Veneto is home to the wonderful city of Venice, and its cuisine is very much linked to the dishes of its past, often featuring one of the area’s four principal ingredients: polenta, rice, beans and baccalà. Both rice and polenta arrived in Italy via Venice, and quickly became important ingredients in the country’s diet. Fish dishes are predictably excellent along the coast and make good use of fish and shellfish from local lagoons, while inland, poultry and stockfish or baccalà are more popular. The radicchio from Treviso is another important local ingredient and is delicious simply grilled or incorporated into a risotto or frittata.
Traditional dishes:
Risi e Bisi: Rice with Peas (Pea Risotto)
Ingredients
- 400 g Carnaroli rice
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 100 g pancetta, diced
- 500 g fresh peas
- 2 liters vegetable broth
- 100 g Parmesan cheese, grated
- 1 tbsp butter
- Handful of parsley, finely chopped
- Extra-virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Heat a good drizzling of olive oil in a thick bottomed pan and add the onion and the pancetta and sauté for 5 minutes.
- Add the peas and a cup of the broth and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Add the remaining broth and when it begins to simmer, throw in the rice.
- Cook until rice is ready, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon.
- Adjust seasoning, sprinkle in the grated Parmesan and the parsley.
- Serve hot.
Number of servings (yield): 4
Pasta e Fagioli: Pasta with Beans
Ingredients
- 300 g dried beans
- 125 g cotica (pork skin)
- 1 carrot
- 1 onion
- 1 celery rib
- Piece of Parmesan rind, scarped and rinsed
- 200 g mixed pasta
- Extra-virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Soak the beans overnight and scrape the cotica well and plunge into boiling water for a couple of minutes.
- Drain beans and place them in a large pan with the cotica, the carrot, onion, celery rib and Parmesan rind.
- Cover with slated water and bring to the boil.
- Once beans are cooked, remove just under half the beans from the pan and push through a sieve.
- Return to pan with the whole beans and once it comes back to the boil, add the pasta.
- Once past is cooked, check seasoning and remove from the heat.
- Remove the cotica and the Parmesan rind and cut into pieces so everyone gets a piece, placing them in the serving dishes.
- Serve the pasta e fagioli warm, not hot, with some freshly ground black pepper and a drizzling of extra-virgin olive oil.
Number of servings (yield): 4
Baccalà alla Vicentina: Dried Cod Vicentina Style
Ingredients
- 500 g dried cod
- 500 ml extra-virgin olive oil
- 250 g onions, finely chopped
- 2 salted anchovies, rinsed and boned
- Handful of finely chopped parsley
- Flour for dusting
- 250 ml milk
- 25 g grated Grana cheese
Instructions
- Soak the dried cod in water for 3 days, changing the water three or four times a day.
- Remove as much of the skin as you can, remove the bones and cut into evenly sized pieces.
- Heat half a cup of olive oil in a terracotta pot and sauté the onion with the anchovies until onion is soft and transparent and anchovies have melted.
- Remove from the heat and throw in the chopped parsley.
- Place a few spoonfuls of this sauce at the bottom of a large pan.
- Roll the pieces of cod in flour and arrange over the sauce in the pan.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Place the rest of the sauce over the top.
- Pour in the milk, sprinkle over the grated Grana and add enough olive oil to cover the fish.
- Cover and cook over a very low heat for about 4 to 5 hours, turning the pan every so often, but never mixing the contents.
- Serve with polenta.
Number of servings (yield): 6
Zaleti: cornmeal cookies
Ingredients
- 350 g polenta flour
- 250 g all purpose flour
- A good pinch of baking powder
- 150 g butter
- 100 g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 100 g raisins, soaked in hot water
- 75 g pine nuts
- 1 cup milk
- Grated zest of a lemon
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
Instructions
- Mix the two types of flour together and sieve in the baking powder.
- Cream the butter with the sugar and eggs.
- Stir in the raisins, pine nuts, milk, grated lemon zest and the vanilla and mix well.
- Stir in the flour, then form long oval shapes with your hand, each about 6 -7cm long.
- Place on an oiled cookie sheet and bake at 360ºF for about 20 – 25 minutes.
Mostarda Vicentina: Mustard and Fruit Preserve
In Vicenza, this sweet, hot preserve is traditionally made in the period running up to Christmas. Local delis keep it in enormous hand-painted ceramic bowls, and serve it into small take away containers with long-handled ceramic ladles.
Ingredients
- 1¼ kg pears
- 750 g apples
- Juice and grated zest two lemons
- ½ bottle of dry white wine
- Equal quantity of water
- Sugar
- 10 level tablespoons hot mustard powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 100 g candied orange peel
Instructions
- Peel and core the pears and apples and chop into pieces.
- Place in a pan with the lemon juice and grated lemon zest, the wine and the water.
- Cook for about 45 minutes or until the fruit is soft.
- Allow to cool slightly then puree the mixture leaving a few larger chunks of fruit whole.
- Add the same weight of sugar, the mustard powder dissolved in a little hot water, and the salt.
- Cook over a medium to high heat for 40 minutes, then add the chopped candied peel and continue to cook until mixture darkens and thickens, from 30 to 40 minutes.
- Allow to cool for 5 minutes before pouring into warm, sterilized jars.
- This mostarda is heavenly eaten with mascarpone cheese and is a good accompaniment to roasted meats.
Number of servings (yield): 4-5 jars