. Liguria - HISTORY AND FOODThe Ligurian cuisine derived mainly from Genoese cuisine, bases its foundations on a variety of dishes that are identified in the now famous and much followed the Mediterranean diet. So low-fat meals, high in fiber and vegetable protein, and very lightly saporosità, obtained with the freshest seafood, vegetables, pasta (fresh and dried), poultry and sheep and cheese.
The kitchen was fine in the past legacy of rich and noble, as they could afford one or more cooks, the kitchen of poor people ranging from soups to vegetables - much less fish - and, when there was an opportunity, more substantial dishes with the use of sheep offal and beef.Inevitable, however, in stuffed vegetables (Verdú Pinn-it), in "porpettoin" (meatballs) and other dishes, the herbs in place of expensive spices, Venetian enemies of exclusive merchandise.For those who had a heavy workload and little time for the table, such as "camallo" and "Caravan" (strongmen traps of each type of goods), goals were obliged "Sciamadda" (in Italian "Flames", shops and cakes porridge just where everything was cooked in the flames of the fire) and chip shops. In "Sciamadda" the golden porridge were served freshly baked cakes and delicious vegetables characterized by "prescinseua". Eating a tasty, nutritious and inexpensive, it could also be served up, in particular the porridge (fainà), a sort of soft and thin focaccia made with chickpea flour, olive oil and salt, sprinkle of freshly removed from the oven that often there is a sandwich filling.
Right on "fainà", the Republic of Genoa in 1447 issued an unusual order: (Furnari quod non-material in the exige debeant scribilitas boiled), what price should require bakers to bake scribilite scribilita ... The term was the ancient name of porridge .But not only. Other decrees or require the use of good olive oil and the size of the text, ie the pan. While the cakes of vegetables, including the famous pasqualina, were known even to the "Forest" (foreigners). In fact, official dinners organized by the noble or powerful or well-known for illustrious guests, were cited as "the use of vegetable pies of Genoa." Other foods made with chickpea flour were and still are today, "panissa" and "pamper". The panissa is a polenta that made it cool, is cut into strips and fried in very hot and fragrant olive oil, or cut into cubes and browned in oil with onions stories, and pepper. A plate, the latter now obsolete, it deserves to come back on our table for his goodness.
The cod preserved in salt (salt cod) and air-dried (dried cod), giving rise to a multitude of Genoese and Ligurian dishes. Another delicacy, a simple but inviting "fugassa": warm, soft or slightly crunchy cake flour, drizzled olive oil and sprinkled with coarse sea salt grains in the dimples left by fingertips, obtained by mixing the flour with water, the rising (yeast), oil and salt, and made to rise for several hours before baking.
A little curiosity on the pitch. The sailors were for centuries the main means of involuntary exchange between the cuisines of the Mediterranean. Arriving with their ships carried spices and products from faraway places and taste the dishes of their host ports. In Liguria in small harbors surrounded by rugged and steep land, when they were sighted the ships in the distance, the women came from homes in a hurry. They went to their gardens in the mountain terracing obtained and collected the leaves of fragrant basil. In the mortar put the pine nuts, spontaneous gifts of nature, aphrodisiac properties, and garlic sauce that gave an intense aroma.It was then that returning mingled perfumes, sailors always rude and violent men, became at once sweet and curious of new sensations of love.
PS: The pine nuts since ancient times were considered powerful aphrodisiacs. Galen, in the second century D.C. recommended the men to drink before going to bed, accompanied by a glass of honey and almond 20 100 pine seeds.