Tiziano near the Rialto. I also love the
elegant display of tramezzini at the historic pastry shop Rosa Salva in Campo
Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Marco), where I’m always tempted by their daily
offerings, maybe the one with giardiniera pickles, anchovies and hard-boiled
egg, or the creamy chicken salad on brown bread.

Some favourite fillings you might find here and elsewhere as you wander the
streets of Venice include crab meat with rocket (arugula), pumpkin and
porchetta, smoked beef, asparagus and gorgonzola, prawn (shrimp) and
artichokes, mortadella and provolone cheese, baccalà mantecato and radicchio,
salmon and egg, tuna with tomato and capers, prosciutto and whole boiled eggs
or mushrooms, even very traditional fillings, such as radicchio and sfilacci di
cavallo (horse meat; Bar alla Toletta does this). The key in all of these fillings
is abundant mayonnaise to hold everything together.

Makes 2 sandwiches that could serve 4 as antipasto or as cicchetti

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
150 g (5½ oz) fresh school prawns (shrimp), shelled
1 small garlic clove, finely chopped
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 slices soft sandwich bread, crusts removed; see Note
handful of rocket (arugula), shredded

Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the prawns and
garlic and toss so that the prawns cook on all sides. These small Venetian
prawns take about 1 minute to turn completely opaque and curled. Set aside in
a small bowl to cool. Strain them if necessary, then add 1½–2 tablespoons of
the mayonnaise, or just enough so that they are well coated, then season with
some pepper.

Place the bread on a work surface and spread all the slices right to the edges
with the rest of the mayonnaise. Spoon half of the prawn mixture onto one
slice, concentrating it in the middle of the slice and leaving a border of 1 cm (½
in) all around. Do the same on a second slice. On top of the prawns, place half
of the shredded rocket in another layer, then repeat on the second slice. Top the
rocket with a slice of bread, mayonnaise side down, and when you do this, cup
your hand over the filling, while pushing down on the edges. Your aim is to
‘seal’ the tramezzino on all edges with the mayonnaise while at the same time
having a bulging, filled centre. Keeping this shape, cut the tramezzino into two
triangles. Repeat with the other tramezzino.

NOTE In Italy you can easily find the perfect, very soft tramezzino bread at supermarkets – it comes in
packs, sliced lengthways, so as long as a loaf of bread, no more than 1 cm (½ in) thick and already
crustless. Softness is key in getting the dome shape and well-sealed edges without the bread cracking. If
you don’t have this ideal bread, use any soft sandwich bread (white or wholemeal), but there are a couple
of tricks you can keep up your sleeve to ensure a good shape. One, before you begin, sprinkle the bread
with a tiny amount of water to dampen slightly (if you have a handy plain water spray bottle this works
well) and then use a rolling pin to lightly roll the bread out a little and make it a bit thinner, a bit more
pliable. If not serving the tramezzini right away, keep them in an airtight container so the bread does not
dry out, or covered with a slightly damp tea towel (dish towel) and store in the fridge.
VARIATIONS This classic combination is made with tiny school prawns (shrimp), which can be found
already shelled. You could substitute them with regular prawns, but they will need an extra minute of
cooking.
A canal in Cannaregio
Tramezzini di asparagi e uova
Asparagus and egg sandwiches

Tramezzini di asparagi e uova

IF YOU ASK ME, boiled eggs are the perfect filling for a tramezzino
(pictured); you only need to accompany them with a seasonal vegetable, or
perhaps your favourite salumi or preserved fish, and you have the ideal
sandwich. Asparagus and eggs are a wonderful combination, if anything
because they are traditionally abundant at the exact same time – spring – so it’s
natural to pair them together.

Makes 2 sandwiches that could serve 4 as antipasto or cicchetti

handful of thin asparagus
2 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 slices soft sandwich bread, crusts removed (see Note)

Break off and discard the woody ends then cook the asparagus in boiling water
with a good pinch of salt for 3 minutes, or until they are bright green and
tender (thicker asparagus, even halved, may need a further 2–3 minutes). Set
aside to cool then cut them a little shorter than the length of the bread slices.

In a small bowl, mash the peeled, boiled eggs with a good pinch of salt and 2
teaspoons of the mayonnaise, saving the rest for the bread.

Place the bread on a work surface and spread all the slices right to the edges
with a teaspoon of mayonnaise each. Place a layer of asparagus onto a slice of
bread, leaving a 1 cm (½ in) border all around. Add 2 tablespoons or so of the
egg in the centre on top of the asparagus layer. Cover with a slice of bread,
mayonnaise side down, and when you do this, cup your hand over the filling
while pushing down on the edges. Your aim is to ‘seal’ the tramezzino on all
edges with the mayonnaise while at the same time having a bulging, filled
centre. Keeping this shape, cut the tramezzino into two triangles. Repeat with
the other tramezzino, then serve immediately.
VARIATION If using thick asparagus, you should slice them in half lengthways before proceeding. If
asparagus is not in season, you could consider using another fresh seasonal vegetable – try thinly sliced
radicchio, sliced tomatoes, grilled slices of eggplant (aubergine) or zucchini (courgette). Otherwise,
marinated artichoke hearts are great here too.
Crostini with radicchio and walnut cream

Crostini con crema di radicchio e

noci

THIS DELICIOUS CREAM, much like the Roasted capsicum cream, could
be used for many different cicchetti preparations, for tramezzini or even as a
dip with crunchy vegetables. It’s also delicious stirred through a pasta or
risotto. The lemon juice here helps enhance and preserve that intense colour
that makes radicchio the most beautiful vegetable that exists, so don’t leave it
out. If you don’t have mascarpone, try using thick natural yoghurt (like Greek
yoghurt) or cream cheese, but also stracchino, a creamy, very fresh cheese, or
robiola, from the same cheese family, are wonderful, slightly tangy, creamy
options here. Another cheese you may want to try if you like its strong flavour
is gorgonzola. With the slightly bitter radicchio, it’s a match made in heaven.
You can use pine nuts instead of the walnuts.

Makes enough for about 12–15 crostini

1 small round head of radicchio di Chioggia (otherwise use half)

1 garlic clove, peeled but left whole
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of ½ lemon
2 tablespoons walnuts, chopped, plus more for garnish
60 g (2 oz/4 tablespoons) mascarpone crostini, to serve

Peel off any rough outer leaves of the radicchio and discard (these tend to be
bitter). Chop off the stem and wash the leaves then roughly chop them – no
need to dry them. Place the garlic clove in a wide frying pan with the olive oil
and heat gently, allowing the oil to infuse with the garlic. Don’t let it brown too
much; a few minutes of gentle sizzling should do it. Remove the garlic clove
then add the radicchio, along with the lemon juice and a good pinch of salt.
Toss together over a medium heat until the radicchio begins to wilt, about 3–5
minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool, then blend in a food processor
until smooth. If you like a very smooth cream, add the walnuts to this too, but
if you prefer a bit of texture, leave them out until the very end and simply stir
through. Add the mascarpone and taste for seasoning (you may like an extra
squeeze of lemon or some freshly ground pepper), giving it one final blend to
combine well.

Spread over bread or crostini of your choice (toasted or untoasted baguette

slices, or on grilled polenta), and if you like, top with some chopped walnuts.
Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to 3 days in the fridge.
Radicchio, the flower of winter

FORCED RADICCHIO IS A BEAUTIFUL, extremely versatile salad

vegetable, a star of the favourite produce of the Veneto, along with asparagus.
‘It looks like a fleshy purple flower, as fresh as if it had been specially created
to bring spring to the dinner table in winter’, wrote Ada Boni in her Italian
Regional Cooking cookbook.

There are many different varieties of radicchio, usually named after their city
of origin, and they each have different qualities, which are appreciated for
different uses in the kitchen, although what they tend to have in common are
juicy, bitter leaves and pretty colours.

The most well known are radicchio di Chioggia, a round, ruby red salad head,
slightly less bitter than its relatives, from the eponymous town south of Venice,
and radicchio di Treviso, an elongated variety from just north of Venice, which
actually comes in two forms and is protected by IGP (Indication of Geographic
Protection) status. In its precoce, or early-harvest form, in autumn, it has an
elongated shape, but when you find it in its highly prized tardivo, or late-
harvest form, its leaves have transformed with the most impossible, almost
tentacle-like curls of crunchy, bright, white-veined ruby leaves.

To earn their IGP status, both precoce and tardivo must be grown only in a
select number of municipalities in the provinces of Treviso, Padova or Venice.
Tardivo is considered the king of the radicchio family. It doesn’t just grow like
this but takes weeks of manual work. The seeds are planted in fields in the
height of summer, then once the first frosts of autumn come along (there
should be two frosts for IGP standards), the leaves are ‘burned’ and growth is
stopped. This is usually in late November and is where the transformation
begins – the radicchio is taken, roots and all, and transferred to large pools of
running water at a constant temperature in complete darkness for 10–25 days.
The water revives the plant and it begins to grow again. Without sunlight and
without photosynthesis turning the leaves green, the characteristic brilliant red
and white leaves grow. The plant is then trimmed and cleaned manually (a
process called toelettatura), removing about 70 per cent of the dead and wilted
outer leaves and trimming the root to retain just the heart of the plant. It is then
thoroughly washed and packed, ready for the market. It’s in season in the
coldest months of winter, until the end of February.

Meanwhile the regular Treviso precoce, which is a little sweeter than the later-
harvest versions, is a wonderful variety to cook with (I love it grilled or in
saor,) and is harvested from September. Its characteristic elongated form is
created in the fields, with an elastic band wrapped around the tops of each
broad salad head like ‘soldatini’, ‘soldiers’, which keeps the hearts of the salad
blanketed in darkness for 15–20 days so that, like the tardivo, the lack of
photosynthesis keeps the new leaves from turning green. When they are
harvested, they are cleaned in the field of their outer green leaves to reveal
their red hearts.

Then there are the rose-like speckled pink and creamy hued tender leaves of
radicchio variegato Castelfranco, which is almost too pretty to eat and my
favourite salad.

I love radicchio deliciously dressed in something sweet–acidic to balance its

slight bitterness. This is one very rare occasion where I like balsamic vinegar in
salad, particularly a sweeter, aged one. It’s also very nice with a hit of
something mustardy (like the dressing of the Insalata di Gallina Padovana) or
with something strong and salty (perfect with prosciutto, anchovies or herring;
try the Insalata di aringa grigliata). And it goes marvellously well with cheese
– gorgonzola ticks the salty/strong/spicy boxes all at once.
Crostini with mackerel, olives and pine nuts

Crostini con sgombro, olive e pinoli

I HAVE HAD SOMETHING like this in a humble bàcaro and wine shop
called Cantina Aziende Agricole while on my way to meet friends on the busy
fondamenta just over the bridge. It’s a good stop with simple cicchetti but
plenty of choice, especially fried things. The original is with tuna, but I think
that tinned mackerel, which is so flavourful and undervalued, makes a very
delicious cicchetto (and is equally good as a tramezzino filling) livened up with
olives and pine nuts. It’s important here to have very delicious olives; I would
go with black marinated olives such as kalamata, or taggiasca olives (these are
very small, so use double the amount). If they’ve already been pitted, then half
the work is done here; otherwise, use the flat side of a large kitchen knife to
squash the olives and then you can pull the pits out easily.

Makes 6 cicchetti

90 g (3 oz) tinned mackerel, drained

1 tablespoon pine nuts, finely chopped
6 large, good-quality marinated olives, pitted and finely chopped
1–2 tablespoons mayonnaise, or to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil, or as needed
a few parsley leaves, finely chopped
6 thick baguette slices, or other crusty bread
pickled baby onions or capers in brine, for garnish

Combine the mackerel, pine nuts and olives in a bowl, breaking the mackerel
up with a fork. Add the mayonnaise and enough olive oil (try a tablespoon at
first) to mash the mixture into a rough paste. If you prefer this smooth like a
cream, you can do it in a food processor instead. Taste for seasoning and add
pepper if you like but you won’t need salt; I find mackerel is usually flavourful
enough. Mix through the parsley and spread onto toasted or untoasted baguette
slices. Garnish with a baby onion (my preference) or a caper on top.
VARIATIONS Try this with tuna, or another favourite tinned fish, with walnuts instead of the pine nuts
(or leave them out), and with any olives that you prefer. The classic chopped garlic and a few sprigs of
finely chopped parsley would be a good addition too.
Cured sea bass with cumin

Branzino marinato al cumino

SERVED ON WARM CROSTINI with butter, this fragrant cured sea bass
seems to melt in your mouth and is an absolute treat for the senses. This
brilliant dish is inspired by a recipe in the Slow Food–produced cookbook,
Ricette di Osterie del Veneto, from Ristorante Al Vecchio Marina on the Lido
of Jesolo, a 15-km (9-mile) long beach north-east of Venice. I found it so
intriguing because of the use of a spice like cumin, which is rare in Italian
cuisine, but it is so perfectly suited to this dish, and also for the choice to cure a
fish such as sea bass, which in Venice is prized for its delicate flesh and is
traditionally roasted or boiled for very special occasions, such as Christmas
Eve. The original recipe has fresh lemon balm (melissa) leaves decorating it
too, but I prefer the spices; a pinch of cumin and some pink peppercorn is
lovely. You need to begin this recipe at least 2 days before you want to serve it
(5 days, according to the original recipe, but I cannot wait that long).

Makes 20 cicchetti

1 × 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) whole sea bass, or 2 sea bass fillets, scaled but skin on,
about 800 g (1 lb 12 oz)
120 g (4½ oz) coarse salt
120 g (4½ oz) raw sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed, plus a pinch for garnish
2–3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
20 baguette slices
1 garlic clove
butter, softened

To fillet the whole fish, first make a diagonal slice that almost cuts the head off
and follows the opening of the gills. From here you will cut the first fillet by
locating the backbone and, using the spine as a guide, cut all the way along the
length of the fish to the tail and pull out the first fillet. Now flip the fish over
and repeat. You should be left with a head and bones and tail all attached. This
makes the most wonderful stock for a fish soup or a fish risotto, so set it aside
for boiling with a carrot, onion and celery, then strain – this freezes well.
Otherwise, ask your fishmonger to fillet it for you (and if you would like to
keep the rest for stock, do tell them that you want to keep it for that purpose).

Gently run the fillets under cold water then pat them dry. Combine the salt and
sugar and sprinkle about half of this mixture in a glass or ceramic dish, place
the fillets on top, skin side up, then cover completely with the rest of the sugar
and salt mixture. Place in the fridge to cure for 24 hours.

The next day, remove the fish from the curing mixture, gently rinse and pat dry.
Place in a new, clean glass or ceramic dish. Combine the lemon juice with the
honey and cumin and pour this over the fish and leave to marinate for another
24 hours.

Remove the fish from the marinade and pat dry gently. Slice the fish on a slight
diagonal; you want to do this as thinly as possible and then discard the skin.
Dress the cured fish with a generous drizzle of very good olive oil and some
crushed pink or black pepper, and another pinch of cumin. Cover and leave to
rest until ready for serving. (It can be kept like this for at least 3 days in the
fridge).

When ready to serve, toast the baguette rounds and rub each once with a fresh
garlic clove before buttering them, all while the bread is still warm. Place a
slice of cured sea bass on top and serve immediately.
Tuna tartare

Tartare di tonno

IT’S ONLY NATURAL that in a city where seafood is such an important part
of the cuisine that a rather international but very popular preparation like tuna
tartare has become a common sight in Venetian bàcari. In the Dorsoduro
quarter of Venice, Cantina del Vino già Schiavi (also known as Cantinone or al
Bottegon) serves a particularly loved cicchetto of tuna tartare with bitter cocoa.
Cantinone is one of the best examples of a classic bàcaro serving a dizzying
array of cicchetti on generously thick slices of baguette made by Alessandra De
Respini, as she has for decades.

This is a more classic combination of flavours inspired by what you might find
on a traditional beef tartare, but it works so well with tuna – the anchovies
provide a great boost of flavour and I think they are a must, but if any anchovy-
haters decide to leave them out, just make sure to adjust the seasoning
appropriately. I am personally very fond of the lemon zest and capers in this.

Makes 8 cicchetti

200 g (7 oz) sashimi-grade raw tuna

2 anchovies preserved in oil, finely chopped
2 teaspoons capers, rinsed, finely chopped, plus extra for garnish
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
8 toasted baguette slices

With a very sharp knife, chop the tuna into small dice, about 5 mm (¼ in) wide
and set aside in a bowl. In a separate small bowl, combine the anchovies,
capers, lemon zest and half of the juice to start with, and the olive oil. Season
to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper then mix this dressing
through the tuna. Taste and adjust for seasoning – you may like a little more
lemon juice or another pinch of salt. Spoon onto toasted baguette slices and add
a caper on top as a garnish.
NOTE Serve immediately – or quite soon after making this. If you leave the lemon juice dressing on too
long, the raw fish will begin to cure, which changes the texture, so if you want to prepare this ahead of
time, I would recommend keeping the seasoning separate from the prepared tartare and mixing them just
before serving.

VARIATION You could use sashimi-grade salmon instead of the tuna.

Carrot mostarda with mustard and roast ham

Mostarda di carote con senape e

prosciutto arrosto

THIS CURIOUS CARROT MOSTARDA was one of the first recipes from
Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani’s cookbook that I wanted to cook. She describes this
as an old recipe to make in the month of September, using many lemons and
much, much more sugar and a low, slow, 4-hour cooking time. She pairs this
with boiled meat, as mostarda often is. I think it is lovely with prosciutto
arrosto or prosciutto cotto, which is cooked ham as opposed to cured as
prosciutto crudo is. Use a top-quality, freshly sliced, off-the-bone ham.

You could also see this as a sort of in saor recipe (see Radicchio in saor) if you
perhaps leave out the sugar, but add raisins and pine nuts to it for sweetness –
in fact, this is another Venetian Jewish recipe recounted in the Slow Food
Ricette di Osteria del Veneto, a dish for celebrating the New Year for the
symbolic happy golden colour and shape of the carrot slices.

This will make enough mostarda for twelve cicchetti. But if you have any
leftovers, try it out next to a roast or on sandwiches – also see Variations,
below, for more ideas.

Makes 290 g (10 oz/1 cup), or a small jar of mostarda

CARROT MOSTARDA
400 g (14 oz) carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
zest and juice of 2 lemons
2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
100 g (3½ oz) sugar

TO ASSEMBLE EACH CICCHETTO

1 thick slice fresh or toasted baguette, for crostini
¼ teaspoon hot English mustard, or to taste
2 tablespoons mascarpone, or cream cheese
1 tablespoon Carrot mostarda (see above)
1 thin slice roast ham

Combine the carrots, lemon zest and juice and vinegar in a small saucepan with
500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) water and bring to the boil. Add the sugar and, once it
has dissolved, turn the heat to a low simmer, cover, and let cook slowly for 1–
1½ hours. The carrots should be soft and the liquid should be reduced and
syrupy. Once made, the mostarda keeps well, like home-made jam, in an
airtight jar in the fridge.

To assemble the cicchetti, on each slice of bread spread the mustard, followed
by the mascarpone, then the carrot mostarda and top with a slice of roast ham.

VARIATIONS You could substitute the roast ham with roast beef or, for a vegetarian version, try the
carrot mostarda with gorgonzola or another strong blue cheese (skipping the mustard and mascarpone). I
had something similar at the popular bàcaro Vino Vero – a warm crostino topped with mostarda and a
slice of gooey washed-rind cheese.
Prawns wrapped in lardo

Gamberi e lardo

THIS IS DELICIOUSLY SALTY, thanks to the lardo, so it begs for a nice

drink to go along with it, and it’s so incredibly simple that you can make this
almost as quickly as it will be devoured. Use very large, very fresh, very
beautiful prawns (shrimp) for this. If you cannot find lardo – which is spiced
and fragrant and should be shaved paper thin like prosciutto – you can, as a
second choice, use prosciutto or pancetta instead, but it should be paper thin so
as not to overwhelm the sweet, fleshy prawns.

Makes 6 cicchetti

6 king prawns (shrimp)

6 basil leaves
6 slices lardo

Peel the body of the prawns – for aesthetics, I like to leave the head and tail, or,
at the very least, just the tail which is a useful tool for picking up with fingers.
If you prefer, you can remove both. Devein the prawns, if necessary, with a
sharp knife along the ridge of the body and pull out the vein. Wrap a basil leaf
around the body, then a thin strip of lardo. Continue with the rest.

Heat a heavy-bottomed frying pan such as a cast-iron or non-stick pan

(something you would cook a steak in, for example) over a high heat then cook
the prawns, turning once, until they turn opaque and bright orange and you see
the lardo turn transparent and the green of the basil shine through. It should
only take 1½ minutes total. No need for salt or oil here; the lardo is flavourful
and fatty enough. Serve immediately.
The Ponte del Megio, which leads to Calle del Spezier, named for the spice trader that was once
here
Giant prawns for Gamberi e lardo
Fritti Calamari fritti
Fried cicchetti Fried calamari

Fiori di zucca ripieni di baccalà mantecato

Fried zucchini flowers stuffed with whipped cod

Mozzarella in carrozza alla veneziana

Venetian-style fried mozzarella sandwiches

Tondini di formaggio
Fried cheese rounds

Polpette di carne
Fried meatballs

Polpette di baccalà
Cod fritters

Baccalà fritto
Battered fried salt cod

Schie fritte
Fried Venetian prawns

Zucchine impanate
Crumbed zucchini
The art of frying
Fried foods have long made up a favourite part of any round of cicchetti in
Venice – especially just-fried, on-the-spot kind of treats that are worth waiting
and lining up for (see the Polpette di carne). Sandro Brandolisio describes the
Fritureta or fritturina of mixed fried fish (see Calamari fritti) in his book about
cicchetti during the 1950s and 60s as the classic street food that you could find
in Venice at many bàcari. Fried on the spot and sold piping hot and wrapped in
paper, perhaps with a piece of fried polenta tucked in there too, you would
walk and eat and chat until you finished and immediately headed for the closest
bàcaro for a glass of wine or two to wash it all down.

But there is one fried treat that is particularly loved and symbolic of Venice’s
cuisine – fritole, or sweet fritters. For centuries, these fried treats were the
number-one street food, sold by peddlers who roamed Venice on foot, setting
up their pots of oil and cooking on street corners to passers-by. These fritoleri,
as the fritter-makers were known, had formed a guild, l’arte dei fritoleri, in
Venice as early as 1609. According to Elio Zorzi in his book Osterie Veneziane,
there were seventy members at this time, each with a particular district of
Venice assigned to them by the guild. It was a trade reserved exclusively for
Venetians, and one that was passed on only to heirs.

The Venetian printmaker Gaetano Zompini is best remembered for his

collection of sixty etchings from 1746–1754, Le Arti che Vanno per Via,
depicting fritoleri along with other common peddlers, artisans and merchants
who could be found selling their goods on foot (or by gondola) around Venice,
from the egg seller and the glassmaker (who will even take broken glass), to
the fresh ricotta vendor and the clam seller (already purged and ready to cook).
Each worker is depicted with one or two other characters in classically
Venetian settings: under porticoes, beside bridges, with the typical calli, or
narrow streets, and bell towers etched into the backgrounds like theatre
backdrops, and the etchings are accompanied by short poems in Venetian
dialect written by Zompini’s friend, the priest Questini. They are a charming,
extraordinary account of everyday life in eighteenth-century Venice.

Some of the merchants are quite specific – the ink and rat poison seller, for
example, the one selling foraged herbs, or beef blood sausage, the one who
goes door to door with vinegar or arrives by gondola with wood. One of my
favourites depicts fritole – fritters – being fried by a seated woman
concentrating on a huge pan over an open fire. At her feet is a wooden barrel
filled with batter. A noblewoman waiting for her order of fritters, which are
being strung on a skewer by a young boy, fans the billowing smoke away from
her face, while her companion leans towards her, pointing his finger out of the
scene, as if to say, ‘We’ll take them to go!’
How to deep-fry
Many people shy away from deep-frying at home, but it is simple and doesn’t
have to be messy. We do it very often at home and, over the years, I’ve come to
adapt a system that I find works really well for my family. Unless I am making
a huge batch of something (rare), I usually fry in my smallest frying pan. The
reason for this is simply because using a smaller pan means I can use less oil.
Because fried foods are so quick to cook, I can fry in batches and serve the
entire plate and everything is still hot – and, in the case of particularly hungry
people, they eat as I fry!

Frying at the right temperature is really important; it will ensure you have a
deliciously crisp outer crust while not being greasy. I used to carefully measure
my oil with a candy thermometer to make sure I had the right temperature
(about 160°C/320°F for something that takes a bit longer to cook through, such
as dough, like in the fritole, or a thicker fish like the baccalà fritto, to between
170–180°C/340–350°F for things that are much quicker to cook, such as
calamari or zucchini/courgette flowers – but not any hotter than that). If the oil
begins smoking you have definitely exceeded the limit and you should really
avoid it getting to this point; it is unsafe for your kitchen but also the oil begins
to degrade at this temperature and it will affect the flavour of your food.

But I have learned over the years to recognise visual cues to know when the oil
is ready. It will start to look like it is shimmering and snaking through the pan.
But my favourite trick is to dip the end of a wooden spoon or my chopstick (I
fry with a pair of extra-long Japanese chopsticks; they are the best for
delicately plucking things out of oil, but you can also use a slotted spoon or
tongs, if you are careful that the metal ends don’t dig into the delicate crust of
batter, or a spider, which is like a steel net on the end of a long handle) and on
contact the wood will immediately be surrounded by tiny, very energetic
bubbles.

My preferred vegetable oil to use for frying is organic sunflower oil. Seed oils
such as sunflower oil have a very high smoke point and are neutral in flavour.
But you can use any vegetable oil, even olive oil if it is all that you have (light
or refined olive oil has a high smoke point more or less equal to seed oil –
however, if it’s the kind of good, unrefined extra-virgin olive oil that is thick
and deep green and you’d only dare eat it raw, drizzled on your very best
bread, I wouldn’t recommend it for frying simply because it would be a shame,
but also because extra-virgin olive oil has a very low smoke point so you need
to be careful with your temperature).

Some people filter used frying oil and reuse it for further frying, but I
personally do not reuse vegetable oil after it has cooled and I would not
recommend it. The quality of the oil will degrade, and will become potentially
carcinogenic if it has not been carefully temperature controlled or has gone
over its smoke point. The smoke point of any oil will lower after it has cooled
and so you will also need to be more careful the next time you use it, making it
less reliable to fry with – not to mention it will also become rancid pretty
quickly. So, I avoid reusing it for cooking with, though I always make sure to
dispose of used frying oil correctly and take it to my local recycling centre (see
how to do this).
A few extra tips
Have everything ready before you start; frying is quick! A wire cooling rack
lined with absorbent kitchen paper is an ideal surface for putting your just-fried
food on to drain of any excess oil. If you don’t have a cooling rack, try a
wooden chopping board; it absorbs any excess moisture better than a plate, a
plastic board or stone surface. Remember to change the kitchen paper when it
gets too oily.

Fry a few pieces at a time to avoid overcrowding the pan, which would lower
the oil’s temperature and lead to a soggy, greasy crust – a good rule of thumb is
to fill the pan halfway (or two-thirds, if you must, but no more).

If the oil is not quite as deep as you thought, or you’re at the end of the batch
and it is running low, you can always top it up – just remember to wait for the
oil to return to the right temperature before frying.

If salting, salt the food as soon as you take it out of the pan and place it on the
paper. If you salt when it’s had a chance to cool a bit, it will simply fall off.
The same goes for sugar, in the case of the fritole – don’t wait, roll them in the
sugar as soon as you can so that it attaches nicely.

If you want to fry multiple types of food while you have the oil hot and ready,
you can absolutely fry different things in the same pan but do them one at a
time and in a particular order. If frying something with a delicate flavour (or
sweet, such as the fritole), I would begin with those first – and fry the fish, for
example, last. I would also give priority to battered foods, while doing the
crumbed foods at the end to avoid having burnt crumbs stuck to the batter. In
between each dish (indeed, even between each batch), make sure to scoop out
any debris with a slotted spoon or a spider.

A note on disposing of frying oil

In many regions in Italy where deep-frying is popular, councils have special
bins for disposing of used vegetable oil safely, where it has the chance to be
filtered and recycled into other products. Look into your own council’s
regulations for how to dump or recycle frying oil responsibly. Do not pour used
oil, even in small amounts, down your drain; it can cause serious plumbing
issues and contribute to water pollution. Instead, let it cool then pour it into a
sealable container such as a plastic bottle or glass jar and keep it, topping it up
every time you fry, until it is full, then you can take it to your council disposal
easily. If you don’t have a large amount of oil or don’t fry often, there are two
other options. You can wipe it out with kitchen paper and compost or dispose
of it normally and, if you have compost, you can also compost frying oil. Just
be sure it is not a large amount and to mix it in thoroughly; adding too much at
once can slow down the composting process.
Fried calamari

Calamari fritti

THIS MIGHT JUST BE the ultimate warm-weather cicchetto. Just-fried, too

hot to touch, you can often find fried calamari at a bàcaro strung on a skewer
together, or sold in yellow paper cones, and it needs nothing more than a glass
of cold, bubbly Prosecco next to it. You can also find this as fritto misto, mixed
fried seafood, which might include pieces of fish or whole tiny fish known as
latterini or atherine, and crunchy whole prawns (shrimp), to be eaten head and
all. But we are particularly fond of calamari; it is my daughters’ favourite. The
trick to this very simple dish is to have very fresh, small calamari and to fry in
small batches – not crowding the pan keeps the oil hot, which means a crunchy
coating.

Serves 4 as cicchetti

350 g (12½ oz) calamari (about 2 small calamari)

60 g (2 oz/4 tablespoons) plain (all-purpose) flour
vegetable oil, for frying

Rinse the calamari and make sure they are cleaned. If the fishmonger did not
do it for you, you can clean them by pulling off the head; use just the tentacles
and cut off the part with the eyes. Pull out the beak, which you will find in the
middle of the tentacles. Reach into the body and carefully pull out the glassy,
plastic-like quill inside and any guts or ink sac. Pull off the wings and, as you
do that, you should be able to now easily pull off all the skin, which is like a
very thin membrane. Rinse well, so you have just an empty white tube and the
tentacles.

Cut the calamari into 1.5–2 cm (½–¾ in) rings. You can leave the tentacles as
they are or cut in half lengthways. Coat them completely in the flour
(sometimes it helps to coat them first entirely in half of the flour, then follow
with the rest of the flour and toss again).

Place enough vegetable oil in a small, deep-frying pan or saucepan so that it is

at least 3 cm (1¼ in) deep and bring to a medium heat (about 170°C/340°F if
you have a candy thermometer). When it is hot enough, the surface of the oil
should look as if it is shimmering. The bottom of a wooden spoon inserted in
the oil should immediately be surrounded by energetic, tiny bubbles. Drop
several pieces of calamari into the hot oil (but not too many at once; you want
the pan to be no more than half full) and turn halfway through if needed, until
the flour coating is a light golden colour and crisp-looking, about 1 minute
total. Drain on kitchen paper and immediately sprinkle with salt. Continue with
the rest of the calamari and serve while hot.
Fried zucchini flowers stuffed with whipped cod

Fiori di zucca ripieni di baccalà

mantecato

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS dish that is really just another

way to eat fried cod (and happens to be handy if you have any leftover Baccalà
mantecato). You could easily double or triple this recipe, but if there are only
two or three of you, this will be enough; they are deceptively filling! These
flowers are particularly good when eaten while piping hot, so I suggest frying
them while your guests are eagerly waiting to eat them.

Makes 6 cicchetti

50 g (1¾ oz/⅓ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour

6 zucchini (courgette) flowers (about 60 g/2 oz)
180 g (6½ oz/6 tablespoons) Baccalà mantecato
vegetable oil, for frying

Make the batter by whisking the flour with 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) chilled water
to a smooth, runny batter. Place in the fridge and let the batter chill completely.
Meanwhile, prepare the zucchini flowers by gently opening the petals and
removing the stamen or stigma inside the flower by pulling or cutting it off. Set
aside.

Measure out 1 tablespoon of baccalà mantecato for each flower, shaping them
into thick logs with your hands (or make quenelles using two spoons) and
placing them inside the flowers, folding the petals back over the baccalà to
enclose it. When all the flowers have been filled and you’re ready to fry, pour
the vegetable oil into a deep-frying pan or a small saucepan – ideally the oil
should be deep enough so that when you put the flowers in they will be fully
submerged, about 7.5 cm (3 in).

Heat over a medium heat to 160°C (320°F). If you don’t have a candy
thermometer, there are some cues to look for: the oil should begin to shimmer
and the bottom of a wooden spoon inserted in the oil should immediately be
surrounded by energetic, tiny bubbles. One at a time, dip the flowers into the
chilled batter, ensuring a good, thick coating particularly around the opening (I
like to twist the petals together slightly at the opening to help close them), and
then place carefully in the hot oil. Continue with the zucchini flowers until you
can comfortably fit them into the pan without overcrowding (you may need to
do this in two batches if your pan is small) and fry for about 2½–3 minutes, or
until the batter is crisp and pale golden.

Remove and drain on kitchen paper, then sprinkle with salt while piping hot.
Continue frying, if you have done batches, and serve while hot.

VARIATIONS For a vegetarian version, substitute the baccalà with mozzarella or ricotta seasoned with
lemon zest, salt and some parmesan. Or simply fry the zucchini (courgette) flowers just as they are dipped
in batter (and this would be vegan). I often do this if I have a mountain of flowers and I’ve run out of
baccalà.
Venetian-style fried mozzarella sandwiches

Mozzarella in carrozza alla

veneziana

THESE DEEP-FRIED SANDWICHES may have been invented in Naples in

the nineteenth century, but dipping bread in a mixture of egg and milk and
frying it is an old tradition in many places, and this is a fried cicchetto that
Venetians have made entirely their own. The classic Neapolitan one is made
with stale bread, and the mozzarella sandwiches are dipped first in flour, then
in plain beaten egg and, finally, in breadcrumbs. But Edda Servi Machlin, who
was born in the heart of the Jewish quarter of the Tuscan town of Pitigliano,
has a recipe in The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews (1981) where she mixes
egg, milk and flour into a batter and submerges the sandwiches into this before
deep-frying. This is similar to the way you’ll find them also in Venice, such as
at the Rosticceria Gilson near the Rialto bridge, where they are made in
enormous quantities, and also in the historic bàcaro Cantina Do Spade – it is at
the latter where they explain the other important difference in the Venetian-
style sandwich: they use the softest sandwich bread, like what you would make
tramezzini with – and they are served in two ways: with anchovies or with
prosciutto cotto, ham.

Makes 6 cicchetti
1–2 balls fresh mozzarella, approximately 150 g (5½ oz)
1 egg, separated
80 ml (2½ fl oz/⅓ cup) well-chilled full-cream (whole) milk
75 g (2¾ oz/½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
6 anchovies preserved in oil, drained, or ham
6 slices sandwich bread, crusts removed and cut into 2 rectangles
vegetable oil, for frying

Slice the mozzarella balls into 1 cm (½ in) thick discs, then drain them in one
layer over a sieve lined with some absorbent kitchen paper while you prepare
the batter.
In a small bowl, whip the egg white with a whisk until it is foamy. In another
bowl, whisk together the yolk and the milk and then add the flour, until you
have a smooth batter. Add the egg whites gently and keep it chilled while you
make the sandwiches.

Place a slice of mozzarella and an anchovy between two rectangles of bread

and continue with the other slices so that you have six rectangular sandwiches.

Heat the oil in a frying pan, about 2–3 cm (¾–1¼ in) deep, over a medium heat
until it reaches 170°C (340°F) (see visual cues if you don’t have a candy
thermometer). One at a time, submerge the bread into the chilled batter to
cover all over, lightly squish the edges together as you do so, and then gently
place in the oil with the help of a slotted spoon. Fry for about 90 seconds,
turning once so it is evenly golden brown all over. Place on absorbent kitchen
paper to drain and salt them immediately. You could fry two at a time.
Continue with the rest of the sandwiches.

They’re delicious freshly fried when still hot and the cheese has melted, but
honestly, these are so good I would (and do) eat them cold too. These also do
very well made several hours ahead of time and simply reheated in the oven,
coming out as if they had just been freshly fried. Let them cool completely
before putting in an airtight container and keeping in the fridge until you need
them. Then place them on a lined baking tray in the oven at 180°C (350°F) and
heat until they are piping hot.

NOTE I don’t tend to add salt to these because the anchovy or ham adds enough, but if you decide not to
use either for a vegetarian version they will be a little more delicate so you may like a little sprinkle of
salt. I prefer salting them when they are just fried.
Fried cheese rounds

Tondini di formaggio

THESE DELICIOUS DISCS of fried creamy cheese are irresistible. I read

about these cicchetti in Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani’s Venetian book and
couldn’t resist the sound of them: a sort of thick béchamel enriched with
cheese and left to cool before cutting out rounds that are crumbed and fried. I
have also tried making these in the oven and I can confirm they come out very,
very well this way if you do not feel like frying – and I am always sceptical of
baking things that should be fried. I like these served together with the
artichoke bottoms.

Makes approx. 20 cicchetti

1 tablespoon butter
1½ tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) full-cream (whole) milk
3 eggs
200 g (7 oz) provola cheese, or another good melting cheese, diced or shredded
80 g (2¾ oz) dry breadcrumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat. Add the flour and a splash
of the milk and stir it in with a wooden spoon until you have a thick but smooth
paste. Beat two of the eggs with the rest of the milk and slowly add this to the
pot while stirring. Add the cheese and stir until it is all melted together and
smooth. Pour onto a greased baking tray approximately 20 × 30 cm (8 in × 1 ft
12 in) in size (like something you might bake a lasagne in) and allow to cool.

Cut out small circles with a shot glass or cookie cutter – with any excess, you
can melt it back together and keep cutting it out. Alternatively, simply cut into
small squares, about 5 × 5 cm (2 × 2 in) and you will have exactly 24 squares
ready for frying. In a small bowl, beat the last egg, and in another small,
shallow bowl, place the breadcrumbs. Dip each cheese round first into the egg
and then in breadcrumbs and place on a plate or tray until they are all crumbed.
Heat enough vegetable oil in a wide pan so that there is at least 1 cm (½ in) oil
and fry over a medium heat on both sides until golden brown, about 2 minutes
total.

If you choose to try baking this in the oven instead of frying, place the crumbed
rounds of cheese on a baking tray lined with baking paper, drizzle with olive
oil and bake at 190°C (375°F) for about 10 minutes, or until puffed and golden.
Leftovers are also delicious reheated in the oven until melty.
Fried meatballs

Polpette di carne

THE DEEP-FRIED MEATBALLS AT Venice’s Alla Vedova are legendary. I

will never forget my first taste of them. It was December 2010. We were
visiting my friend Rosa to celebrate her husband Massimo’s birthday and the
plan was to sustain ourselves entirely on cicchetti for the whole weekend.

There is something I find incredibly romantic about Venice in the winter. The
short days, the threat of sloshing about in knee-high acqua alta, the damp, cold
air and the festive season seem to create the perfect excuse for zipping into the
nearest bàcaro for a quick cicchetto and a cheek-flushing glass of wine
(although to be honest I could probably find a good excuse for bàcaro-hopping
no matter what time of the year).

We started at Arco near the Rialto, the place where your first cicchetto in
Venice should always be baccalà mantecato and Prosecco. Then we trudged
over the wet stones to Piazza San Marco to treat ourselves to a spritz at Caffè
Florian, which has been doing what it does since 1720. A drink at the mid-
nineteenth century bar inside, standing at the counter, is surprisingly affordable
considering that you pay an arm and a leg for a cappuccino if you happen to sit
down at a table outside in the square. But the piazza on a wet winter evening is
eerily empty; except for some solitary rose sellers and the smell of pigeons, it
doesn’t take much to imagine you are walking into an eighteenth-century
version of Venice in moments like these.

Our last stop, finally, is Alla Vedova (‘the Widow’, as it is lovingly known,
although technically its actual name is Trattoria Ca’ d’Oro) and the journey
here is for one thing and one thing only: Polpette di carne. After our brisk walk
cutting through the narrowest of calli to get to the Strada Nova, we crowd in
through the front door and stand with the others at the marble bar waiting for
freshly fried polpette while we are instantly handed an ombra, a little glass of
wine, to keep us company. On display in the small wooden counter are also
sarde in saor and crisp, deep-fried sardines with soft white polenta. But,
finally, the polpette arrive – crunchy on the outside and impossibly soft and
juicy inside – and then they keep flying fresh out of the kitchen so we keep
eating them, and ordering more ombre. And so, a successful night of cicchetti
concludes.

Thanks to these polpette, Alla Vedova is considered a culinary institution. Any

cookbook that speaks of Venice offers a version inspired by the deep-brown,
glowing polpette of Alla Vedova, which is supposedly a closely guarded secret.
Every recipe I’ve seen is different. The main question is whether the polpette
are made with fresh minced (ground) beef, which is probably the most
convenient, or – more traditional – boiled leftover beef (or other ‘bits’). The
incredible softness that contrasts with the crunchy coating can be attributed to
breadcrumbs in the filling, or perhaps soft white bread soaked in milk, and
mashed potatoes. Or a combination. There is usually an egg, perhaps some
cheese and, in many cases, mortadella or salame for flavour.

In Venezia, Tessa Kiros calls for fresh minced (ground) beef, floury potatoes, a
couple of tablespoons of parmesan and a small egg to bind the filling together.
Russell Norman is more generous with the eggs, and his filling of fresh mince
includes breadcrumbs soaked in milk and 100 g (3½ oz/1 cup) grated
parmesan.

Valeria Necchio, in Veneto, makes hers with boiled beef (or any leftover beef )
and spiced sopressa (an aged Venetian salame with DOP status: the kind that
you’ll see in Jacopo da Bassano’s painting of Christ in the House of Martha,
Mary and Lazarus from 1577 at the Pitti Palace in Florence; while the main
event is happening off to the side, the real show-stopper is the food in the
kitchen: baskets of glistening fish, plucked poultry, carafes of red wine and an
unmistakable sopressa being sliced). She softens them with white bread soaked
in milk and mashed potato. I feel Necchio’s recipe is very much like the most
traditional Venetian recipes for polpette. Similarly, Sandro Brandolisio in his
cicchetti book of the 1950s and 60s calls for leftover cooked meat. He adds
ham, mortadella and salame, one boiled potato and a grating of nutmeg and
Grana cheese.

Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani has a recipe for polpette using fresh mince, but she
notes it is usually made with leftover meat so that it isn’t thrown away and that,
either way, the main scope of making polpette di carne is to give sustenance to
children who are growing or for whoever is in need of a pick-me-up with
something substantial. She adds nutmeg too, fries them in butter and serves
them with radicchio di Treviso.
De Zuliani also includes three interesting recipes for sweet meatballs – recipes
that she notes are no longer in use in Venice. Using leftover meat, one recipe
includes sultanas, pine nuts and candied citron, along with a small glass of rum.
Another is mixed with luganega (Venetian sausage), milk, parmesan, nutmeg,
sultanas and pine nuts. As a final touch, these deep-fried polpette are sprinkled
with sugar.

The other recipe, she notes, is from the 1800s and involves a filling of meat
(fresh mince or already cooked beef ), cinnamon, parsley and an egg. It’s fried
in lard to get a good crust, then finished slowly in butter and served in a sweet
zabaione – a spoonful of sugar, an egg yolk and rum cooked over a medium–
high heat until fluffy and creamy.

Interestingly, in La Cucina di Venezia e della Laguna (2016), by Maria Teresa

Di Marco and Marie Cécille Ferré, the recipe is for fresh minced (ground) veal,
mortadella and mashed potatoes and two spoons of parmesan – according to
Alla Vedova’s cook, Ada’s, ‘secret’ recipe, they say. Hold on. I thought this
was a secret recipe.

After digging around for Ada’s ‘secret’ recipe, I found a Facebook group called
Veneziani a Tavola (‘Venetians at the Table’) with a post entitled, ‘The mystery
of the polpette of Alla Vedova’, claiming that after decades of creating the
polpette that no Venetian can pass up, the cook, Ada, has finally shared her
recipe from her archives: ‘Some slices of mortadella, a couple of potatoes,
boiled and passed through a mouli, mixed with 300 g (10½ oz) minced meat,
grated Grana cheese, two eggs, parsley and garlic, salt and pepper, and a little
bit of breadcrumbs to adjust the consistency. Make balls with your hands, a
light crumbing, and fry in abundant boiling oil.’ The debate continues in the
comments, however, as to whether or not it is indeed the real recipe.
Personally, I think the best way to enjoy Alla Vedova’s polpette is at Alla
Vedova. But making these and enjoying them piping hot as they come out of
the frying pan comes a close second.

Makes 24 polpette

1 potato
1–2 slices white bread, crusts removed
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) full-cream (whole) milk
100 g (3½ oz) mortadella
1 garlic clove, peeled
a few parsley sprigs
450 g (1 lb) minced (ground) beef
1 egg
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste, plus extra to serve
50 g (1¾ oz/½ cup) dry breadcrumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

Boil the potato until a fork easily goes through it, then peel and mash. Set aside
in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, soak the bread in the milk for a few minutes, then squeeze
the excess milk out and add the bread to the mashed potato.

In a food processor, or finely chopping by hand, mince the mortadella, garlic

and parsley together. Place in a large bowl with the mashed potato.

Add the beef, egg and parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Mix
everything well with your hands, then roll into golf ball–sized balls and set
them on a tray until they are all shaped. In a shallow bowl, add the
breadcrumbs then roll the meatballs through the breadcrumbs to coat lightly
but entirely.

In a frying pan, pour enough oil to cover a layer of meatballs, about 4–5 cm
(1½ in). Heat over a medium heat until it reaches 170°C (340°F) and, when the
oil is visibly shimmering and the end of a wooden spoon dipped in it is
immediately surrounded by tiny bubbles, drop in the meatballs (you should do
it in batches, filling the pan only halfway each batch) and cook until deep
brown all over, about 4–5 minutes. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle
immediately with salt to taste.
Cod fritters

Polpette di baccalà

THIS IS AN IRRESISTIBLE WAY TO enjoy baccalà, and it is a favourite

in my family, where we also do this with other preserved fish such as tinned
tuna. You could use pre-soaked dried stockfish or salt cod baccalà for this, just
be aware of adjusting for salt for the latter even after soaking (speaking of
which, you should always try a little taste after soaking salt cod to ensure it has
been adequately desalted). You could even consider making this with leftover
Baccalà mantecato, or indeed any leftover white fish.

Makes approx. 12 cicchetti

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) baccalà, already soaked

1 garlic clove, whole but peeled
50 g (1¾ oz) (about 3 slices) stale white bread, crusts removed
60–125 ml (2–4 fl oz/¼–½ cup) full-cream (whole) milk
1 egg
40 g (1½ oz) dry breadcrumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

Place the pre-soaked baccalà and garlic in a pot of boiling water and poach for
about 15 minutes.

In the meantime, soak the stale bread in the milk (the amount will depend on
how stale the bread is), about 10–15 minutes.

When the baccalà is ready, remove any large bones or skin, then mash by hand
or blend in a food processor with the garlic clove, along with the bread,
squeezed of any excess milk, the egg and add freshly ground pepper and a
good pinch of salt (if using dried, unsalted stockfish or salted baccalà, you may
not need much – I usually take a little taste to be sure here). Roll the mixture
into small balls or cylinders like croquettes and then roll in the breadcrumbs to
lightly but entirely coat them.
Heat enough vegetable oil in a frying pan so that there is at least 2 cm (¾ in)
oil and heat over a medium heat. Fry the polpette on all sides until golden
brown, about 2 minutes total. Drain on absorbent kitchen paper and serve.

NOTE If you’re using bread that isn’t quite stale yet you won’t need as much milk. For instructions on
how to desalt and prepare salt cod, if it isn’t already soaked (and you should always double check), see
the note on Baccalà fritto.
Battered fried salt cod

Baccalà fritto

DELICIOUS MORSELS OF BATTERED, deep-fried cod are a classic street

food, and one that has a particular following where there are also important
Jewish communities in Italy, for example in Rome’s and in Venice’s Jewish
quarters. In Tuscan-born Edda Servi’s wonderful cookbook The Classic
Cuisine of the Italian Jews (1981), she has a recipe for what she calls pezzetti,
which are finger-shaped pieces of salt cod dipped in a flour and water batter,
fried and served with lemon wedges. Venetian gastronome Sandro Brandolisio
in his book on cicchetti from the 1950s and 60s says he likes to use milk
instead of water for the batter, an egg and flour, similar to the batter here. But
some only dust them in flour before frying. Other Venetian recipes call for
poaching the cod first in milk (then use the milk for the batter), which also
helps the de-salting process.

Makes 16 pieces

1 × 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fillet baccalà (salt cod), pre-soaked

1 egg, separated
80 ml (2½ fl oz/⅓ cup) well-chilled full-cream (whole) milk
75 g (2¾ oz/½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting
vegetable oil, for frying

Pull the skin off the salt cod fillet (it is easiest to do this from the wide end,
rather than the tail end) and pick out any large bones that may be remaining –
there are usually a few, so a feel with your hands to find them and a pair of
sturdy tweezers is best for this. Make sure that the fish is as dry as possible.
Slice the fish into 16 or so bite-sized pieces, ideally no thicker than your
thumb. Dust in flour and set aside.

To make the batter, beat the egg white with a pinch of salt until it is fluffy and
foamy. In another bowl, whisk together the yolk and the milk and then add the
flour, until you have a smooth batter. Fold in the egg whites gently, then
submerge the pieces of salt cod into the batter.
Heat a pan with enough vegetable oil to cover the pieces of fish (about 3
cm/1¼ in) over a medium heat. The oil will start to look like it is shimmering
and the end of a wooden spoon dipped into the oil will be surrounded by tiny
bubbles. Fry just a couple pieces at a time to avoid overcrowding the pan until
they are golden brown and crisp, about 4–6 minutes total. You want these to fry
quite slowly so that the fish cooks through, but if you find they are browning
much quicker than that time takes, the oil is getting too hot. You can turn it
down a notch and you can also add some cold oil to the pan to adjust the heat.
Drain on kitchen paper and immediately sprinkle with salt, if it needs it.

NOTE This recipe uses salt cod rather than dried stockfish because it is fleshier (you could do this too
with fresh cod fillets if that is easier for you to find). With salt cod, you will need to start this recipe at
least 2 days before you want to use it, unless you have access to pre-soaked salt cod that has already been
through the soaking and desalting process. It’s much easier to do at home than when using dried
stockfish, thankfully. Simply rinse off the excess salt and place the fish in a bowl of fresh water and set in
the fridge. Change the water every 8 hours – or if you don’t remember the exact number of hours, just
remember to fill up with fresh water five times in 48 hours. Have a little taste at this point – if you are
squeamish about tasting it raw, just pinch off a piece and quickly boil it then taste. The important thing is
to check that it isn’t too salty, as all your efforts will be ruined with a too-salty-to-eat fish. If too salty,
place back in the water for a further 12–24 hours. Note that the tail end of thinner pieces will be saltier
than thicker parts of the fish. Drain, pat dry and you can begin the recipe. Alternatively, you could do
what American chef Renee Erickson does, which is what she calls ‘home-made salt cod’: fresh cod fillets,
trimmed into pieces and sandwiched between salt to cover entirely, more or less the same weight as the
fish, and left to firm up in the fridge for 4 hours before using (here, too, I would check for salt, but do it
the opposite way: rinse off the salt, pat dry and taste-test it about 3 hours in – if it is firm and suitably
salted, then it is ready, otherwise leave it an extra hour. Note that thinner pieces of fish will salt quicker
than thicker pieces).
Fried soft-shell lagoon crabs
Moeche fritte

WE SPENT A FOGGY WEEKEND in autumn searching for moeche: soft-

shelled green lagoon crabs that change their coats for a fleeting moment, a
matter of hours, every autumn and spring. I wasn’t even sure it would be
possible to find what I had come looking for, but we booked a hotel on the
Giudecca – that long, thin island that lies under the belly of Venice’s fish (have
you ever noticed it looks like a fish from above?) – and we waited for news
from a friend of a friend who knew someone. Not just anyone, but the so-called
‘last of the moecanti’, the last family of fishermen in Venice who have farmed
and harvested lagoon crabs for centuries on the Giudecca.

I was pinching myself as Manuel Bognolo pulled up to pick us up on Denis, his

bragozzo, or boat, right around the corner from the hotel, an ex-flour mill,
where Manuel used to play with his friends as a boy. He took us through the
canals and around the rarely seen underside of the Giudecca to the shack –
unreachable by foot – where his brothers picked through the crabs, which were
slowly sliding or crawling sideways on a slightly inclined wooden board into a
large bucket to be tipped back into the sea. To me, they all looked the same, but
the moecanti could spot the moeche in an instant just by the shade of their
bellies. It took only a glance and the crab was swept up quickly and placed into
a small bucket.

What followed will remain etched in my memory as possibly the best day of
my life. Manuel took a bowl full of moeche right from the shack, stepped back
onto the boat where he had set up an enviably well-equipped makeshift kitchen
and he fried them.

A recipe popular in Venetian restaurants and books describes placing the crabs
in a bowl full of beaten eggs and waiting for them to greedily eat it all before
frying them, but Manuel insists that’s not the real way to prepare this Venetian
specialty. His suspicion is that this is a tradition from the terraferma, the
mainland, as a way to stretch the meal and fill you up, countering the need to
buy more crabs (which have their price, about 80 euro a kilo). And besides,
Manuel added, eggs are more plentiful in the countryside than they are in the
lagoon. It’s certainly not the way fishermen would make it. I was convinced.
Manuel took about 100 g (3½ oz) moeche per person and dusted them lightly
but completely in flour. Then he fried them in plenty of vegetable oil at 175°C
(345°F) until the shells changed colour from lagoon green to deep red. And
that was it.

He opened a bottle of Ribolla Gialla and we talked while we ate and sipped,
floating on the foggy lagoon, about his family, their history, climate change,
how things have changed in Venice. In the 1990s they could bring in 10–
12,000 kg (22–26,500 lb) of crabs in one day. This particular day that we were
together they found 3 kg (6 lb 10 oz), but, I’m told, spring is usually a better
season. Manuel talked with romance about the cycle of the moeche, the male
crabs, who change their shells twice a year, in spring and autumn, as they grow.
The female, la masanetta, undergoes the same shell change in the summer and
this is when the moecanti fishermen stay away, as it’s mating season. Manuel
described the way the male crab, after mating, tucks the soft-shell female under
one leg to protect her until her shell grows back as the same way the lion of
San Marco – the symbol of Venice – is holding his book.

I’ve never tasted anything like these moeche, but there is another secret that
Manuel let me in on: he has served us a specialty normally set aside for the
fishermen themselves, what they call strapasae or, in Italian, stroppiciate – the
moeche that are the softest but that don’t make it to restaurants who ask for the
prettiest-looking, pristine ones. Strapasae, even though they are full of water,
are much more delicious and the fishermen get to take them home. We finished
the last delightful, crunchy bites and the final drops of our glasses and glided
back over the water at sunset, and I couldn’t help but think the taste of these
moeche were pure Venice.
Fried Venetian prawns

Schie fritte

THIS DISH IS ALSO KNOWN SIMPLY as polenta e schie, indicating how

important it is that these prawns, tiny grey shrimp that are fished out of the
Venetian lagoon, are served together with polenta. There is something really
satisfying about this contrast of textures: the soft, velvety bed of polenta topped
with the incredibly crunchy prawns, which are eaten – strictly – heads, shells
and all. No Venetian would bother to sit and peel these tiny prawns one by one,
it would be unthinkable. But also, you’d really miss that crunch, which is vital
to the whole experience of eating schie.

Note that this is traditionally eaten with white polenta, which is a soft, floppy
style of polenta, but you could also eat these schie just as they are as a
delicious crunchy snack, like chips, perfect for aperitivo. This amount would
easily serve at least four people as part of a meal, but if serving smaller plates
as cicchetti, you could stretch it to eight.

Serves 6–8 as antipasto or cicchetti

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) live, very small prawns (shrimp) (school prawns or brown
shrimp)
1½ tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour, for dusting
vegetable oil, for frying (see frying notes)
creamy white polenta or polenta crostini, to serve

Place the whole prawns in a large bowl and dust with the flour, mixing gently
so they are all covered lightly. Pour the vegetable oil into a wide frying pan
with at least 2 cm (¾ in) oil and heat over a medium heat to 180°C (350°F).

Fry the prawns in a few batches – they should only take about 30 seconds to
cook (they will turn orange and the flour will become crisp and golden). Drain
on absorbent kitchen paper and sprinkle generously with salt. When they are all
ready, serve them with hot, creamy white polenta, or with grilled white polenta
crostini.
NOTE You need really tiny prawns (shrimp) for this that can be bought live, ideally, or are extremely
fresh, as they are eaten whole. A very close substitute for schie would be school prawns in Australia,
which are equally small, wild-caught prawns often found in estuaries, or brown shrimp in the US or UK
(where it is also known as Morcombe Bay shrimp, which you can often find already peeled; go for the
whole ones). Do not use already cooked or peeled prawns for this.
Crumbed zucchini

Zucchine impanate

I LIKE TO MAKE THESE with round zucchini (courgette), but you could
use regular long ones and do long strips instead, or you could also use eggplant
(aubergine). These are delicious as they are but try also using them as a base
for topping with a soft cheese such as buffalo mozzarella or stracchino, perhaps
with a fresh mint or basil leaf as a garnish. These are lovely warm or at room
temperature but best on the day they are made as they tend to go soggy if left
overnight.

Makes 10–12 cicchetti

400 g (14 oz) zucchini (courgette) (about 2 large round ones)

1½ tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
1 egg, beaten
70 g (2½ oz) dry breadcrumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

Slice the zucchini into thick discs, about 0.5–1 cm (¼–½ in) thick. Get three
shallow bowls ready: one with the flour, one with the egg and the other with
breadcrumbs. Add a pinch of salt to the beaten egg. Dip both sides of the
zucchini discs into the flour, then into the egg to cover and, finally, in the
breadcrumbs to coat entirely.

Heat enough vegetable oil in a frying pan so that there is at least 1 cm (½ in)
oil and heat over a medium heat to around 180°C (350°F). Fry both sides until
deep golden brown, about 1½ minutes total. Drain momentarily on absorbent
kitchen paper, then sprinkle with salt and serve.
Dawn at the fish market in Burano
Piatti piccoli Insalata di mare
Small plates Seafood salad

Insalata di aringa grigliata

Grilled smoked herring salad

Insalata di Gallina Padovana

Padova chicken salad

Asparagi con salsa d’uova

Asparagus with egg yolk sauce

Canestrelli gratinati coi funghi

Gratin scallops with mushrooms

Funghi e polenta
Mushrooms and polenta

Seppie al nero
Cuttlefish stewed in its ink

Ton fresco in tecia

Fresh tuna stewed with tomatoes

Baccalà al pomodoro
Salt cod stewed in tomatoes

Carpaccio alla Cipriani

Cipriani’s carpaccio

Fegato alla veneziana

Venetian-style liver

Patate alla veneziana

Venetian-style potatoes

Frittata dei frati

Friar’s wild herb frittata
The Rialto market
The seasons of the Rialto market
When I’m in Venice, the first place I’m drawn to is the market. It’s a
spectacle on its own; there is always something to see and a constant flow of
people – or seafood or birds – to watch.

You can spot the season, if you know the clues, just by looking at the
abundant fish, displayed on huge beds of ice and looking like live Dutch
still-life paintings, often moving, being spied on by oversized seagulls that
wait for the fishmongers to turn their backs for a moment to steal a sardine.
There are enormous piles of whole cuttlefish, smudged by their own ink, that
are at their best in spring and autumn and disappear very quickly from the
counters, and shellfish of all kinds – snails, queen scallops, mussels, clams
(vongole) and tightly tied bags of long cappelunghe, razor clams, if it isn’t
their mating period between April and May. There might be an enormous
whole tuna waiting to be carved, gleaming sea bass and striped mackerel,
tiny whole squid, piovra, large whole octopus, and moscardini, their smaller
cousins, and always the long, stiff grey tails of dried stockfish sticking out of
vessels. The freshest, plump scampi. Wriggling mantis shrimp and lobsters
that might walk right off their perch. In the winter and spring, too, you can
find the best examples of granceola, spider crab. Latti di seppia is another
specialty, one that you might only find in Venice – cuttlefish ovaries, which
are boiled briefly and dressed with olive oil, parsley and pepper and eaten as
cicchetti, ideally with a glass of chilled Prosecco.

It’s the place to know what is in season. Venice has a unique lagoon
environment and a strong link to the comings and goings of the seasons.
Venetian specialties are truly fleeting – the moeche (soft-shell crabs)
available for a couple of months in the spring and autumn change their shells
in a matter of hours. And the special tiny castraure artichokes have a season
of 10, maybe 15 days in spring. Whenever I visit Venice, I have this urgency
to enjoy that special thing that is only in season for that moment.

Elizabeth David has a wonderful account in An Omelette and a Glass of

Wine (1984) that describes this seasonal urgency on a visit to Locanda
Cipriani on the island of Torcello in May of 1969, where she was introduced
to risotto with bruscandoli, wild hop shoots, a wild green found locally only
in the first 10 days of May. The next day, at Romano’s on Burano island, she
had it again and was told that she might even find some at the Rialto market,
‘Hurry though. The season ends any day now.’ So she went back to Torcello
to have her fill again and later at the Rialto market found an old woman
selling a few bunches of it: ‘it’s the last of the year, she said – took it back to
my hotel, stuck it in a glass so that I could make a drawing of it. When I
came back in the evening the zealous chambermaid had thrown it away. No,
next morning there was no old lady selling bruscandoli in the market. For
once it was true, that warning “tomorrow it will be finished”.’ After reading
this, I went looking for it on my next visit to Venice’s Rialto market. It was
the 1st May, but 52 years after Elizabeth David’s encounter with
bruscandoli. And there they were in piles between the plump stalks of
Bassano white asparagus and the castraure, wrapped in bunches in pink
satin ribbon, as you would only see in a Venetian market.

Venice’s lagoon produce

Venice’s cuisine is one that is, substantially, very simple and, while the
‘magpie’ city loved collecting things, including ingredients, from other
cultures, there was an abundance of local products too.

Without a doubt, ‘Fish is the most important element of Venetian cooking’,

as Ada Boni writes in Italian Regional Cooking. Built on the water, Venice is
blessed with a bounty of seafood; even the most ancient of testimonies
describe the array of fish found and the ways they were prepared in the
lagoon – usually very simply grilled for larger fish, or fried for small fish,
and if not eaten right away, perhaps marinated in saor. On the island of
Murano, eel, skinned and scored, was prepared in a nest of bay leaves and
cooked near the embers of the roaring ovens used to heat and melt glass.
Indeed, many of the most special seafood dishes today are the ones that were
once considered ‘poor’: sardines, fried and marinated in saor, moeche (soft-
shell crabs) and schie, the tiny grey prawns (shrimp), both fished out of the
lagoon and eaten whole, fried and on a gleaming puddle of white polenta.
One of the classic symbols of Venetian seafood today is also one of the most
impressive-looking, granceola, or spider crab, where the meat of the boiled
live crab (those in the know will use both the male crab for sweeter meat and
a female crab for more abundant meat, together) is almost always served
inside an upturned shell as a bowl, dressed very simply with olive oil, lemon
and parsley.

Meat was – and still is – secondary to the seafood. If it isn’t obvious enough,
there was nowhere for large animals to graze on an island city built on a
lagoon, though live cattle was imported from the East and there was a
slaughterhouse for fresh meat on the Lido (offal, in particular liver and tripe,
were and still are popular – such as in the classic Venetian-style liver with
onions). Otherwise, beef was usually prepared in ways that used the meat of
old animals that could no longer work. Even horse was traditionally eaten
for the same reason – those too tired for the return journey back to Genova
were usually slaughtered in Venice, writes Riley, and often made into
bresaola.

There is also a revered, very traditional dish of preserved mutton known as

castradina, where salted and smoked mutton imported from Albania or
Dalmatia (a historical region of Croatia, along the east shore of the Adriatic
Sea) is cooked with cabbage, onion, bay leaf, juniper berries and wine or
stock into a stew. It’s a traditional dish prepared for the Madonna della
Salute, ‘Our Lady of Health’, celebrating the end of the devastating 1630
Plague every 21st November with the beautiful Basilica built on the Punta
della Dogana that you can see from Piazza San Marco. It is a dish that Mariù
Salvatori de Zuliani writes was ‘obligatory on the tables of the poor, the
nobility and merchants, alike’. This mutton (or any leftovers) were also used
to prepare riso in cavroman, where you can also find a Levantine influence:
a stew of tomatoes and mutton, with a soffritto of celery, onion and carrot,
spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, finished with a handful of rice per
person.
Wild hop shoots at the Rialto market
A bag of moeche (soft-shell crabs)
While researching the many traditional recipes over centuries of Venetian
cooking, I noticed that fresh pork is a real rarity in Venice, presumably
because of the difficulty of keeping pigs, as with beef. You do, however, find
the odd recipe for pig’s trotters, boiled then cooked with lardo, onion and
cabbage, or liver, cooked in the same way as veal liver, but you mostly see
pork in the form of sausages and salame, the most traditional of which are
luganega and sopressa, respectively, preparations that make good use of all
parts of the pig and spices.

Poultry was a far more important ingredient in Venetian kitchens. Chickens,

turkeys, pigeons and geese (an important part of Venetian-Jewish cuisine),
birds known as da cortile, could be easily kept in the small courtyards
attached to palazzi. Turkey cooked with pomegranate juice (a Persian-
sounding dish) is traditional, while roast duck is a special and festive dish for
the Festa del Redentore that Venetians celebrate in July for the end of the
Plague that gripped the city in the sixteenth century. As important as seafood
was the hunting of wild water birds attracted to the lagoon as well – Vittore
Carpaccio’s painting of a bird hunt on the lagoon from 1490 shows how it
was done with a bow and arrow while standing on a gondola (although there
is an argument as to whether these birds were eaten or hunted for their
feathers). Gallina Padovana was particularly appreciated for its meat, an
ancient breed with a prominent crest, which is clearly depicted in Jacopo da
Verona’s 1397 fresco of the Annunciation in Padova. There is a legend that
during the thirteenth century a treaty was drawn between Padova and Venice
that forced the Paduans to bring thirty of their indigenous hens to Venice
each year, an accord that lasted five centuries.

The saline soils of the islands around Venice provided a place for vegetables
to grow successfully and, even today, much of Venice’s local produce comes
from the island of Sant’Erasmo – artichokes, especially the best-known
young castraure, which are picked off the plant early, but also wild hop
shoots, peas, zucchini (courgette), beans, eggplant (aubergine), pumpkin and
radicchio, the latter of which is from nearby Chioggia and Treviso. Even
local grapes, some of which are being revived by the Michelin-starred
restaurant Venissa, on the island of Mazzorbo.

Like the seafood, vegetables are cooked very simply. The preferred way is in
tecia, dialect for ‘in the pot’, with a bit of olive oil, garlic and herbs. In fact,
you will find that this simple combination of garlic and parsley, minced very
finely, with olive oil is the favourite way to accompany fish or vegetables –
and, mostly, not much else is needed. When in doubt, and when you have
absolutely gleamingly fresh seafood and seasonal vegetables as they do in
Venice, the only thing you need to do to reproduce it in a Venetian way is
use these three key ingredients.

Olive oil was imported into Venice from their colonies on the Greek islands
and sold to Lombardy, Trentino and Bavaria. Because of its availability to
the Venetians (who kept 40 per cent of what they imported for their own use)
olive oil was (and still is) the preferred fat for cooking. It’s interesting to
note too, that for preparations such as sarde in saor (and the many
variations), which have roots in Venice’s Jewish quarter, it was preferred to
use olive oil for frying (which was often prepared on a Friday for Shabbat,
the Jewish day of rest), rather than animal fat so that the next day the fat did
not solidify and there was no further cooking required.
Seafood salad

Insalata di mare

THIS IS A CLASSIC SEAFOOD recipe that is much loved all along the
Italian coast. It is popular served along with cicchetti as it’s a good one to
prepare in advance and keeps well chilled in the fridge. I like to keep the
mussels in their shells and eat them right out of their shells with my hands.
My husband, Marco, prefers not having to fiddle with them and always
wants to remove their shells before serving them. We compromise by doing
both.

Serves 4

150 g (5½ oz) cherry tomatoes

80 ml (2½ fl oz/⅓ cup) olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
150 g (5½ oz) calamari (about 1 medium-sized one)
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) mussels
1 potato, peeled and diced
150 g (5½ oz) prawns (shrimp) (about 12)
½ celery stalk, preferably the top half with leaves still attached
handful of parsley leaves
1 garlic clove
juice of 1 lemon

Halve the cherry tomatoes and drizzle over some olive oil and a pinch of salt
and let them marinate in a bowl while you prepare the other ingredients.

Clean the calamari and scrub the mussels with a metal scourer – pull the
beards from the mussels if they haven’t already been cleaned by the
fishmonger (if you are buying them vacuum-packed they are usually already
cleaned).

Place the potato in a pot of cold water and cook until tender, about 15
minutes. Use a slotted spoon to fish out the potato pieces and set them aside
to cool, then add them to the tomatoes. Keep the water in the pot boiling for
cooking the seafood.

Poach the calamari for 1–1½ minutes and remove with a slotted spoon,
setting aside with the potato.

Poach the prawns whole for 1 minute and drain, then add them to the
calamari.

In a separate pan, place the mussels over a medium heat and steam them
open. Give the pan a shake to make sure any underneath have the chance to
open. It should take about 2 minutes. Remove some of their shells if you like
and add the mussels to the rest of the seafood along with the celery and its
leaves.

Make a dressing by finely mincing the parsley, garlic and a pinch of salt
together on a chopping board. Place in a bowl and whisk in the lemon juice
and olive oil, along with some freshly ground pepper. Toss together with the
salad ingredients and serve. This is quite nice when it has had a little bit of
time for the flavours to mingle, for example, prepared in the morning for
lunch.

VARIATIONS You can use any favourite seafood here, and you could even just use one type – how
about just prawns (shrimp), for example? This is a combination I particularly like, but here are some
other ideas you could consider: octopus instead of the calamari; vongole or other clams instead of the
mussels; crab meat; tinned or fresh tuna, salmon or mackerel, gently poached. You can also keep it
strictly seafood and remove the vegetables, if you wish, or add even more vegetables – I also like
black olives, thinly sliced fennel or marinated artichokes here.
Grilled smoked herring salad

Insalata di aringa grigliata

THIS SALAD IS PARTLY inspired by a recipe in the Veneto chapter of

Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking. It utilises renga, as it is known in the
Veneto, or aringa, smoked whole herring, which is another preserved fish
like baccalà and stoccafisso that comes from a northern European tradition
but is well used in this corner of Italy. You might find it as a sandwich filling
(use it in place of tinned mackerel or tuna, for example); Cantinone già
Schiavi offer a cicchetto with herring and scarola, bitter curly endive (salty
and bitter are so good together), and it works really well as a simple topping
on a slice of polenta with the classic parsley, garlic, lemon and olive oil.

The herrings are first salt-preserved and then cold-smoked, and the time that
they are smoked (and therefore their quality and flavour) can differ greatly.
They usually come in two different qualities, noted in Italian as dorata,
golden, the most prestigious and the most flavourful, which is smoked for 3
days, or argentata, silver, which is a bit more delicate as it is only smoked
for a maximum of 12 hours. Sometimes smoked herring can be eaten just as
it is, while others need to go through a process of desalting – usually soaking
for 24 hours in milk – in order to make them palatable. That said, my
mother-in-law’s grandfather used to take the salty smoked herring as is and
rub it against thick slices of polenta, to insaporire, for extra flavour.

Ada Boni uses the herring as it comes – in other words, not cooked or even
desalted, in a salad with onion, white beans, black olives and boiled eggs.
But I have to admit that once I discovered a method from Pellegrino Artusi’s
1891 cookbook Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene that he describes
as aringa ingentilita, ‘refined herring’, it quickly became my favourite way
to eat smoked herring. He first calls for desalting in boiling hot milk for 8–
10 hours, then grilling it and dressing in olive oil and lemon juice. It’s
absolutely delicious. He describes also placing the herring in cold water and
bringing to the boil, poaching for 3 minutes, then rinsing in cold water again
before eating as another method to ‘refine’ it, which you could too if you
prefer.
Serves 4 as a shared cicchetto or antipasto

1 smoked herring
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) hot full-cream (whole) milk
½ red onion, thinly sliced
3–4 radicchio leaves, torn
1 celery stalk with leaves, thinly sliced
60 g (2 oz) cooked borlotti (cranberry) beans
1 hard-boiled egg, quartered
¼ green apple, skin on, finely sliced
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar, or lemon juice, plus extra for the onions if
desired
Place the herring in a container with a lid and pour the hot milk over it.
Leave to cool, then place in the fridge for 8 hours and then drain of the milk
and rinse in fresh water. Pat completely dry. To obtain the fillets, cut the
head of the fish off, and then, using the backbone as a guide, slice
lengthways just above the backbone and as close to the bones as possible.
Remove the backbone and any large bones that may be remaining, any guts,
and cut off the tail. You should now have two clean fillets.

Grill the fillets of herring in a griddle pan over a high heat for 2 minutes,
then let cool and break apart with your hands.

In the meantime, if you want to take the edge off the red onion, soak the
slices in a bowl of hot water with a splash of red-wine vinegar while you
prepare the salad. You can also choose to leave them as is; the bite goes
quite nicely with the herring.

Arrange the salad with radicchio, celery, borlotti, the egg quarters, apple and
the (drained) onion slices. Scatter over the herring and parsley and dress
with the extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar. You probably won’t need salt on
this salad, but adjust to your taste.
Padova chicken salad

Insalata di Gallina Padovana

THIS RECIPE IS INSPIRED by a salad that is also known as Insalata

Gonzaga, found in the cookbook by Bartolomeo Stefani, the chef of the
House of Gonzaga in Mantua, L’Arte di Ben Cucinare from 1662, and is still
a much-loved dish in the area (Mantua or Mantova is on the border of the
Veneto in Lombardy). Traditionally made with galletto, a young chicken
similar to a poussin, or with cappone, a castrated rooster, it is poached, then
the meat is shredded and dressed simply with lemon zest, olive oil and
vinegar, and an important, very specific pop of sweetness from sultanas. In
the original seventeenth-century recipe, candied citron featured too, along
with the feet of the chicken.

But getting closer to Venice, I was intrigued by a recipe in the Slow Food–
produced cookbook Ricette di Osterie del Veneto for a similar recipe using
Gallina Padovana, an ancient, Venetian heirloom breed of chicken with an
impressive plume of feathers on its head, and the same agrodolce, or sweet-
and-sour, flavours found in the Gonzaga salad (indeed familiar in many in
saor dishes too). The recipe, proposed by Enoteca Angelo Rasi in Padova,
includes salad leaves, green beans, beetroot (beets), sultanas, candied citron
(or green apple), redcurrants and balsamic vinegar.
Serves 4 as antipasto

½ whole chicken
1 small onion
1 carrot
½ celery stalk
1–2 tablespoons sultanas
50 g (1¾ oz/1 cup) baby spinach, or other small salad leaf such as rocket
(arugula)
1–2 tablespoons pine nuts
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard
1 teaspoon honey

To poach the chicken, place in a stockpot with the onion, carrot and celery
and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for 1–1½
hours, then turn off the heat but allow the chicken to cool in the stock. Pull
the meat off the bone, shredded with either your hands or by chopping finely
with a knife, and set aside. Keep the stock for another use.

Soak the sultanas in a glass of water (some like to use white wine) for about
20 minutes, then drain.

Arrange the salad leaves, shredded poached chicken, sultanas and pine nuts
in a serving bowl.

For the dressing, whisk together the lemon zest and juice, olive oil, mustard
and honey. Add a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper to taste, then
dress the salad. You may not need all the dressing.

NOTE Try to get a really good chicken for this – organic and free-range – as it is so simply prepared.
It will make a difference. If you are using a poussin then you can use the whole thing, otherwise I have
suggested half a regular chicken. The chicken broth left over from cooking is wonderful for making
soup with or for boiling and serving tortellini in, so save it for another use (it freezes well too). If you
happen to have mostarda, that very spicy, nose-tingling fruit compote, you can use it in place of the
mustard and honey in the dressing. Pomegranate seeds would be very fitting here too, if you have
them – the juice or seeds of pomegranate are found in some ancient Venetian recipes such as paeta,
roast turkey with pomegranate, butter and sage, very reminiscent of its Middle Eastern influence and
the Persian dish fesenjān – their sweet-and-sour flavour goes really well here.
Asparagus with egg yolk sauce

Asparagi con salsa d’uova

THIS IS A VERY CLASSIC approach to serving asparagus in the prime of

the season. Asparagus is a wonderful Venetian vegetable, though white
asparagus is particularly loved in this region. Nearby Bassano del Grappa is
famous for their DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) status white
asparagus and in the spring these plump, creamy white vegetables appear in
the markets. There is just one local green variety of asparagus, Montine
asparagus, that has been grown on the lagoon north of Venice for centuries,
around the islands of Lio Piccolo, Mesole and Treporti, and is usually boiled
or cooked in risotto.

This sauce is like a light mayonnaise, but simpler in a way as you really just
throw everything into a blender. I like this just the way it is, but I’m also
inclined to slink an anchovy or two over this too, or, if you’re keeping this
vegetarian, a spoonful of chopped capers.

Serves 6 as a starter, antipasto or side dish

2 eggs
bunch of asparagus
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil

Place the eggs in a small saucepan of boiling water and cook at a rapid
simmer for 9 minutes for a hard-set yolk. Remove from the heat, drain the
eggs and place in a bowl of cold water. When cool enough to handle, crack
the egg all over, refresh the bowl of water and, with your hands in the water,
begin to peel the eggs. The shell should come off very easily this way. You
only need the yolks for this recipe, so save the whites for another recipe or
do what I do – eat them as the cook’s snack!

Trim the woody stems off the asparagus, then boil for about 10–15 minutes
with a good pinch of salt depending on how thick they are, until tender.
Rinse under cold water to stop them cooking further and set aside to drain.

In a small food processor or with a hand blender, or simply by hand, mash

the egg yolks with the lemon juice and olive oil to a smooth, creamy sauce.
Adjust to taste with salt and pepper. Serve the boiled asparagus with the
sauce drizzled over the top.
Gratin scallops with mushrooms

Canestrelli gratinati coi funghi

SCALLOPS SERVED in some kind of gratin is a classic, and these are

perfect to serve as cicchetti – I mean, they even come with their own plates!
This combination of mushroom and scallop is heavenly, and it is always
received with much oohing and ahhing. Much like the squid with peas,
where seafood is paired with a vegetable, there is some kind of magic that
happens to the flavours – where here, the mushrooms soak up the liquid like
sponges.

Makes 10 cicchetti

10 scallops
1–2 tablespoons olive oil
80 g (2¾ oz/4 tablespoons) butter
2 tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) full-cream (whole) milk
150 g (5½ oz/1⅔ cup) mushrooms (see Variations)
juice of 1 lemon
a few sprigs of parsley leaves, finely chopped
15 g (½ oz/5 teaspoons) dry breadcrumbs

Clean the scallops, cut them off the shell if needed (reserving the shells),
give them a quick rinse and pat dry. Sear them in a very hot pan with the oil
for 1 minute on each side, or until they develop a golden-brown crust but are
still bouncy and tender. Chop them roughly and set aside.

Make a béchamel by melting half of the butter in a small saucepan with the
flour over a low heat. It should become like a thick, smooth paste. Slowly
add the milk and keep stirring until the béchamel becomes thick, like
custard. Add salt to taste then set aside.
Finely slice or chop the mushrooms and cook them in a pan with the rest of
the butter for 3–5 minutes, or until they are cooked through and soft. At the
last minute, squeeze over some lemon juice and sprinkle over the parsley.

Combine the scallops, béchamel and mushrooms – taste and, if needed,

adjust for seasoning – and spoon this mixture back into the scallop shells.
Sprinkle about ½ teaspoon of breadcrumbs over each and bake them for 10–
15 minutes, or until they are bubbling and the tops are golden.

VARIATIONS I use chiodini (honey fungus), but regular button mushrooms work well too. You
could also leave out the mushrooms and simply cook these with the scallops and béchamel.
Mushrooms and polenta

Funghi e polenta

IN VENICE FUNGHI E POLENTA IS often made with fresh, meaty

porcini mushrooms or chiodini (honey fungus) and served on a bed of
creamy yellow polenta or, a more old-fashioned way to serve them, as a flan
using a small dish such as a ramekin to form ‘sformati’ with the mushrooms
served around them. Leftovers are perfect on grilled polenta crostini (or
regular bread crostini), too. This preparation is lovely with any wild
mushroom.

Serves 6

300 g (10½ oz/3⅓ cups) mushrooms

2–3 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
creamy polenta, to serve

Trim the mushrooms of any dry or woody stems then dunk in a bowl of fresh
water quickly to remove any dirt or debris. If using larger mushrooms, cut
them into smaller chunks, otherwise small mushrooms such as chiodini can
be left whole.

Heat the olive oil in a wide pan over a low heat and gently fry the garlic until
soft and fragrant (be careful not to let it brown), then throw in the
mushrooms, still wet, along with a splash of water, some salt and pepper and
turn the heat up to medium. Continue cooking until the mushrooms are soft
and cooked through. If they are small this will take about 5 minutes. Add the
parsley during the last minute, check for seasoning and toss.

Serve with creamy polenta.

Cuttlefish stewed in its ink

Seppie al nero

PILES OF WHITE-FLESHED cuttlefish stained with black ink are a

common sight at the Rialto market, where both cuttlefish and its ink sac are
valued ingredients and often cooked together. The glossy black ink lends a
deliciously briny, even earthy flavour to this dish, but above all, it lends it
that deep, dark colour that makes it such a striking dish, especially when
served over a bed of pearly white polenta, or stirred through pasta (bigoli,
thick noodles – the only traditional Venetian noodle – would be ideal) or
risotto. While squid ink (which you can also find sold as a separate
ingredient, usually in a jar) may seem like an expensive or superfluous
ingredient to some now, this is a dish that characterises cucina povera, the
peasant side of Venice’s cuisine – this was once a dish linked to tougher
times, when the only thing available to flavour some rice or polenta was the
cheap leftover ink after all the squid was already eaten. If you can, choose
smaller cuttlefish for this.

Serves 4

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil

1 garlic clove, peeled and squashed
1 onion, sliced
300 g (10½ oz) cuttlefish, cleaned (see Note) and cut into thin strips
1–2 teaspoons squid ink, or the contents of the cuttlefish’s own ink sac
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) dry white wine
200 g (7 oz) puréed or peeled tinned tomatoes (about half a tin)
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
soft white polenta or crostini, to serve

Gently heat the olive oil in a wide saucepan and infuse it with the garlic
clove for a few minutes, being careful to keep the heat on low so the garlic
doesn’t burn but only turns slightly golden. Remove the clove, then add the
onion and cook until soft and translucent, about 7 minutes or so. Add the
cuttlefish and turn the heat up to medium and cook for about 2 minutes, then
add the ink, the wine, tomatoes and a good pinch of sea salt and freshly
ground pepper. Bring to a simmer, then turn the heat down to low and cover
the pan. Let it cook for about 30 minutes, occasionally stirring and checking
for tenderness (a fork should easily pierce the cuttlefish like butter). If it
begins to look like the sauce has reduced too much, add some water to top it
up. At the last minute, stir through the parsley and taste for seasoning,
adding more salt or pepper if needed. The onions and cuttlefish make this
quite a sweet-tasting dish. Serve over soft white polenta or atop bread or
polenta crostini.

NOTE If you have procured some beautiful whole cuttlefish and are planning to use the ink sacs
inside, proceed carefully so as not to break them. First, pierce the membrane near the large, flat
cuttlefish bone (this should be done with a fingernail) and then you can easily pull out the bone.
Without this structure in the way, you should now be able to see the innards through the almost
transparent membrane – carefully pierce this (again, a fingernail should do it or you can use a small
knife, just be careful not to be too enthusiastic with it). Once you open up the cuttlefish this way, the
innards will be exposed and you can find the ink sac right at the bottom, an almost glowing, silvery-
blue orb. Gently cut it out and set aside on a plate. Cut and remove the rest of the innards. Cut off the
tentacles, avoiding the eyes and beak, which you can discard – you can cut the tentacles in half or
leave intact if small. Peel the skin off the cuttlefish, which is most easily done from the wings, which
you can pull off too. You should be left with a flap of white cuttlefish flesh that you can now cut into
thin strips. If you do not have whole cuttlefish with the ink sac or cannot get cuttlefish ink separately,
you can also do this without the ink; you’ll simply have a red sauce instead of the characteristic black
sauce, but it will still be delicious.
Fresh tuna stewed with tomatoes

Ton fresco in tecia

THIS IS INSPIRED BY a recipe that leapt out at me from a wonderful

Venetian cookbook because the recipe begins with ‘Buy a good tuna steak at
the Rialto...’ It is called A Tola Co I Nostri Veci, ‘At the table with our
elders’, originally written in 1971 by Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani and in its
seventeenth edition. This labour of love was written entirely in the author’s
native Venetian dialect and is a precious source of historical and more recent
recipes and anecdotes. I don’t speak Venetian, but I have certainly learned
now to understand many of its culinary terms after being utterly absorbed
and transported by this fascinating cookbook, which I often read with a glass
of wine in hand, to make it feel even more Venetian.

Serves 4

400 g (14 oz) fresh tuna, cut into large pieces

plain (all-purpose) flour, for dusting
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 white onion, finely sliced
4 anchovy fillets preserved in oil
3 fresh San Marzano tomatoes (or equivalent; see Note), roughly chopped
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) white wine
handful of parsley leaves, finely chopped
creamy polenta, to serve

Dust the tuna in just enough flour to coat both sides lightly.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a wide frying pan over a low heat and, when
the butter has melted, add the sliced onion and cook very gently, stirring
occasionally, until the onion is soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. Do not
let the onion brown.
Add the anchovies, which should just eventually melt into the onions,
followed by the tomatoes and wine, then turn the heat up to medium and
bring to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper. When the tomatoes have
begun to break down a little and create a bit of a sauce, add the tuna pieces
and continue cooking until the fish is just cooked, 5–7 minutes. Scatter with
the parsley and serve with some creamy polenta.

NOTE The tuna should be at least ‘two fingers thick’. I find that two thick tuna steaks cut into four
large pieces serves four people nicely. If, instead, you want to make this a small plate to share, cut the
tuna into bite-sized pieces to serve six to eight. For the tomatoes, you can use any equivalent here – if
fresh tomatoes aren’t ripe and juicy, try this with peeled tinned tomatoes (which is actually what de
Zuliani calls for), but it is equally delicious with about twelve plump, fresh cherry tomatoes, halved. If
the tomatoes aren’t particularly juicy, a splash of water can help.
Salt cod stewed in tomatoes

Baccalà al pomodoro

THERE ARE SO MANY ways to prepare baccalà in a tomato sauce – a

dish you might find in old-school bàcari or bars but also on family tables on
Christmas Eve – that when I first started researching recipes I was so
overwhelmed with the variations between family recipes and the little, subtle
touches that make them different. There are those who flour the pieces of
cod before cooking, those who use pelati (whole peeled tomatoes), as
opposed to concentrato (tomato paste/concentrated purée), or passata
(puréed tomatoes). Some add white wine, or red. Some cook the fish first in
milk. Usually there is an onion in there, sliced, but sometimes just a garlic
clove. At times, a few flecks of butter. It could be baked slowly for hours but
is most often cooked on the stovetop. Grated cheese, salted sardines, finely
chopped parsley, cinnamon, cloves, ‘giant’ borlotti giganti (cranberry) beans
(I have to admit, these are an especially appealing addition) may all make an
appearance, alone or together. But I think the one thing that unites every
single recipe is that the dish must be served with polenta.

Below is a simple version – feel free to adapt with one of the suggestions
above – but one thing that makes it special is the cinnamon, so don’t be
afraid to try just a pinch. It somehow doesn’t change the flavour so much as
enhances everything about this dish with a subtle, enticing scent.

Serves 4

2 fillets baccalà, pre-soaked (about 500 g/1 lb 2 oz)

1 white onion, finely sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) white wine, or unsalted vegetable stock, or water
1 × 400 g (14 oz) tin peeled or crushed tomatoes
pinch of ground cinnamon
creamy polenta, to serve
Remove the skin of the baccalà fillets. This is easiest to do by pulling from
the widest part, not the tail, and remove any large bones (there are usually a
few, so use your fingers to feel where they may be and pull them out with
sturdy tweezers). Cut into bite-sized chunks.

Heat a saucepan over a gentle heat with the onion and olive oil and a pinch
of salt. Cook very gently, so that the onion softens and goes a bit transparent,
but make sure that it does not colour, about 7 minutes. Pour over the wine
and turn the heat up to medium so that it begins to simmer vigorously. After
a few minutes, add the tomatoes along with the cinnamon and another pinch
of salt and, when it comes back to a simmer, add in the baccalà and turn
down the heat a notch, then cook, uncovered, for a further 15–20 minutes,
stirring occasionally. Taste for seasoning and adjust with some salt and
freshly ground black pepper or white pepper as needed.

Serve with creamy polenta.

Cipriani’s carpaccio

Carpaccio alla Cipriani

SOMETIME IN JUNE 1950, this dish was invented by Giuseppe Cipriani

of Harry’s Bar for his friend and favourite client, the well-known Venetian
countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo, who (as the story goes) had been put on a
strict diet by her doctor. It included having to avoid cooked meat (there are
many different stories as to why this may have been, low red blood cells
being one of them, but her granddaughter Barbara Garavelli Nani Mocenigo
recounts on her blog that her mother always explained nonna had been
poisoned by an anchovy and could never eat cooked meat again). So, the
countess couldn’t order her usual entrecôte, but Giuseppe instead prepared a
lean dish of raw prime beef, in the thinnest slices, with a light mayonnaise
spiked with mustard and worcestershire sauce. It has been a classic ever
since. It was named after the Renaissance Venetian painter (as Cipriani is
fond of doing) Vittore Carpaccio, who studied under Bellini.

Serves 2 as a light lunch or 3–4 as antipasto

200 g (7 oz) beef fillet

2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon juice
200 ml (7 fl oz) extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon dijon mustard
white pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon full-cream (whole) milk, or as needed

To prepare the beef, make sure it is cleaned of any connective tissue and fat
(trim it away if not) so you are left with just the lean meat. Put the fillet in
the freezer for 30 minutes so that it is nice and firm.

In the meantime, you can prepare the sauce. Blend the yolks with a pinch of
salt and the lemon juice with a hand blender and slowly add the olive oil in a
thin stream until it is incredibly creamy and very thick – you may not need it
all. Stir through (and adjust to your taste), the mustard, some white pepper,
worcestershire sauce and some milk to loosen the sauce to your liking. You
may even like to add more lemon juice or more salt. Set aside.

Remove the fillet from the freezer and slice into 3 mm (⅛ in) slices with a
very sharp knife, then flatten the slices using the flat side of the knife’s
blade, using a bit of pressure until you flatten them to about 1–2 mm ( in)
thin. This will result in neater, more compact slices than if you batter them
with a meat mallet.

Scatter salt over the top (place the salted meat in the fridge to keep well
chilled until needed if not serving right away), then serve the Carpaccio with
the sauce drizzled over the top. You can also put the sauce in a squeeze
bottle so you can decorate the dish ‘Kandinsky style’ as they like to do in
Harry’s Bar, in a sort of criss-cross pattern.

NOTE You could easily make this into more of a cicchetto by placing small slices of beef onto toasted
bread crostini with a drizzle of the sauce over the top. This makes plenty of sauce, you won’t need it
all, and if using a hand blender or similar you will find it hard to make this mayonnaise in a smaller
quantity – but the bright side is that it is absolutely delicious and you will want to eat it with
everything you can. It’s perfect with fish, with vegetables, and on sandwiches too. It goes without
saying that you should use the best-quality beef you can afford.
Venetian-style liver

Fegato alla veneziana

THIS IS A CLASSIC of Venice’s cuisine, and much loved throughout Italy.

I was immediately drawn to the two recipes that Mariù Salvadori de Zuliani
includes in her Venetian cookbook A Tola Co I Nostri Veci. One is a recipe
from the year 1800 and she claims it is the most authentic recipe for this
classic dish, which doesn’t use either vinegar or wine, but lemon juice. The
other recipe is her own family recipe and she adds that you can use wine –
red, or even a sweet one like Marsala – to finish the dish. But some will use
beef stock, others just white-wine vinegar. It is really about balancing the
sweetness of the onions and liver with the acidity of the wine and vinegar
and, to this end, I think the lemon wedges (for guests to adjust the acidity to
taste themselves) are a must.

Serves 6

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) white onions, thinly sliced
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) veal liver, sliced into strips (see Note)
80 ml (2½ fl oz/⅓ cup) white wine or white-wine vinegar
a few parsley sprigs, finely chopped
lemon wedges, to serve
creamy polenta, to serve

In a wide, shallow pan, heat the oil and butter together and begin cooking the
onion over a low heat with a good pinch of salt until it is very soft, almost
creamy, about 15 minutes. Add a splash of water to help the cooking without
browning the onion. Add the liver, turn up the heat to medium–high and sear
all sides briefly, adding salt and freshly ground pepper. Pour over the white
wine, add another pinch of salt and continue cooking for 5 minutes. The
liver should be cooked until slightly pink inside. Serve scattered with parsley
and lemon wedges over a puddle of soft polenta.
NOTE This is best made with very fresh veal liver, but if you can only find frozen liver, defrost it
slowly by placing it in the fridge overnight for best results.
Venetian-style potatoes

Patate alla veneziana

THE PAIRING OF ONIONS with these golden, olive oil–soaked potatoes

is quite irresistible to me. Some might compare this to a similar French dish
for Lyonnaise-style potatoes, but I can’t help but think the use of onions this
way is so typically Venetian (and, actually, that before becoming Venetian, it
was borrowed from the great exposure to Turkish cuisine, as gastronome
Giuseppe Maffioli suggests), where everything from baccalà to fried
sardines to liver starts out this way. You could serve these in small bowls
with a toothpick to fish them out as cicchetti. This is as delicious piping hot
as it is cold the next day.

Serves 4–6

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) potatoes

1 white onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or as needed
handful of parsley leaves, finely chopped

Place the whole potatoes in cold water and bring to a simmer, then par-boil
for 15 minutes. Drain. When cool enough to handle, peel and chop the
potatoes into chunks (the reason for boiling them whole first is so they aren’t
too watery for the next step).

Cook the onions in the butter and olive oil in a wide frying pan over a
medium heat until they begin to turn soft, about 3–5 minutes. Add the
potatoes, a good pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper, and continue
cooking, tossing occasionally, to give the potatoes time to get a nice golden
colour. They should be cooked through, while getting a little crisp and
browned on the edges and the onions should begin to caramelise, about 7–10
more minutes. You could add some olive oil if you think it needs it. Sprinkle
with the parsley at the last minute and adjust for seasoning, adding salt or
pepper if you like.
Venetian-style whole spider crab
Granceola alla veneziana

THIS LARGE CRAB, also commonly known as grancevola or granseola,

is often the centrepiece of Venetian restaurants, where it will be flaunted on
ice in displays at the front to entice customers. It is, as Mariù Salvatori de
Zuliani writes, the most well-known specialty of Venetian cuisine. She notes
it is best eaten in the months of November until January, as this is when you
can find the females also full of eggs. They must always be cooked live, the
long, spider-like legs and claws tied to the body so they don’t splash, and the
meat is simply dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice. In I
Sapori del Veneto (2010), Mila Contini notes you should get one male crab
and one female crab – the first has tastier meat, the latter has it in more
abundance – boiled for exactly 7 minutes, then cracked open, shredded and
mixed together. In restaurants, it’s often served in the opened shell of the
crab itself, turned upside-down like a bowl. The shredded meat is placed
inside and the dressing goes over the top, then you only need a fork and a
glass of Prosecco.
Friar’s wild herb frittata

Frittata dei frati

THIS IS A FRITTATA to prepare in the spring when you can forage for
wild herbs. Otherwise, use any regular fresh herbs you like; just remember
the key here is to use fistfuls of them – not just as a garnish, but treat the
herbs like vegetables.

This is a recipe I read about in a book produced by Slow Food, Ricette di

Osterie del Veneto, but it is actually a centuries-old preparation. A frittata
filled with wild herbs including spinach, mint, sage, marjoram and parsley is
in one of the oldest Italian cookbooks, the fourteenth-century Libro per
Cuoco, written by a Venetian cook, as a recipe intended for Quaresima,
Lent, where eating meat was forbidden for 40 days until Easter. The Slow
Food recipe itself is inspired by the sixteenth-century cookbook Singolar
Dottrina by Domenico Romoli, a sort of gastronomic encyclopedia of
Renaissance Venice from 1560, and it includes a handful of breadcrumbs
boiled in wine to thicken the frittata, which is perfumed with cinnamon and
white pepper, along with basil, lemon verbena, spearmint and santoreggia
(winter savory).

I use a combination of wild and regular herbs, such as wild fennel, borage,
nettle, nepitella (calamint, but you could use a combination of mint and
oregano in its place), sage and rosemary. In the Veneto, some other
traditional herbs you can find are bruscandoli (wild hop shoots), wild
radicchio, dandelion and poppy leaves, wild asparagus and wild garlic.
Romoli’s reference to frati, or friars, in the name of this dish I imagine is
because Venice’s vegetable gardens and green spaces were often found
inside monastery walls and the use of herbs in cooking and medicinal
concoctions was a specialty of these monasteries. The traditional finish on
this frittata is a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar. It’s unusual today, but
cinnamon and sugar was a condiment that you’d easily find on Venetian
tables that was only relatively recently replaced with grated parmesan. It
works beautifully on this herby frittata.
Makes 4 cicchetti

40–50 g (1½–1¾ oz, or two big handfuls) fresh wild or regular herbs (see
opposite for suggestions)
4 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
a good grating of fresh nutmeg, or a pinch of cinnamon
white pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine, or water

When you get home from foraging herbs, place them in a large bowl of cool
water for a while to revive them and keep them fresh, then let them dry on a
tea towel (dish towel). When ready to cook, chop the herbs all together very
finely (breathe in the incredible scent!).

Beat the eggs with the parmesan in a small mixing bowl and add the nutmeg,
a good pinch of salt and some white pepper.

Place the butter and oil in a wide, non-stick frying pan or cast-iron pan
(something that is good for sliding eggs around in) over a medium heat.
Cook the herbs for about 1 minute, letting them sizzle and turn dark green
and glossy. Pour over a splash of white wine, continue cooking for 1 minute
then add the egg mixture. Swirl to cover the whole pan and cook until it is
set on top – the egg should still be glistening but not very wobbly. Slide the
frittata gently onto a plate held in one hand, then place the pan over the top
of the plate and, carefully but decisively, flip everything together so that you
now have the undercooked side of the frittata on the bottom of the pan.
Continue cooking for 30 seconds or so, then flip back onto the plate. Serve
warm or at room temperature, cut into slices, or as a topping for crusty
bread.
Fresh scallops from the Rialto market
At a cafe in Campo Santa Margherita
Dolci e bevande Spritz
Sweets and drinks Bellini

Sgroppino

Cioccolata calda di Marco

Marco’s thick hot chocolate

Marmellata di rose
Rose petal jam

Fritole
Venetian Carnival fritters

Crema fritta
Deep-fried custard

Crema di mascarpone
Mascarpone cream

Bussolai
S-biscuits from Burano

Zaleti di Valeria
Valeria’s polenta and sultana biscuits

Pevarini
Pepper biscuits

Pinza di pane
Bread pudding

Torta de pomi
Venetian apple cake

Pan del doge di Zaira

Zaira’s fruit cake
Panificio Giovanni Volpe in the old ghetto is Venice’s only remaining kosher bakery
Sugar, the powder of Cyprus
Sugar was the status symbol of the elite in the Renaissance – and it was
accessible to Venetians more than anyone else in Europe thanks to the fact
that they were the first to import this precious, sweet substance. The
Venetians first encountered sugar during the Crusades at the end of the
eleventh century. Although the Arabs had already introduced sugar to Sicily
when it was an Arabic state in the ninth century, it didn’t catch on anywhere
else. It was the lagoon city that commercialised and then diffused it to the
rest of the continent.

The Libro per Cuoco, the fourteenth-century cookbook by the ‘anonymous

Venetian’ cook, is filled with recipes influenced by the East, ‘a richness of
sugar and spices that at the time only Venetians could afford’, says Giuseppe
Maffioli. According to Giampiero Rorato, until the sixteenth century,
however, sugar was still considered a spice in Europe – and spices were, for
the most part, treated as medicinal. So, the cost of sugar was exorbitant and
it wasn’t used for food. Sweetness was usually obtained by adding honey or
sultanas, or mosto, the leftovers of the wine harvest crushed and boiled into a
jammy syrup.

The merchants of Venice kept the price of sugar high throughout the Middle
Ages, but as the Venetian Republic expanded their cultivation of sugar cane
on their colonies in Cyprus and Crete, and perfected the long and
complicated process of creating sugar, it became a more accessible, more
common ingredient in the kitchen and on the table. But this happens, notes
Carla Coco in Venezia in Cucina, for the most part, in the 1700s. La polvere
di Cipro, the powder of Cyrus, she says, was a must at parties, celebrations
and weddings. Venice was full of laboratories that created marzipan,
confections, candied almonds and caramelised fruit. Sugar was sprinkled
generously over fritole, fried treats cooked humbly on the street. But it’s not
just for sweets: the ‘imprinting from the Levant and the love for sweet-and-
sour [dolzegarbo in dialect, much like the many in saor preparations] is used
in dishes that are served throughout the entire meal – not just at the end’,
Coco notes. In fact, until recently, Venetian dishes were often finished with a
condiment of grated cheese, cinnamon and sugar (see also the unusual sweet,
deep-fried meatball recipes in the introduction to Polpette di carne).
Around this time, too, so-called ‘colonial drinks’ such as tea, coffee and hot
chocolate began to appear, all served with sugar in small pots, and teacups
and teaspoons that weren’t there before became part of the table setting.
Meanwhile, cafes – think of decadent Caffè Florian, which opened its doors
in magnificent Piazza San Marco in 1720 – filled with the ritual of cafe-
goers drinking cups of tea, coffee and chocolate at all times of the day. A
ritual revolving around that sugar pot.
Spritz

Spritz

UNDENIABLY, THE SPRITZ has become one of Italy’s – if not the

world’s – favourite cocktails. And yet just a decade ago it was something
you may have only enjoyed when travelling to Italy’s north-east, where the
drink originated as nothing more than a mixer of white wine and sparkling
water (today it’s called spritz bianco, a white spritz; see Variations). In
Venice, the spritz is still the favourite aperitivo of choice and when you ask
for one, you’ll immediately be asked with which bitters would you like it
made – Aperol, Campari or Select, usually, but some also offer bitters such
as Cynar, the artichoke digestif, which makes a nice change.

Select, intense pinkish-red and dry, with flavours of juniper berries and
rhubarb roots, is the choice of proud Venetians, as it is local (an idea born
between the young Pilla brothers in the sestiere of Castello in 1920) and,
whenever I can, I like to order mine with this too as I find the usual Aperol
can be cloyingly sweet. Those who prefer a stronger cocktail and the classic
bitter flavour will like the version with Campari.

This is the perfect spritz, served in a tumbler with a whole large green olive
(not the kind that have already been pitted) served on the end of a skewer so
you can easily fish it out of the glass and nibble on it, but some may like a
slice of orange instead.

Makes 1 short spritz

ice, as needed
30 ml (1 fl oz) Select
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) Prosecco
soda water (club soda), to top up
a large green olive on a skewer, or a slice of orange as garnish (optional)
Fill a short tumbler with ice to cool the glass while you gather the
ingredients. Tip out any melted ice that may have gathered at the bottom of
the glass. Pour over the Select, the Prosecco, then top up with soda water.
Serve with an olive, or your preferred garnish. Double this amount if you
want to put it in a bigger glass such as a wine glass.

VARIATIONS The Hugo is a delicious variation of the original white wine and sparkling water spritz,
most often made with the addition of 20 ml (¾ fl oz) elderflower syrup (lemon balm syrup was the
original creation, but admittedly more difficult to procure) and therefore less alcoholic than the better
known spritz. A squeeze of lemon is nice in this too. Garnish with mint leaves.
The land of Prosecco

ITALY’S FAVOURITE SPARKLING aperitif is produced in the north-east

of the country, in the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, but the best Prosecco
comes from the hills of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene (pronounced ‘ko-ne-
lee-ah-no val-doh-bee-ah-den-aye’) areas in the province of Treviso, a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, and this wine is protected with prestigious
DOCG (Controlled and Guaranteed Designation of Origin) status, which you
will always find as a paper sticker attached to the neck of the bottle. It is
worth seeking out as, in comparison, Prosecco labelled DOC is a more basic,
mass-produced Prosecco.

Prosecco is actually also the name of the grape variety used in this
eponymous wine, but in 2009 was renamed Glera (confusing, but this was
done so that ‘Prosecco’ could be registered as a region instead), but it isn’t
the only grape you will find in the wine – often you can find other rare
indigenous varieties such as Verdiso, Bianchetta and Perera making up a
small percentage too. What sets Prosecco apart from other sparkling wines is
how it is made – yeast and sugar is added to the base wine in very large
fermentation tanks. As the wine referments, carbon dioxide is released and
the pressure caused by this carbonates the wine. The wine is then filtered and
gets a hit of sugar before bottling. Prosecco labelled Brut is the driest, with
the least amount of sugar added, up to 12 g (¼ oz) per litre. Extra Brut has
between 12–17 g (¼–½ oz) and then there is Dry, 17–32 g (½–1 oz).
There is also a recent revival of a traditional process known as Prosecco col
fondo (fondo is the sediment that you can find at the bottom of a wine bottle)
where the wine is refermented in the bottle. I’m a fan of this style of
Prosecco, which is often cloudy but not always. Look for Prosecco labelled
Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore DOCG.

Unfortunately Prosecco’s worldwide popularity (two thirds of it is exported

overseas) might also be its environmental downfall. In recent years,
prominent figures such as Carlo Petrini, founder of the International Slow
Food movement, and the bishop Corrado Pizziolo have spoken out against
the alarming rate at which the

Prosecco production area is expanding, which is creating a vast monoculture

with a great dependency on pesticides. Where possible, look for EU-certified
organic Prosecco (represented by a little rectangle with a green leaf in it) and
try to find low-intervention producers, such as Bele Casel, Costadilà and
Casa Coste Piane.

Prosecco is so loved because it is food-friendly, it’s perfect for serving with

cicchetti or antipasto, and it has very fresh, simple and crisp aromatics. I
think as an aperitif it is rather perfect also because it isn’t too alcoholic
(usually hovering around 10.5–11.5 per cent alcohol). Naturally, you will
find this local bubbly all over Venice, often served on its own, but also
mixed in drinks, from Spritz to Bellini, as well as in an after-meal form as
Sgroppino. Serve it as chilled as possible, in an equally chilled glass.
Bellini

Bellini

MADE WITH RIPE, BLUSHING white peaches, this light and refreshing
cocktail is the perfect summertime aperitivo. The original Bellini was
created in the 1930s in Venice’s legendary Harry’s Bar. It’s a simple, elegant
drink of local Prosecco, stirred gently (so as not to lose fizz) with puréed
white Veronese peaches. Giuseppe Cipriani, Harry’s founder, named it after
the rosy colours famous in the paintings of Venetian Renaissance artist
Giovanni Bellini, and it is still one of the most popular things to order at
Harry’s Bar. The classic ratio is one-part peach purée to three-parts
Prosecco. If you are using Saturn (also known as donut) peaches, those
beautiful flattened white peaches, then you can use two of them for this
recipe.

This is how it is made by my husband, Marco, who before becoming a

sommelier was an excellent bartender at the Atrium Bar at the Four Seasons
in Florence. He has the following three tips to share:

Everything should be well chilled, from the peach to the Prosecco, to the
glass (put the glasses in the freezer for 10 minutes before serving).

Exposure to air can oxidate the fruit, making the peach purée turn brown –
avoid this by not preparing the purée too far in advance (in other words, do it
on the spot).

Finally, don’t be tempted to add anything else.

Serves 2

1 chilled white peach

250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) Prosecco
2 teaspoons caster (superfine) sugar, if needed
Peel and pit the peach. Place the fruit in a blender with half of the Prosecco
and, if the peach is a little tart, the sugar, and blend until smooth. Pour into
chilled glasses, add the rest of the Prosecco, give it a gentle stir with a spoon
and serve immediately.

VARIATIONS If you cannot get white peaches, there are a number of classic variations on the
Bellini, where another fresh, seasonal fruit is substituted for the peaches. For example, a Rossini is
made with strawberry purée, Puccini with freshly squeezed mandarin juice and Tintoretto with fresh
pomegranate seeds and juice. Just don’t substitute yellow peaches; it wouldn’t look anything like the
pink Venetian skies of a real Bellini.
Sgroppino

Sgroppino

THIS FROTHY AFTER-DINNER digestif is an age-old refresher that

once graced aristocratic Venetian tables, served between courses as a palate-
cleanser, particularly when moving between a seafood and a meat dish.
Today, you will often see it as an after-dinner drink in place of dessert and it
might even be boosted with a splash of vodka. Its name comes from the
Venetian word to ‘un-knot’ or ‘to loosen’ – in fact, it is a welcome drink to
enjoy after a big meal.

Sadly, in many restaurants you may come across it as an industrially

produced, pre-mixed slushie-type concoction. It goes without saying the
home-made version is far superior. I also like it in an unmixed version, a
little like an elegant, adult ice-cream soda, where the Prosecco is topped with
a scoop of lemon sorbet (and perhaps reinforced with a shot of vodka). The
key to making this is creating a light and smooth-as-silk consistency. A
blender makes this very easy, but purists argue that it should be hand-
whisked, as the blender melts the sorbet too quickly. I’m all for doing this by
hand – it doesn’t take long and whisking is no more laborious than cleaning
a blender.

If you have access to really good lemon sorbet from an artisan gelateria by
all means use that; if not, below you can find a home-made version.

Serves 4–6

HOME-MADE LEMON SORBET

zest from 5–7 medium-sized lemons
300 g (10½ oz) sugar
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) lemon juice, strained

TO ASSEMBLE
500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) Home-made or other good-quality lemon sorbet (see
above)
500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) Prosecco
For the sorbet, zest the lemons by either peeling them carefully in strips with
a vegetable peeler (be careful not to take the white pith, which is bitter) or by
grating the lemons with a microplane and place the zest in a saucepan along
with the sugar and 300 ml (10 fl oz) water. Bring to the boil to make a
simple syrup, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Take off the heat and let it
cool, then add the lemon juice.

If you have cut the zest into large strips, remove these (you can let them dry
on a baking rack and you have some strips of candied lemon to use in cakes
or biscuits or as a garnish); microplaned zest can remain. If you have an ice-
cream machine, churn through the machine until the sorbet is creamy and
set. If not, pour the cooled mixture into a large, shallow container so that it is
not more than about 7.5 cm (3 in) deep. Freeze for 2 hours, then take out the
container and give the whole mixture a good stir with a fork or a whisk.
Place back in the freezer and, after another 2 hours, stir again. Place back in
the freezer for a further hour or two, until it is creamy rather than icy, and
can be scooped easily. Give it another stir and it is ready to use.

If you are using store-bought lemon sorbet, remove the sorbet from the
freezer about 10 minutes before assembling the cocktail to let it soften
slightly. Place the sorbet in a bowl and whisk by hand until creamy, almost
like the texture of whipped butter.

Divide the sorbet between glasses – flutes or Martini glasses are perfect for
this. Top up with Prosecco, a little at a time, and stir gently until well
incorporated and frothy. Serve with a spoon if quite thick.
Marco’s thick hot chocolate

Cioccolata calda di Marco

WHEN HE WORKED as a bartender in Florence’s best bars long ago, my

husband, Marco, perfected this smooth, dark, thick hot chocolate – it’s hard
to go back to drinking regular hot chocolate after tasting this. In many Italian
bars hot chocolate is often made with less cocoa and with the addition of
starch (usually cornflour/cornstarch or arrowroot/tapioca flour) to thicken it,
but Marco instead likes to use extra cocoa in place of the starch, which
naturally equates to a deeper, darker chocolate flavour.

This is quite rich, so you only need a small amount – this recipe makes
enough for two teacup-sized hot chocolates, which I think is the perfect size.
This is on the not-too-sweet side, so feel free to adjust to your taste, but I do
think the whipped cream is essential, especially if you want to feel as if
you’re sitting in historic, decadent Caffè Florian in Piazza San Marco with
one of their iconic hot chocolates con panna.

Makes 1 large drink, or 2 smaller drinks

125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) pouring (single/light) cream

1 tablespoon icing (confectioners’) sugar, sifted
35 g (1¼ oz) unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) full-cream (whole) milk

Whip the cream with the icing sugar until thick, soft peaks form. Keep
chilled in the fridge while you make the hot chocolate.

Combine the cocoa powder and sugar in a small saucepan and add the milk,
a little at first, and mix with a spatula or a whisk until you have a thick paste
with no more dry bits, then add the rest of the milk, stirring in as you go,
until it is smooth. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer over a low heat and
let it cook for about 1 minute while you stir, until it is thickened slightly.
Pour into cups, top with some whipped cream – you may not need all of it,
but you never know.
Rose petals for breakfast on an
Armenian island monastery

I STUDIED FINE ART at university, something that brought me to

Florence in my twenties, where I was awarded a scholarship from the Italian
embassy to study art restoration. For several weeks over two autumns while
doing that second degree, I got the opportunity to work in the Armenian
monastery of the island of San Lazzaro in Venice, where in return for food
and lodging, I repaired flooded etchings from the monastery’s incredible
museum collection.

San Lazzaro degli Armeni was a leper colony in the Middle Ages – and this
is how the island got its name, after Saint Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers
– but by 1601 it lay mostly abandoned other than as a vegetable plot for the
cathedral of San Pietro, until 1717 when La Serenissima gave the island to
the founder of the Armenian Catholic Mekhitarists to build a monastery. It
has since become one of the world’s most important centres of Armenian
culture. When Lord Byron visited the monastery in 1816 there were seventy
monks at San Lazzaro. When I was there in 2007 and 2008, there were just
five. It sits a 15-minute ferry ride from Piazza San Marco, just west of the
Lido and neighbouring the island of San Servolo, where you can now find
the Venice International University but was previously an island for escaped
nuns and the insane.
The island is small and flat – it probably takes a handful of minutes to walk
all the way around it – but big enough for the Armenian monastery that sits
quietly and proudly on the lagoon, where it houses a church and a stunning
cloister, an extensive museum, a publishing house (now in disuse),
accommodations, flower and vegetable gardens, olive trees, rose bushes and
occasionally an exhibition for the Venice Biennale. Water softly laps around
the edges of the monastery and that is about all you can hear except for the
occasional speed boat on its way to the Lido.

In the evenings after closing the makeshift laboratory, I would catch the
vaporetto coming from the Lido, glide into a foggy Piazza San Marco and
wander the quiet canals of Venice to my favourite bàcari, bridges and
squares before heading back to the monastery, like Cinderella, by midnight.
But one of my favourite parts of the day was breakfast, when the monks
supplied coffee, fette biscottate (dried slices of bread), butter and a large,
deep-pink jar of their famous rose petal jam, known as vartanush – ruby,
almost transparent petals floating in a luscious, silky syrup. It is made every
May with small, blooming magenta flowers, picked at sunrise. The
monastery is open for guided visits once a day for visitors coming in on the
vaporetto from Piazza San Marco, and this is the chance to get a jar of their
special rose petal jam – but it is produced in limited quantities and they
disappear quickly off the gift-shop shelves.
Rose petal jam

Marmellata di rose

WHILE THE ARMENIAN monks of San Lazzaro did not reveal their
exact recipe to me, one thing that they did share was their special technique:
the petals have to be massaged to soften them and get the most out of that
beautiful rose perfume and fuchsia colour. I’ve long used a recipe from
Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 cookbook as inspiration; he loves using ‘rosa dalla
borraccina’ (also known as rosa centifolia, literally ‘hundred-leaved’ rose,
or cabbage rose, as they are known above all for their sweet fragrance and
rose oil), but I’m quite convinced the success of making a rose petal jam as
special as the one from San Lazzaro island depends on the roses themselves,
which should be small, deep pinkish-red roses with thin petals, perfumed
and freshly picked, not at all wilted or old. It is also important to choose rose
petals that you know have not been sprayed, for example from someone’s
garden. Do not use commercial roses for this. For this recipe you will need
about two large mixing bowls full of petals.

Makes 750 ml (25½ fl oz/approx. 3 cups) jam

200 g (7 oz) freshly picked rose petals

juice of 1 lemon
600 g (1 lb 5 oz/2¾ cups) sugar

Gently rinse the rose petals and lay them on a tea towel (dish towel). Use
another tea towel to carefully dab them to remove some of the excess
moisture. Place them in a large mixing bowl with the lemon juice and about
200 g (7 oz; approximately 1 cup) of the sugar. Rub and carefully ‘massage’
the petals with the sugar and juice until they are no longer velvety but limp
(still whole, however) and the mixture begins to look like a pulp. Set aside.

Place the rest of the sugar in a saucepan with 625 ml (21 fl oz/2½ cups)
water. Bring to a simmer over a medium heat and cook until the sugar is
dissolved. Add the massaged rose petals and continue simmering until the
syrup thickens slightly and the petals no longer float, stirring occasionally.
This takes about 30 minutes.

Note that this jam is not the same consistency as a traditional jam, but rather
it is a perfumed syrup with softened, delicate petals in it. A saucer test will
help you quickly see if the jam is ready: place a saucer in the freezer before
you start and when you want to test the jam, add a small blob of it to the cold
saucer. As it cools down, quickly look at how the syrup behaves when you
turn the plate to let it run (it should run slower than water, as it will be
slightly thickened). Be careful not to overcook the syrup as it will harden.

Transfer the hot jam to sterilised glass jars, fill to the top, seal tightly and
leave to cool. If instead you are filling the jars with cooled jam, once sealed,
place them in a saucepan filled with water right up to the neck of the jar and
boil for 5 minutes to help seal the jar completely, then let cool. Store in a
cool, dry place until opened and then store in the fridge, where it should be
consumed within a few weeks. I particularly love this rose petal jam drizzled
over thick yoghurt or ricotta.
Venetian Carnival fritters

Fritole

DECLARED THE OFFICIAL dessert of Venice in the eighteenth century,

sugar-crusted fritole (which are similar to doughnut holes but are studded
with dried and candied fruit and nuts, and rolled in sugar) were also called
the ‘Queen of Venetian pastry-making’ by early twentieth century Venetian
journalist Elio Zorzi. It’s interesting when you delve into this beloved treat –
which was sold piping hot in the streets, ‘Calde calde calde le ga a boaa’, as
the call of fritoleri announced – that they are also the perfect example of
how Venetian cuisine was so uniquely marked by the lagoon city’s important
relationship with the Levante, which in medieval Venice referred, in
particular, to Syria-Palestine, Egypt, Turkey and even Greece.

In Giampiero Rorato’s Origini e Storia della Cucina Veneziana (2010), the

journalist points to a work by an eleventh-century physician from Baghdad
known in Europe as Ibn Jazla. His tome was translated into Latin in 1280 by
the Jewish-Sicilian doctor Faraj ben Salem and there are a number of Persian
recipes, including one for Zelabia, also described by Giambonino da
Cremona in Liber de ferculis et condimentis (‘the book of dishes and
condiments’, which is essentially a collection of Jazla’s Arabic recipes,
translated by Giambonino in the thirteenth century) as a yeasted batter where
small portions are fried by the spoonful in oil or lard and covered in honey.
A century later, in the Libro per Cuoco written by the ‘anonymous Venetian
cook’, recipe twenty-eight is for frittelle bianche, ‘white fritters’ that are
made with a yeasted batter that includes almond flour (ground almonds) and
are covered in sugar. This is an important – and specifically Venetian – case,
to see sugar at this time rather than honey (see Sugar, the powder of Cyprus).

Fast forward to the sixteenth century and we find ‘Zelabia’ again in an

account by Andrea Alpago, a Venetian physician to the consulate in Syria
reporting on foods, medicines and other products, described as a spongy, soft
pastry fried in oil and eaten with sugar or honey and found throughout Egypt
and Syria. And in Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera (1570) there is a recipe for
frittelle alla veneziana, Venetian-style fritters, where goat’s milk, butter,
rosewater and saffron are mixed with flour into a dough before eggs are
added and the batter is fried in lard, then served hot, covered in sugar.

Around the time of Gaetano Zompini’s etching of a Venetian street-side

fritolemaker, Le Arti che Vanno per Via, was printed, Pietro Longhi painted a
similar scene, La Venditrice di Fritole (1755), which is displayed in Ca’
Rezzonico, one of the most beautiful palaces (and home of the Museum of
eighteenth century Venice) on the Grand Canal. In this outdoor scene, a
woman is stooped over a pot of fritters, stringing the fritole onto a long
skewer; her young helper is holding a large bowl of fritters to the side, while
the customers seem to be ordering three skewers, indicated by a simple hand
gesture.

Shortly after Zompini’s etchings were printed, Carlo Goldoni released a new
theatrical comedy, Il Campiello (one of Goldoni’s most celebrated works),
set and written in celebration of Venice’s Carnival, featuring a proud
Venetian seller of fritole, Orsola. One can only imagine that the character of
Orsola, like the women in Longhi’s and Zompini’s artworks, in her dress
with its large apron, crouched over a bubbling pot of fritters, depicted
faithfully a truly beloved part of Venice’s everyday life.

Although the peddlers selling their freshly fried fritole on street corners in
Venice are no longer, every single bakery and pastry shop in the city makes
sure no one goes through Carnival season without the offer of fritole still on
street corners or campi. Traditionally made in copious amounts to feed an
army ( judging by the list of ingredients in old recipes) with a yeasted batter
of eggs, flour, milk, grappa or rum, and usually dotted with sultanas, candied
citron and pine nuts, these days you’ll find many more kinds on offer, filled
with ricotta, crema (custard), rice, thinly sliced apples or even zabaione.

Some don’t add sugar to the dough at all, only coating it generously after
they are fried. Very traditional recipes might leave out the eggs. Lemon zest
is common too, especially if you decide to leave out the candied citron (and
adds so much fragrance to the warm fritters). Many of the traditional recipes
(before the time of electric mixers) call for working the dough tirelessly for
30–45 minutes with a wooden stick – but this loose batter produces puffy,
fluffy fritole with the ease of a simple hand whisk.
Makes approx. 16

80 g (2¾ oz/½ cup) sultanas

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) grappa, or rum
15 g (½ oz) fresh yeast (or 3.5 g/0.12 oz active-dried yeast)
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) lukewarm full-cream (whole) milk
1½ tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon sugar, plus extra for rolling them in
zest of 1 lemon
½ teaspoon salt
200 g (7 oz/1⅓ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
30 g (1 oz) pine nuts (optional)
vegetable oil, for frying (tips)

Place the sultanas in the grappa and let them soak until needed (alternatively,
you can soak them in warm water if you prefer).

Crumble the fresh yeast (or mix the dried yeast) into the lukewarm milk and
mix until creamy. Tip this into a large bowl and whisk in the melted butter
and the eggs until combined, then add the sugar, lemon zest and salt. Whisk
in the flour just until you have a sticky but smooth batter rather like thick
pancake batter.

Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place (such as inside the oven with
the pilot light on, or next to a heater if you are doing this in the dead of
winter, as is traditional for Carnival) for about 2 hours, or until doubled in
size. Add the sultanas and their grappa (or drain them if not using the
grappa) and stir them into the batter along with the pine nuts, if using.

Heat enough oil in a saucepan over a medium heat so it is at least 5–7 cm

(2–2¾ in) deep.

Prepare a cooling rack with a few sheets of absorbent kitchen paper and
place the extra sugar in a bowl.
When the oil reaches about 160°C (320°F) – if you don’t have a candy
thermometer you can also look for the visual cues described – using two
spoons to help you, pick up blobs of batter and carefully drop the batter into
the hot oil. Fry a few at a time, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Let
them cook, turning them on all sides until evenly deep golden brown; you
want to make sure the dough is cooked all the way through, which takes 3–4
minutes. When ready, first drain them on the absorbent kitchen paper for a
moment, then, while still piping hot, roll them in the sugar (alternatively, you
can dust them in icing/confectioners’ sugar later). These are divine while
still warm, but you can also serve them at room temperature. They are best
on the day they are made.
Deep-fried custard

Crema fritta

FRIED CUSTARD IS A specialty of the Venetian Carnevale (Carnival),

and from the 17th January for the feast day of Anthony the Great until
Martedì grasso (Mardi Gras) you can find these sugar-crusted golden cubes
in Venice’s bakeries, pastry shops and bàcari. Sometimes they are even
made with sweet polenta cooked in milk until creamy instead of custard.
Loved by adults and children alike for good reason, grown-ups might like
these particularly with a glass of dessert wine.

Makes 16

2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
200 g (7 oz) sugar
120 g (4½ oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) full-cream (whole) milk
zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 g (3½ oz/1 cup) dry breadcrumbs
vegetable oil, for frying

Separate the eggs and set aside the whites for later. Whisk the four egg yolks
directly in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with half (100 g/3½ oz) of the sugar.
Add the flour and whisk again to a smooth, thick paste. Add the milk, bit by
bit at the beginning, until you have a smooth, fluid mixture. Add the lemon
zest and vanilla and, finally, place the saucepan over a low heat. Using a
wooden spoon or a whisk, keep an eye on the custard as it heats, stirring
slowly but constantly to ensure it doesn’t catch at the bottom (the edges of
the pan are the first place it will start to thicken). Once the mixture begins to
thicken, you will need to stir more frequently to ensure it stays smooth, and
keep stirring until it is quite thick and semi-solid – the custard should hold
its shape. This should take about 20 minutes.

Scrape the custard out of the saucepan and into a buttered, rectangular
shallow dish (something like a brownie pan is ideal) and let this mixture cool
completely, covered. You can do this the day before and leave it overnight in
the fridge if you prefer. Once cooled, cut the custard into 16 squares, around
3 × 3 cm (1¼ × 1¼ in), or whatever makes the most sense in your pan.

Whisk together the two egg whites set aside from earlier in a shallow bowl.
In another shallow bowl, place the breadcrumbs. Dip the cubes of custard
first into the egg white to cover all sides and then into the breadcrumbs the
same way and place them on a clean plate until all the custard is crumbed.

Prepare another shallow bowl with the rest of the sugar.

Place enough oil in a small saucepan to cover the cubes of custard (about 4
cm/1½ in deep, minimum) and heat over a medium heat. It should be about
160°C (320°F), or, if you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can test the
oil by dipping the end of a wooden spoon into it – it should bubble like
Prosecco immediately. Fry the custard in small batches for about 90 seconds,
or until they are golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper briefly then toss the
hot fried custard into the sugar, rolling it on all sides to coat. You must do
this while the custard is piping hot or the sugar won’t stick. You can serve
immediately or even enjoy them at room temperature, but these are best
eaten on the day they are made.
Mascarpone cream

Crema di mascarpone

BEFORE TIRAMISU OR ‘tiramesù’ was invented in 1970 at the

restaurant Alle Beccharie in nearby Treviso, there was always crema di
mascarpone, the simplest preparation of sweet, creamy mascarpone that has
a few similarities with zabaione, another creamy northern Italian favourite
for the dipping of biscuits. This is the recipe I have been using since I first
tasted a family friend’s tiramisu as a teenager (in fact, if you triple this you’ll
have enough for a three-layer tiramisu made with savoiardi dipped in
coffee). Many traditional recipes, such as those of Giuseppe Maffioli in La
Cucina Trevigiana (1983) and Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani in A Tola Co I
Nostri Veci, call for just the egg yolk, which makes a slightly richer, less
pillowy crema. De Zuliani suggests a splash of rum, if you like, and serving
it in Murano glass-stemmed bowls – naturally.

Serve it with fresh strawberries in the spring and summer, over pandoro at
Christmas time, or on its own, eaten with a spoon, or for dunking biscuits
anytime. Baicoli are particularly Venetian biscuits, ones that no one makes
anymore because the Colussi company make such perfect Baicoli that still
come in attractive, vintage-looking tins, and they are rather perfect for
dipping in sweet mascarpone – small, thin and crunchy, and not too sweet.

Serves 3–4

1 very fresh egg, at room temperature

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
150 g (5½ oz) mascarpone
biscuits for dipping, such as Baicoli, or fruit such as strawberries

Separate the yolk and the white into two medium bowls. Whip the egg white
(make sure you use a very clean bowl – glass or metal is best – and very
clean beaters to quickly get beautifully stiff whites) until you have stiff
peaks that hold their shape even when you turn the bowl upside-down. Set
aside while you whisk the sugar into the egg yolk and add the mascarpone
until combined. Fold the whipped egg white into the mascarpone mixture.
Chill completely before serving in small bowls with biscuits or fruit to dip.

This is best eaten on the day, or the next at most.

NOTE This recipe uses raw eggs, so it is important that you have very fresh, organic, free-range eggs
– if that isn’t already your norm. You could pasteurise the eggs if you are squeamish about using them
raw, but in Italy the classic way is the simplest way, with fresh eggs. If you can remember to let your
egg come to room temperature before using, you will have maximum fluffiness.
S-biscuits from Burano

Bussolai

THE NAME OF THESE biscuits that are associated with the colourful
island of Burano comes from the Venetian word buso, or buca in Italian,
meaning hole. The original bussolai were made simply of bread dough
(water, flour, yeast and salt) and shaped into the characteristic ring and
baked, after which they could easily last three months if kept well in a
biscuit tin – no wonder, then, they were the preferred snack of the mariners
and fishermen from Burano.

These beloved, long-lasting bread rings were eaten by all Venetians (they are
also known as buranei, or buranelli, referring to their origins on the island of
Burano), as they were eventually prepared by the bakeries run by
Serenissima apparently as early as the fifteenth century. They took the place
of regular fresh bread during meals and were dipped into wine.

But bussolai today are usually in the form of sweet biscuits, rich in egg
yolks, buttery and sweet (a recipe for bussolà in the fourteenth-century Libro
per Cuoco written by ‘a Venetian cook’ describes a baked good somewhere
between a bread and a biscuit, with eggs, salt, flour and honey). They can
still be found in rings, but also in an S-shape, according to some stories, at
the request of a restaurateur on Burano, which made them easier to dip into
small glasses of sweet wine – these esse-shaped ones have since become
more popular.

Carol Field has a recipe for buranelli in her brilliant book The Italian Baker,
where her irresistible introduction reads, ‘Close your eyes and picture the
water stretching away from Venice, past the palazzi and gondolas on the
Grand Canal, and think about finding your way to the island of Burano that
lies beyond Venice, where these S-shaped buttery cookies are made’. She
creams 125 g (4½ oz/½ cup) soft, unsalted butter with almost double the
amount of sugar and five egg yolks, perfuming the batter generously with 2
teaspoons vanilla extract and the zest of two lemons, adding flour and salt
and shaping into Ss. It is quite similar to the way they are made at Cantina
Do Spade, an excellent bàcaro near the Rialto market, which is where I have
adapted this recipe from.

Makes 16
100 g (3½ oz/⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, softened
100 g (3½ oz/scant ½ cup) sugar
zest of 2 lemons
4 egg yolks
250 g (9 oz/1⅔ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl and add the sugar, lemon zest,
and then the egg yolks, one at a time. Beat until you have a smooth and
creamy mixture. Fold in the flour and mix carefully (I use a spatula here)
until the dough comes together. Cover the bowl and place the dough in the
fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Split the dough into four pieces and roll
these into long snakes, about the width of your finger. Break off 15 cm (6 in)
lengths and form into an inverted S or a ring shape – or both. Bake until just
cooked – about 15 minutes. They should still be pale, just starting to turn
golden. Place on a wire baking rack, where they will harden as they cool.
Rizzardini, Venice’s oldest pastry shop, opened in 1742
The colourful houses of Burano
Valeria’s polenta and sultana biscuits

Zaleti di Valeria

VALERIA NECCHIO IS A kindred spirit and an old friend. I have always

admired her writing, her knowledge and appreciation for food and traditions,
and her careful, beautiful photography. Valeria was born and bred in the
Venetian countryside, and her cookbook, Veneto, is an ode to her homeland.
To celebrate it when it was published, we went to Venice to clink many
glasses of Prosecco together.

We wandered the calli of Venice for hours, to the sound of water lapping at
the edges of the canals, and visited the markets, of course, and hopped to and
from beloved bàcari to eat morsels of baccalà mantecato, boiled eggs with
anchovies and sarde in saor, before visiting a favourite restaurant of hers,
Anice Stellato, in a gloriously quiet corner of Cannaregio, where we sat by
the canal and had a meal of seared scallops with candied lemon and
spaghetti with scampi, washed down with a carafe of unfiltered Prosecco.
And when we got home, a plate of her delightful zaleti were waiting for us.
These plump yet light and crumbly hand-formed polenta biscuits, studded
with sultanas, are a love of mine. I could eat them all the time – and Valeria’s
are the best.

The name Zaleti, also known as zaeti in dialect, comes from the word
gialetti, from giallo, or yellow, for the presence of yellow polenta, which
gives the biscuits a unique, crumbly crunch – use what is known as
‘fioretto’, or very finely ground polenta. The rest changes from household to
household. Valeria says this was the recipe her mum – who was not fond of
baking – would make when she couldn’t be bothered to swing past the
bakery. In other words, it is foolproof. Try them with a glass of sweet wine,
such as Malvasia or Moscato.
Makes approx. 26

80 g (2¾ oz/½ cup) sultanas

60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) grappa, or water
280 g (10 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
250 g (9 oz/1½ cups) fine ‘fioretto’ polenta (cornmeal)
½ teaspoon baking powder
180 g (6½ oz/⅔ cup plus 1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, chilled and diced
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
150 g (5½ oz/⅔ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
icing (confectioners’) sugar, for dusting (optional)

Soak the sultanas in the grappa for at least 15 minutes, then drain.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, polenta, a pinch of salt and the baking
powder and rub this mixture through the butter with your fingers until you
have a mixture that resembles damp sand. Beat in the eggs and the yolks,
then the sugar, and bring the dough together – you might find this easiest
with your hands. Finally, tip in the drained sultanas and combine well. Chill
the dough in the fridge for 1 hour.

When ready to bake, heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Use a heaped
tablespoon-sized piece of dough and form it into a thick oval. Place on a
baking sheet lined with baking paper and flatten it a little. Leave at least 4
cm (1½ in) space between the biscuits as they will puff up a bit.

Bake for 15–17 minutes – they should be golden and slightly cracked on top
but not browned and definitely still a little soft inside. Cool on a wire baking
rack and, if you like, dust them with icing sugar before serving. They last
well for 2 weeks in an airtight container.
Pepper biscuits

Pevarini

THESE WARM, SPICY, not-too-sweet biscuits are rich in molasses, which

substitutes sugar entirely in this recipe and is what also gives them their deep
brown colouring and mellow, balsamic-like flavour. They are named for the
presence of pevare, or pepper, in Venetian dialect – this is white pepper to be
precise – and often the recipe is accompanied by other spices too, such as
cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. You could use a combination of them here
too. Originally, these would have been made with lard in place of the butter
or sometimes brushed with a sticky glaze of simple syrup when coming out
of the oven. This is inspired mostly by a recipe from Giampiero Rorato’s I
Dolci delle Venezie (2005).

Makes approx. 35

350 g (12½ oz/2⅓ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons ground white pepper
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
250 g (9 oz/¾ cup) molasses
75 g (2¾ oz/⅓ cup) unsalted butter, softened
juice of ½ lemon
1 egg
cocoa powder, for dusting

Place all the dry ingredients, except for the cocoa powder, in a large bowl. In
a separate bowl, beat the molasses, the butter and lemon juice until caramel-
like. Add the egg then stir (I like a wooden spoon or a fork) into the flour
mixture until you have a well-combined dough.

Rest the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge, or even overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Then, on a clean
surface such as a wooden board, roll the dough to about 5 mm (¼ in) thick
(dust it beforehand with cocoa powder if it is sticky; this will help, like flour,
for it to not stick but the colour blends in better). Cut into diamonds
approximately 5 cm (2 in) wide and place, spaced well apart, on a baking
sheet lined with baking paper.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the biscuits are slightly puffed and dry on top.
Cool on a wire baking tray. They keep well stored in an airtight container for
up to 3 weeks. Try these dipped in wine.
Bread pudding

Pinza di pane

THIS IS AN ANCIENT RECIPE – possibly the most ancient of the

Venetian dessert repertoire – that has a special role for the Epiphany, on 6th
January, and the start of Venice’s Carnival season. As old traditions went,
young singles on this day had to eat a slice of pinza in seven different houses
to guarantee getting married within the year.

As it is a homely dish, and one that makes good use of leftovers or whatever
you have on hand, you can find pinza made with all kinds of grains as the
base – polenta is very common, but also buckwheat, regular flour or stale
bread.

I have a soft spot for bread puddings, and this is my favourite version,
closely followed by the polenta one. Like the Pan del doge di Zaira, you’ll
find it studded with dried fruit (usually figs and sultanas), which sometimes
may have been the only sweet contribution in this pudding, and nuts of all
kinds, some sort of liquid, be it milk with a splash of white wine, grappa or
Alkermes, but also an array of spices such as wild fennel seeds, cinnamon or
nutmeg. It’s quite a soft pudding, not too dense, no matter what it is made
with, perfumed with citrus and fennel, full of dried figs and sultanas, and it
is to be washed down with a glass of sweet wine, such as Marsala.
Serves 10

250–300 g (9–10½ oz) stale bread (about half a large country-style loaf )
500–750 ml (17–25½ fl oz/2–3 cups) warm full-cream (whole) milk
150 g (5½ oz/1 cup) sultanas
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) grappa, or rum or white wine
2 eggs
80 g (2¾ oz/⅓ cup) sugar
60 g (2 oz/¼ cup) butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, bashed slightly in a mortar and pestle
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
150 g (5½ oz/1 cup) dried figs, roughly chopped
icing (confectioners’) sugar, for dusting (optional)

Tear or cut up the bread (whether you leave crusts on or off is up to you, but
you should end up with a total of about 250–300 g/9–10½ oz) and let it soak
in 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) warm milk until you can easily crumble or mash
the bread – add more milk if needed, or leave overnight (see Note).

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

While the bread is soaking, place the sultanas in a bowl to steep in the
grappa. If not using alcohol, simply use water.

Stir the bread with its leftover milk with a wooden spoon (it should break up
easily) – you could also use a food processor – until you have a dense,
crumbly sort of batter. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together
with the butter. Add the fennel seeds and zests and then, with a spoon or
spatula, fold in the bread mixture until it is creamy and well combined. Add
the sultanas (with their grappa) and the figs and combine.

Grease a baking tin with butter and line with baking paper or dust with flour
(this is such a homely recipe, use whatever tin you have, a springform round
cake tin around 22–25 cm/8¾–10 in wide, or a 23 cm/9 in square tin, like a
brownie tin, would work perfectly. I’ve even done this in an oval ceramic
dish). Bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the pudding is golden brown and set.
It should feel firm on top. Serve warm or cold, dusted with icing sugar
before serving, if you wish. Keep any leftovers in the fridge for up to 3 days.

NOTE The quantity of milk you will need will depend on the texture of your bread and how stale it is.
Start with 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) and if it is quite stale, leave it to soak, even overnight, and you may
need to add 250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) more milk. It should be easy to crumble or mash.
Venetian apple cake

Torta de pomi

RATHER THAN A CAKE, this dessert is really just sliced apples held
together with the smallest amount of batter. It’s reminiscent of a thin French
clafoutis and it is absolutely delicious. It is a classic, home-style dessert, for
making when you really don’t have much around except a lot of apples – in
fact, it also goes by the name torta economica de pomi in Mariù Salvatori de
Zuliani’s book: yes, an economical apple cake. If using particularly sweet
apples, I would even cut out a tablespoon of sugar; if using very tart apples,
you may like to add an extra one to the batter.

Serves 6–8

1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) apples
3 tablespoons sugar, plus extra for dusting
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 eggs
2 tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) full-cream (whole) milk
butter, for greasing

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

Peel and slice the apples and place them in a bowl with the sugar and lemon
juice to marinate while you prepare the rest. In a small bowl, mix the lemon
zest, eggs, flour and milk until smooth.

Prepare a ceramic dish or a round cake tin (like the Pinza di pane, this is the
homeliest of dishes, so use what you have but don’t try this with a
springform tin; the batter is quite thin and you’ll risk it leaking out! I have
tried this in many different-sized and -shaped dishes and I personally prefer
my widest ceramic pie dish, which is 26 cm/10¼ in, for a thin layer but you
may prefer something smaller for a slightly thicker result). Grease the dish
with butter and dust with about a spoonful of flour and sugar each, tapping
the dish or tin to distribute evenly. Tip out the excess. Arrange the apple
slices and their marinade over the bottom of the dish and pour over the
batter. It will seem like very little batter and the apples may stick out from
the top, but they will cook down.

Bake for 25–35 minutes (even up to 40 minutes, depending on the apples

used), or until the apples are very soft (a toothpick poked through the centre
of the cake will help determine this) and golden brown on top. If the apples
poking out on top are getting too brown, cover with some aluminium foil
until ready. This is rather lovely with a dollop of mascarpone (or thick cream
or clotted cream, if you don’t have it). Keep any leftovers refrigerated.
Zaira’s fruit cake

Pan del doge di Zaira

I ADORE FRUIT CAKES of any kind and the first time I tasted the pan
del doge from Pasticceria Dal Mas, an historic bakery shop that I somehow
found time to nip into as I was running to catch the last train back to
Florence, I was hooked.

This cake (pictured), full of dried and candied fruit and nuts, is found all
over Venice, any time of the year. It’s so named because the first stories of
this ‘doge’s bread’ date back to the doge Silvestro Valier (1630–1700) who
supposedly ate it in Villadose, a small town near Rovigo, about 50 km (31
miles) south-west of Venice where he was served this ‘bread’ (originally it
would have been a leavened sweet dough, akin to panettone, but today it is
more of a cake), sweetened with honey and full of the ingredients often
associated with the Christmas season: candied fruit, dried sultanas and figs,
and nuts such as walnuts. In the pastry shops in Venice, you may see this as a
log-shaped treat, somewhere between a crumbly cake and a soft biscuit, and
other times a round but rather flat cake, sometimes studded on top with
blanched almonds, or coated in a generous dusting of powdered icing
(confectioners’) sugar for appeal.

As soon as I brought this precious package back to Florence and tasted the
delicious, fragrant cake, I knew I needed to re-create it and luckily my friend
Zaira had a recipe for me – and it was even better than Dal Mas’. Zaira
Zarotti is an artist, born into a family of artists in Venice, who seems to have
come from another time. She is Artemisia Gentileschi with a camera.
Together with her partner, Francesco, they produce beautiful raku ceramics
(you’ll spot them in these pages) and the two of them are often found on the
Venetian lagoon, in their boat, Zaira’s long auburn hair flowing like she’s a
figure out of a John Everett Millais painting, or dressing up and creating
portraits next to dilapidated Palladian-style villas in the countryside. They
are the most romantic Venetians I know. Zaira is also a wonderful food
writer and storyteller, and this cake of hers – which will delight you as it is
baking by perfuming your house with citrus zest, honey and toasting nuts –
is my favourite version of this historic treat. I have only tweaked it ever so
slightly to reduce the batter a bit so that it is bursting with fruit and nuts,
because that is the part for which I am most greedy.
Serve 8–12

100 g (3½ oz) sultanas

125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) rum, or water
160 g (5½ oz/⅔ cup) unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
80 g (2¾ oz/⅓ cup) sugar
1½ tablespoons honey
2 eggs
finely grated zest of 1 orange, or lemon
200 g (7 oz/1⅓ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting
1 teaspoon baking powder
50 g (1¾ oz/⅓ cup) almonds, roughly chopped
40 g (1½ oz/¼ cup) pine nuts
50 g (1¾ oz/¼ cup) candied orange, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
dusting of icing (confectioners’) sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease with butter and dust with flour a
23 cm (9 in) baking tin with a springform base.

Place the sultanas in a small bowl with the rum and let them soak for at least
15 minutes.

In a large bowl, whip together the butter, sugar and honey until combined,
then add the eggs, one at a time. Add the orange zest and fold through the
flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Tip in the nuts, candied orange and
the soaked sultanas, drained (you could add a splash of the rum too, if you
like) and, finally, the vanilla and fold with a spatula until the ingredients are
well incorporated.

Tip the batter into the prepared baking tin and smooth out the top. Bake for
about 35 minutes, or until the top is deep golden brown and the cake’s
surface is springy when touched. If you like, dust the top with some icing
sugar once cool. There won’t be many leftovers once you taste how
delicious this cake is, but it does keep well at room temperature for several
days, covered.
VARIATIONS You can substitute any dried fruit or nuts that you prefer – dried figs, walnuts,
hazelnuts, candied citron (which Zaira calls for) or other candied fruit. You could add a splash of rum
(why not some of the rum used for soaking the sultanas?) or grappa, if you prefer, or you can leave it
out. If you don’t have rum to soak the sultanas, substitute with white wine or simply use water. If you
would like to put whole almonds on top, as some pastry shops do in Venice, you’ll need another 50 g
(1¾ oz/⅓ cup) to cover the top of the batter before putting the cake in the oven.
By the Rialto market
Resources
This is a useful but by no means exhaustive list of international sources for
harder-to-find ingredients, from squid ink to fine ‘fioretto’ polenta
(cornmeal) to stockfish.

Stockfish, which is produced exclusively in Norway, is a little bit difficult

to buy outside of certain regions in Italy, most notably the Veneto and
Calabria, but also Liguria, Sicily and Campania. In Tuscany, it is also used
in Livorno, and in Le Marche it is a specialty of Ancona, so there are some
other pockets here and there (Italy consumes two-thirds of the Norwegian
production of stockfish!). Note that outside of Italy dried stockfish is more
commonly found in Italian specialty shops during Christmas or Easter as an
important ingredient in popular, traditional festive dishes.
In Australia

Mediterranean Wholesalers Melbourne’s go-to shop for all things Italian.

Here you can find stockfish, baccalà and
liqueurs, plus a deli counter of regional
Italian cheeses and cured meats.
mediterraneanwholesalers.com.au

That’s Amore Cheese Local Melbourne producers of Italian-style

cheeses. Highly recommended for the
squacquerone (a soft, delicately tangy
cheese), plus aged and specialty cheeses
ideal for a cicchetti plate.
thatsamorecheese.com.au

IGA Gervasi Thomastown A neighbourhood Melbourne supermarket

where you can find a particularly good
selection of Italian ingredients, including
baccalà.

Preston Market One of Melbourne’s best markets with a

selection of fishmongers for baccalà and
specialty Italian shops, in particular
Farinacci deli and Lemnos deli for, among
their brimming counters, dried stockfish.
prestonmarket.com.au

Boccaccio Cellars Excellent selection of Italian wines and

special ingredients, including baccalà and
 an array of cured meats, cheeses and more in
Melbourne.
boccaccio.com.au

Essential Ingredient Specialty food and cookware store where

you can order online or shop in person (in
Victoria, New South Wales and Canberra)
for ingredients such as spices, olive oils,
pickles and other preserved foods, plus
harder-to-find ingredients such as squid ink
and white polenta (cornmeal).
essentialingredient.com.au

Paesanella For a mind-boggling range of imported

Italian cheeses and local Italian-style
cheeses in Sydney’s Marrickville, plus
numerous other Italian ingredients.
paesanella.com.au
In the United Kingdom

Brindisa A Spanish specialty shop at the Borough

Markets and online, where you’ll be able to
find baccalà and squid ink.
brindisa.com

Steve Hatt Historic Islington fishmongers for

sustainable fresh seafood and preserved fish.
stevehattfishmongers.co.uk

Moxon’s London fishmonger for fresh and in-house

smoked fish, plus a good selection of quality
pantry items, from squid ink to creamed
horseradish.
moxonsfreshfish.com

The Fish Society Online fishmonger where you’ll be able to

find dried stockfish, baccalà, both salted and
already desalted (pre-soaked), baby octopus,
smoked herring (kippers), whole and peeled
brown shrimp (similar to schie) and more.
thefishsociety.co.uk

Natoora For seasonal, fresh heirloom Italian produce.

You can even find Venetian produce such as
Castelfranco and Treviso radicchio. They
have shops in various London locations and
also online via Ocado.
 natoora.co.uk

Nanona Italian food importers based near Bristol

with fresh produce, cured meats and
cheeses, and pantry ingredients such as
‘fioretto’ polenta (cornmeal).
nanona.co.uk

Valvona & Crolla Scotland’s oldest Italian delicatessen with a

huge range of fine ingredients, including
cured meats and baccalà.
valvonacrolla.co.uk
In the United States

Olsen Fish Company Minneapolis-based supplier of Scandinavian

specialty food products including the
highest-grade stockfish direct from Norway.
olsenfish.com

LaRuche Imports This self-named ‘Best Stockfish Supplier in

the USA’ in Houston have a sample pack of
Norwegian stockfish already cut into pieces
(which is handy) for those just wanting to
dip their toes in, or whole/scored bigger
family and dealer packs for committed
stockfish lovers.
larucheimports.com

Natoora Like their UK branch, here you can get

strictly seasonal, heirloom produce and rare
varieties such as Castelfranco and pink
radicchio direct from the Veneto or white
peaches from Campania (perfect for those
Bellinis). Based in Brooklyn.
natoora.com

Barney Greengrass Historic New York Jewish deli that you

could find useful for ingredients such as
smoked fish, fresh horseradish and herring.
barneygreengrass.com
In Venice and nearby

The Rialto market The place to shop for food in Venice for the
past thousand years. Find stalls of fresh
produce by the Grand Canal, plus two
undercover pescherie housing the fish
markets and additional shops such as the
ones mentioned below. All around the Rialto
you’ll find the most typical bàcari, wine
bars, for sampling cicchetti after a shopping
trip.

Antica Drogheria Mascari Near the Rialto market, this old-school shop
is the go-to for wine but also for preserves
such as mostarda and dried fruit, nuts and an
impressive range of spices (could this be
what remains of Venice’s roaring spice
trade?).
imascari.com

Casa del Parmigiano As its name suggests, this is a small and

wonderful shop for cheese in the Rialto
market.
casadelparmigiano.ve.it

I Sapori di Sant’Erasmo A family-run farm with an on-site shop (and

delivery) on the island of Sant’Erasmo for
produce grown right in the Venetian lagoon,
in particular the tiny artichokes known as
castraure.
isaporidisanterasmo.com
Gastronomia Ortis An old-school convenience store in Venice’s
Castello neighbourhood, where you can
order and buy baccalà (that is, dried
stockfish) already soaked in large wooden
barrels. You can also buy their in-house
baccalà mantecato.
gastronomiaortis1914.com

Casa del Baccalà In the historical centre of the town of

Treviso, this specialised, family-run baccalà
shop sells the highest-quality stockfish,
including already soaked stockfish, and
baccalà (salted cod) as well as a variety of
ready-made dishes, such as alla Vicentina,
mantecato and in tomato sauce.
Eating and drinking in Venice – a
brief guide
This is a collection of the many wonderful places to eat and drink like a
Venetian that inspired the selection of cicchetti and treats in this book:

All’Antica Mola (Cannaregio),

All’Arco (San Polo),

Al Mascaron (Castello),

Al Vecchio Marina (Lido di Jesolo),

Anice Stellato (Cannaregio),

Bancogiro (San Polo),

Bar ai Nomboli (San Polo),

Bar alla Toletta (Dorsoduro),

Bar Rialto da Lollo (San Polo),

Bar Tiziano (Cannaregio),

Ca’ d’oro Alla Vedova (Cannaregio),

Caffé Florian (Piazza San Marco),

Cantina del Vino già Schiavi (or Cantinone) (Dorsoduro),

Cantina Do Mori (San Polo),

Cantina Do Spade (San Polo),

Cantina Aziende Agricole (Cannaregio),

Harry’s Bar (San Marco),

Rosa Salva in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Marco),

Taverna Tipica Veneziana (Torcello),

Venissa (Mazzorbo),
A map of Venice
References
These are the books that helped me most in understanding the rich history
of Venice in relation to its cuisine, as well as a number of wonderful
cookbooks both in English and Italian (and even in Venetian dialect) that
offer more inspiring Venetian recipes.

Accademia Italiana della Cucina, 2009, La Cucina: The Regional Cooking

of Italy, Rizzoli, New York.
Artusi, Pellegrino, 1960, La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene,
Giunti Marzocco, Florence.
Bellina, Luisa and Mimmo Cappellaro, 1992, Ricette di Osterie del Veneto:
Quaresime e Oriente, Slow Food Editore, Farigliano.
Boni, Ada, 1994, Italian Regional Cooking, Crescent Books, New York.
Brandolisio, Sandro, 2019, Cichéti: Ricettario dei cichéti preparati nei
‘Bàcari’ veneziani negli anni ’50–’60, Franco Filippi Editore, Venice.
Coco, Carla, 2009, Venezia in Cucina, Editori Laterza, Bari.
Conti, Mila, 2010, I Sapori del Veneto Cucina Regionale, RL Libri, Milan.
David, Elizabeth, 2009, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, Grub Street,
London.
Del Conte, Anna, 2017, Classic Food of Northern Italy, Pavillion Books,
London.
Dickie, John, 2007, Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their
Food, Sceptre, London.
Field, Carol, 1985, The Italian Baker, resissue edition, Harper & Rowe,
New York.
Kiros, Tessa, 2008, Venezia: Food and Dreams, Murdoch Books, Sydney.
McAlpine, Skye, 2018, A Table in Venice, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
Morris, Jan, 1960, Venice, Faber and Faber, London.
Necchio, Valeria, 2017, Veneto: Recipes from an Italian Country Kitchen,
Guardian Faber Publishing, London.
Riley, Gillian, 2009, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, Oxford
University Press, New York.
Rorato, Giampiero, 2010, Origini e Storia della Cucina Veneziana, Grafiche
De Bastiani, Godega di Sant’Urbano.
Rorato, Giampiero, 2015, Spezie, Vino, Pane della Serenissima, Dario De
Bastiani Editore, Vittorio Veneto.
Salvatori de Zuliani, Mariù, 2001, A Tola Co I Nostri Veci, 17th edition,
FrancoAngeli, Milan.
Servi, Edda Machlin, 1981, The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews:
Traditional Recipes and Menus and a Memoir of a Vanished Way of
Life, Everest House, New York.
Stefani, Mario and Nino Agostinelli, 1978, Osterie a Venezia, Edizioni del
Lombardo, Padova.
Zompini, Gaetano, 2009, Le Arti che Vanno per Via, Filippi Editore
Venezia, Venice.
Zorzi, Elio, 2009, Osterie Veneziane, Filippi Editore Venezia, IV Edizione,
Venice.
Grazie
Writing and photographing this cookbook alone during more than one
lockdown was certainly a solitary experience quite different to making my
other books, but I am never truly alone in the endeavour. On the contrary, I
couldn’t have done this without the help of so many people.

Thank you first and foremost to my friend, historian Rosa Salzberg, who
had the idea in the first place to make a book about cicchetti and their
history, and who graciously gave me her blessing to let me write this but
was always there along the way, fact-checking, proofreading and ready to
toast with a spritz.

I am also indebted to our friends Edoardo Gamba and Krystina Stermole,

who always show me a new perspective of Venice, whether it’s in a glass
factory or on their boat zipping through the Grand Canal with all our kids in
tow, and who pulled strings to get me in touch with Manuel Bagnolo, the
last of the moecanti, the moeche fishing families on the Giudecca. I must
also thank Manuel for that foggy day out on his boat, one of the most
memorable experiences I’ve ever had, eating the best fried soft-shell crabs
of my life.

A special grazie to my inspiring friends Valeria Necchio and Zaira Zarotti

for allowing me to include their recipes for zaleti and pan del doge,
respectively, not to mention just enjoying Venice with them is an enormous
pleasure.

Thank you to the enthusiastic recipe testers who put their hands up to try
some of the recipes before they went into their editing stage. This is such an
important part of the making of the book for me; it’s the test run, the
moment I get to see how the recipes read and how they translate in ordinary
homes and to get the valuable feedback before everything goes into print.
Thank you (and your families) from the bottom of my heart: Jodie
Anderson, Mandi Baldry, Jill Bernadini, Anne Bright, Raffaella Di Maio,
Kate Fanning, Sally Frawley, Nicolette Gallo, Karen Louise George,
Phoebe Luton, Michelle Molloy, Giulia Porro, Sara Postorino, Terri
Salminen, Gabrielle Schaffner, Suzanne Shier, Stephanie Whidden, Peggy
Witter and Sing Yee.

Thank you Katharina Allè Trauttmansforff of Trust & Travel for

coordinating a stay in the beautiful Palazzo Ca’nova where some of the
recipes in these pages were photographed.

Hana, my sister, who edited more than 700 of my location photographs and
hundreds more recipe photographs all the way from Melbourne to get them
print-ready (and give them that warm Venetian glow) – thank you, I have no
idea what I would have done without you.

And to Jane Willson, my publisher, thank you for letting me create this
book, for believing in it from day one and for always standing up for it, in
every little detail. I so appreciate it, and all the books we have made
together, and I will miss you.

Last but not least thank you to my husband, Marco Lami, for being the best
cicchetti company and cocktail maker I know, and to my mother-in-law and
Mariù and Luna, for being so patient with me during the many months of
the making of this book.
About the author
Growing up between Australia, Japan and China, Emiko Davies has spent
most of her life living abroad, and since 2005 has called Italy home. After
gaining a Bachelor of Fine Art in the US at the Rhode Island School of
Design, she arrived in Florence to study art restoration and photography. It
was in the Renaissance city that she met her husband, Marco Lami. Emiko’s
passion for food, photography and history, and Marco’s journey as a
sommelier, led her to start her eponymous food blog in 2010, exploring
regional and historical Italian food and wine, as well as travel tips and
musings on family life in Italy.

This is her fifth cookbook. She continues to write about food and travel in
Italy on her blog, as well as for other publications such as Food52, Saveur,
Financial Times, Gourmet Traveller, Condé Nast Traveler and Corriere
della Sera’s popular food magazine, Cook.

She and Marco live in a Tuscan village with their two daughters, where they
dream about opening their own wine bar one day.
Published in 2022 by Hardie Grant Books, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright text © Emiko Davies 2022

Copyright photography © Emiko Davies 2022, except p. 23, bottom (incamerastock/Alamy Stock
Photo) and p. 239 (Valeria Necchio)
Copyright design © Hardie Grant Publishing 2022

Cinnamon and Salt

eISBN 978 1 74379 731 0

Publishing Director: Jane Willson

Project Editor: Loran McDougall
Editor: Andrea O’Connor @ Asterisk & Octopus
Design Manager: Kristin Thomas
Designer: George Saad
Photographer: Emiko Davies
Production Manager: Todd Rechner

Hardie Grant acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the country on which we work, the
Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and recognises
their continuing connection to the land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past
and present.