Italian Cooking: Recipes From Lake Garda

Massimo Ghidelli

Italian cooking

Recipes from Lake Garda

Smashwords Editions

Copyright 2012 Massimo Ghidelli

Ebook ISBN 9788890692314

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Index

IN PRAISE OF LITTLE FISH: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Appetizers

Bagoss cheese flan

Barbequed bleak

Bleak to burn your fingers

Bleak with onions

Carpaccio of trout and whitefish flavoured with basil

Citrus Sardines with broccoli and traditional mustard sauce

Crunchy Good Henry with Monte Baldo cheese fondue and mushrooms

Delicate lake antipasto

Dried bleak

Fried bleak

Fried sardines

Garlic sardines

Golden sardines

Lake char terrine

Lake sardines in carpione

Little sardine roll

Little whitefish cakes with fresh tomato and basil

Perch terrine

Perfect fried fish

Pike fishcakes

Raw beef in Bagossa sauce

Salami with herbs

Salted bleak

Sardine fishcakes

Sardines in concia sauce

Sardines in saòr with grapes and pine nuts

Sardines with olive oil, parsley and garlic

Sisàm

Sisàm of beans

Sweet and sour bleak

Sweet and sour chub

Trout cannolis

Trout in carpione

Twaite shad tartar

POPULAR TRADITIONS, MODERNITY AND EXPERIMENTATION

First courses

Baldo Chestnuts

Baldo’s Chestnut soup

Bigoli al torchio with crunchy tench and candied lemon

Bigoli with bleak

Bigoli with fresh sardines

Bigoli with salami

Bruscànsi with eggs

Burnt broth

Burnt broth and beans

Caponsèi

Chicken rice

Egg Tagliolini with Tombea and truffle

Farmhouse gnocchi

Fillets of perch and melted rice

Garda flavoured bigoli with sardines

Gardesana lake fish soup

Gnocchi with herbs

Holly risotto

Homemade tagliatelle with Garda whitefish and black truffle

Lake carbonara spaghetti

Lake fish soup

Mariconde

Pasta with wild herbs

Pike ravioli

Polenta gnocchi

Ravioli with Garda fish and prawns, pistachios, almonds and prawns powder

Rice and pumpkin

Rice and sardines

Risotto mantecato with Garda carp and greens

Risotto with stracchino cheese and Argan oil

Spaghetti with capers and tomato

Spaghetti with Garda sauce

Spaghetti (hand made) with sardine fillets, confit and prawn carpaccio

Spaghetti with sweet water prawns

Spaghettini with tench fillets

Strangolapreti with butter and sage

Strozzapreti all’amatriciana with perch, un-smoked bacon of Sauris and Vulcano ricotta

Tagliatelle with lake ragù

Tagliolino noodles with Tench and braised vegetables

Tastasàl risotto

Tench risotto

Tyrolean dumplings

Tyrolean perch dumplings

Trout and citron risotto

LAKE FISH, A CONTROVERSIAL LOVE AFFAIR

Lake fish

Chub in guazzetto

Citrus trout

Eel kebabs

Fillets of perch

Fried fillets of perch

Fillets of trout with bacon and broccoli

Fisherman’s pike

Grilled fish

Jellied lake fish

BBQ eel with candied garlic in duck fat

Lake Garda eel

Lake Garda tuna with salad and hard boiled eggs

Large carp barbeque

Large carp in parchment paper

Large boiled carp

Little whitefish tart with diced vegetables

Mountain bleak

Peasant-style chub

Perch marinated in Malcesine olive oil with candied lemon, capers and potato olive crunch

Pike in Gonzaga sauce

Pike in sauce

Seared sturgeon, toasted pumpkin and roast pestőm

Stewed eel with peas

Stuffed tench

Trout dumpling with wild asparagus

Trout with porcini mushrooms

Viking trout

Warm pike with olive oil and marjoram, served with with potato purée

Warm whitefish salad with Valtenesi black truffles

Whitefish barbeque

Whitefish della tradizione

Whitefish Garda style

Whitefish in spicy sauce

Whitefish roulades

Whitefish with rocket and capers

White pike Gonzaga style

THRESHING FLOOR, COURTYARD, FARM AND STABLE INLAND COOKING

Meat and cheeses

Boiled and stuffed chicken

Bread, cheese and salami

Brescian baby goat

Cabbage cakes

Cheese purée

Duck with balsamic vinegar

Escaped little birds

Lake salmì

Mixed boiled meats with pearà and green sauce, Veronese red chicory in large carp with fresh pork sausage and polenta crackers

Omlette of meat

Pizza!

In praise of polenta

Polenta balls (balòta)

Fried polenta

Polenta pastiche

Polenta Tiragna

Polenta taragna with buckwheat flour

Village polenta

Salted meat

Wild herb omelette

SWEET TEMPTATIONS

Desserts and puddings

Brescian chestnut pudding

Chestnut ice cream

Dove with egg

Elderflower syrup

Focaccia

Frozen orange soufflé

Guanaja chocolate muffins

Lemon pie

Lemon pie Italian crostata

Maderno cake

Olive oil and lemon biscotti

Paradise cake

Rose cake

Sweet canederli

San Vigilio biscotti

The Author

Recipes from lake Garda

Easy dishes, stories and curiosities

One Italy does not exist.

There is no single Italian cuisine, no single architectural style, not even the language and the landscape stay the same. On the contrary, there are thousands of dialects, thousands of bell towers, thousands of traditions and styles and cultures and landscapes like nowhere else in the world. If you jump in a car and drive a short distance, from one place to another in this marvellous country, you will discover new panoramas, bell towers of different styles, you will hear original and sometimes incomprehensible dialects, you will taste new dishes and find that every area has its own specific culinary traditions and methods. This is how it is everywhere, from the Alps to Sicily, from Piedmont to Venice, from Sardinia to the Marche. This specific identity (which is true, real) is a positive typical feature of our country (a country which is, of course, strongly unified and cohesive) and makes it unique and somewhat mysterious in the eyes of overwhelmed visitors.

Mysterious is the right word. Many foreign visitors to our country are intrigued by a lifestyle that they can almost breathe in the air, they notice it in the geniality of certain solutions, they admire it in the artistic creativity and our daily lives, but they are unable to unravel the enigma. Such diversity and richness is also found in a small area such as Lake Garda.

Could cooking be far away from such vivacity? No, of course not. To tell of all these cultural and gastronomic details we have transcribed some recipes, mainly associated with popular tradition, a few re-touched by emerging young chefs and by some of the great champions of local restaurants. These are all easy to prepare recipes and examples of what can be offered in an area as fortunate and welcoming as Lake Garda; a first taste (and it’s really worth mentioning) of an historical, touristic and eno-gastronomic panorama which is extremely varied and rich.

Enjoy!

Massimo Ghidelli

IN PRAISE OF LITTLE FISH: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Just go into any small port and take a look at the water.

You will see big chub swimming languidly; friendly ducks observing them from a distance; coots looking for grassy food and swans collecting sticks, branches, reeds and rubbish (left behind by forgetful tourists) to build nests on the rocky shore. You will see fishermen showing off their prized catch and casual observers looking at the lake, caught up in mysterious thoughts. But above all (between May and June, when the eggs are just opening, or in the winter time when, still young and incautious, they go looking for warmth in the low, protected waters of the lake) we see groups of tiny fish flitting about in the water. These are bleak, the most common fish in Lake Garda. Bleak is not a prestigious species, but it is so widespread that for years, together with sardines, they have represented a certain source of income for fishermen; so many of them are caught that their sales compensate the low commercial value and can ensure fishing income for every month of the year.

Fifty years ago, more than half of all fish caught from Lake Garda were bleak and sardines; but fifty years is a lifetime. Today this percentage is reduced by half. Blame the fish. The presence of bleak and sardines and other species has concentrated the efforts of fishermen on ever more appropriate instruments for their capture. They use nets and tools with bizarre names that defy translation such as birba, sciaola, scarolina and tirlindana. There is ever greater knowledge of the areas which are best for fishing during certain times of year in order to ensure the largest catches. Some have even identified the best time of day to go out in the boat and drop the nets, or the best hours of the night for starting the hunt. This is the fault of predators: not only men, but also and above all water birds and the larger fish. Blame it on the change in quality of the waters, the state of the lake depths and a thousand other conditions associated, as one says in these cases, with progress.

Obviously, such abundance leads to experience in the kitchen and a multitude of interpretations that are themselves part of culture: the culture of a cooking radically linked to the produce-territory-preparation triangle; the culture of human history linked to the lake and the passage of time and fishing which, in every area and in every period of the year, is constantly in flux; the culture of a local cuisine stubbornly able to protect its own traditions and contain them within the confines of local areas, or even, in some cases, small towns.

APPETIZERS

Bagoss cheese flan

Place 50 gr of butter in a saucepan and melt gently. Remove from heat and add 40 gr of flour, mixing well.

Return the saucepan to the stove top and add 250 gr of milk and 100 gr of whipping cream then bring to a boil. Turn off heat immediately and add 3 whole eggs, 3 handfuls of grated Bagoss cheese, salt and pepper

Butter the inner surfaces of 4 or more small pudding moulds and pour the mix in. Place in the oven for