Cuisine Gems from Cinque Terre is a quite brilliant title.
It concerns family and living customs of these five villages that Unesco has chosen to protect. It is perfectly in accordance
with recipes and lifestyles of people living in this Ligurian Sea 's coastal strip isolated from the rest of the world for centuries.
These people were proud of their achievements: to be able to take elements for life's continuity out of their land. And from
the sky, thanks to a really privileged sun's exposure (such an amazing light!) they had the grace to have the hope to survive.
What about the sea? It was mainly lived with deference and fear as it was very often an enemy, allowing first to have all
the basic products that have already permitted life's continuity since the very beginning when the waters started to go out
(shellfish, small fishes and mussels).Fishing arrived from 1929 on, when new fishing techniques were introduced. But the real star of the sea was the octopus. People say there were giant octopuses until just a few years ago. This is a great sea resource that we can find in a recipe offered by Rina (from Monterosso). As it happened in the whole historical region of Lunigiana, also the Cinque Terre's dwellers used to eat garden and wild herbs to fill up their stomach, and you can find trace of a "green heart" in this recipe book. I want to point out for instance stuffed mussels' receipt (prepared by a ladies team from Riomaggiore), stew cuttlefish (by Rosa Raffaella from Riomaggiore) and stew stockfish (by Ines from Manarola), where chards play a role in many preparations. Black cabbage and potatoes are ingredients of the frittelle di baccalà (fritters made with dried salted cod), again by the Riomaggiore team. To address it from the perspective of tastes, I would say that black cabbage and potatoes are used to reduce the taste of salt used for fish preservation. But if we look closely at the fritters
as they appear when ready, we can realize they put on their particularly distinct esthetic "facies" that comes from the
black cabbage (a dark element on a white background). In line with agronomist Roberta Tonfoni, let me briefly define
the personality and biodiversity of black cabbage as a typical crop in La Spezia area. It belongs to the family of the cabbages
with long-stalked, ruffled leaves with curly edges, dark green in color. Grown in the whole area of La Spezia, once it was
an essential culinary ingredient (as it is still today to people who love the good, healthy soups of the winter tradition)
in many preparations. It is a biennial plant of which single leaves, picked from its base, are used. When you ask around,
you'll realize that only very few youngsters know it. The small after-harvesting sprouts (called brugi or brugeti) are known to
the gourmets as an excellence. Raw black cabbage in a salad tastes delicious, even magic if the black cabbage comes from
Cinque Terre. Who knows if this magic comes from the sun or from the sea winds that feather the crop with salt or from
the soil.
With the passing of time and increased links, the local diet of Cinque Terre was enriched with new ingredients (potatoes,
tomatoes, beans or pumpkin, just to give an example), always used in a proper balance (notably, "just enough") required to
activate taste sensations - in other words to harmonize foods and keeping their tastes separate, as a cult, thanks to the
Cinque Terre's women instinct. Women, historically involved in collecting and processing foods before men did, invented
cooking process. In my opinion, they pursued another myth: bringing to the table a tasty, inexpensive and eye-catching
meal.