Zuppa dei valdesi

A reader who I'll call "Nancy T." wrote me recently to tell me about a dish called zuppa that her Piedmontese grandmother used to make. The word is one of several in Italian that mean 'soup' (see our Glossary for details). A zuppa is rustic soup, typically the kind that you are meant to have with bread, either dunk into it while you eat like the Neapolitan zuppa di pesce or laid at the bottom of your bowl before the soup is ladled on top like the Tuscan zuppa di porri. Nancy's grandmother's zuppa, on the other hand, is an example of the medieval practice of actually making zuppa out of leftover bread. In her zuppa, the slices of old bread are sautéed in butter and simmered with enough broth to cover and soften the bread while it cooks until it reaches the consistency of a pudding, reminiscent of the Tuscan pappa al pomodoro without the tomato.

Nancy asked if I had ever heard of her grandmother's zuppa. I hadn't but the recipe intrigued me—and it also sounded delicious! After a bit of digging, I found what I think is the traditional Piedmontese recipe for her grandmother's dish. The full name is zuppa dei valdesi,  also known in the local dialect as supa barbetta, and it comes from the valli valdesi, an area consisting of three valleys near Torino. The dish is a typical example of cucina povera, showing how, with a little imagination, the humblest of ingredients can be turned into exquisite eating.

Ingredients (for 4-6 people)

500g (1/2 lb.) stale bread or grissini
100g (3-1/2 oz.) grated cheese (see Notes)
100g (1/2 cup) butter (or more, to taste)
1 liter (4 cups) chicken (or vegetable) broth, or as much as you need.
Nutmeg, cloves and/or cinnamon, to taste
Salt, if needed

Directions

Break up the old bread (or grissini) into pieces. Sauté them gently in half the butter until lightly brown on all sides. Season with one or more of the spices, mixing a few times to ensure that the bread is evenly coated, then add enough broth to cover. Simmer the bread in the broth, covered, for about 15-20 minutes, or until the bread has softened and the broth has been completed absorbed by the bread. (You should add a bit more broth if needed to keep the bread moist.)

When the bread is done simmering, taste it and adjust for seasoning. Top with the grated cheese and the other half of the butter, which you will have melted separately.

You can serve your zuppa just like this, but for extra flavor, put the zuppa in a hot oven (200°C/400°F) for about 10 minutes until golden brown on top. Or just pass it under a broiler for a few minutes.  Serve immediately.

NOTES: Now here is the way that Nancy describes her grandmother's zuppa:

For us, typically after bagna cauda, when we have leftover bread, and it gets a little dry, we make  this dish (unless, of course, we wait too long and the bread is like a  brick).  I slice the loaves into about 1" slices.  Then, in a large pan, add "a nice piece of butter", as my grandmother would say. 3-4  Tablespoons. After the butter melts, the bread gets arranged, and it  browns in the butter.  It's turned over, adding more butter, of course.  Meanwhile, I've got about 6-8 cups of chicken broth heating up in a pot  behind the bread pan.  When the bread's been turned and had a chance to  brown a little, I start adding the broth, gradually. Kind of like  risotto. When about half of the broth is absorbed, the bread gets turned again, and more broth added.  In the end, I usually flip them once  more. 

The recipe today is usually a bit more upscale, made with those ubiquitous bread sticks called grissini, but Nancy T'.'s grandmother's version using stale bread is actually how the soup was originally made. In the old days, they often layered the bread with Savoy cabbage and let it simmer slowly for a few hours by the fire. There are also recipes that call for some sautéed onion. One rather extravagant version calls for cured pork and various herbs (bay leaf, rosemary, sage) interspersed between the layers of cabbage and bread.

The cheese would typically be Toma, a semi-hard cow's milk Piedmontese (and French) cheese, but if you can't find it, parmesan or grana padano would do. Or you could go for an Alpine cheese such as fontina, gruyère or Emmenthal.

Nancy recommends washing down this dish with some good, full-bodied red wine, and I would, too. It may be simple but—especially if you are generous with the cheese and butter—it is quite hearty.

There is little doubt that this dish is quite ancient in its origins. According to Anne del Conte in The Gastronomy of Italy:

Of all foods, zuppa is the most obvious inheritance from the feudal system centered on the castle. The lords and ladies ate what was considered noble food. The servants made use of the leftovers from the high table, which included large slices of bread that had been used instead of plates to hold meat, fish and other food, and to these they added herbs, wild plants and water, the result being cooked at length.  

The zuppe of the 15th and 16th centuries were very thick, made with toasted bread layered with other ingredients, often cheese, sugar and spices, and then placed in the oven. 

The valdesi, by the way, were the followers of a religious movement known as valdismo that began in the 12th century. It preached the virtue of humility and poverty, much like the Franciscans in Umbria who came shortly after them, and I suppose this 'poor' soup reflects those values. Unlike the Franciscans, however, they eventually broke with the Catholic Church. The Chiesa Evangelica Valdese still exists today and have a large place of worship in Rome among other places. They are known for their progressive social views, promoting, among other things, gay and reproductive rights, stem-cell research, the right to die and secular government. William Paca, one of the signers of the US Declaration of Independence, belonged to the movement. The US branch of the movement merged into the Presbyterian Church in the late 19th century.

Chiacchiere

I wasn't much on sweets even as a kid, but these little sugar-dusted ribbons of fried dough—variously known as chiacchiere, nastrini, stracci, cenci, frappe and a myriad of other names—were my one weakness in the sweets department. They are a traditional treat for Carnival, a time for over-indulgence, culinary and otherwise, getting in your 'last licks' before the privations of Lent.

The recipe is actually quite simple. The dough strongly resembles the dough for making stuffoli, but it is rolled out flat like pasta and cut into ribbons or squares or other shapes as you like. Even with such similar ingredients, the taste and texture are entirely different, an example of the Italian talent for creating incredible variety out of a limited palette.

They are not overly sweet—one reason I like them so much—but they are surprisingly addictive. So make lots!

Ingredients (enough for a large plateful of chiacchiere)

200g flour
1 whole egg plus 1 yolk
50g sugar
2 Tbs. olive oil (or butter)
1 jigger of sambuca, anisette, grappa or white wine
A pinch of baking powder (optional)

Oil for frying
Confectioner's sugar for dusting

Directions

Mix the first six ingredients together into a ball. You may need to add more flour or a bit of water until you have a mixture that is rather soft but neither sticky nor tacky. Knead the mixture for a good five minutes until you have a nice, elastic dough. (If using a KitchenAid mixer, use the paddle to mix the ingredients, then switch to the hook to knead the dough on slow.) Wrap your ball of dough in cellophane and then a towel and let it rest for at least an hour.

Divide the two into two parts and roll it out just as if you were making fresh egg pasta. If using a pasta machine, roll it to a medium thinness (notch 3 on a KitchenAid mixer pasta attachment).

Then cut the dough out into the shape(s) you like with a fluted pastry wheel. The most typical, perhaps, is the rectangle that is partially split in the middle as pictured above, but Angelina favored simple ribbons (see photo below). Some folks like to pinch the ribbons in the middle to create little 'bow-ties'.

Deep fry the dough shapes in moderate hot oil. (Not too hot: remember dough fries very quickly and  if your oil is too hot, it may darken too much.) They should puff up immediately, especially if you've used a bit of baking powder. Turn them often with a slotted spoon so they cook evenly. Fry until they are just golden brown, not too dark. (The dark ones don't look as pretty but they are still good—you can exercise you cook's prerogative and enjoy them yourself in the kitchen while no one is looking...)

Drain the fried chiacchiere on paper towels and let them cool. (They can be served lukewarm or at room temperature.) Before serving, dust them with confectioner's sugar. I like to toss them delicately the a bit of sugar first, then top them with a further dusting. They are at their best eaten immediately but are still good for a day or two after they are made.

Chiacchiere, Nana-style

NOTES: No Italian carnevale would be complete without a plate (or two) of chiacchiere, although other Carnival sweets can also be found around the country. In Naples, the other classic dish of the season is lasagna di carnevale, Angelina's signature dish. A dinner featuring both—and a nice roast, perhaps, for the secondo—would be almost overwhelming, but then, Carnival is all about excess.

The recipe for chiacchiere has changed remarkably little. Northern versions tend to use butter and spirits like grappa for the dough, while in the south they use olive oil and sambuca. (The original recipe, I believe, used lard, which you may try if you dare!) Modern recipes add a bit of baking powder (as for stuffoli) for a lighter, puffier result. You will also see recipes that add some additional flavors, usually lemon zest or, as in this lovely version I just saw today, a bit of orange zest. Some recipes will have you bake the dough ribbons in a hot oven, but I've never tried that—don't like the idea, frankly.

The recipe is apparently extremely old, dating back to ancient Roman times, when they (or something similar) was called frictilia.

Fagioli con le cotiche

Tuscans are known for being the biggest bean-eaters in Italy, so much so that they are sometimes called mangiafagioli in Italian. But Romans are no slouches in the legume department, either. They love fava beans, of course, and they make a mean pasta e lenticchie, for example, even if the Roman version is actually quite different than the one Angelina used to make. But the ne plus ultra of Roman bean cookery has got to be fagioli con le cotiche, a kind of Roman-style pork and beans, made with cannellini or (even better, in my book) borlotti beans simmered in tomato sauce with strips of pork rind. A classic example of how Roman frugality can produces hearty and delicious results.

Ingredients (for 4-6)

For simmering the beans:

500g (1 lb.) dried cannellini or borlotti beans

A garlic clove

A sprig of fresh parsley

Salt

For simmering the pork rind:

250g-500g (1/2-1 lb.) pork rind, depending (see Notes)

A stick of celery

1/2 medium onion, in one piece

Salt and pepper

For the tomato sauce:

250-500g (1/2- 1 lb.) canned tomatoes, depending (see Notes)

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

A handful of parsley, finely chopped

Lard or olive Oil

Salt and pepper

Directions

Soak the beans overnight. Simmer the beans in fresh water to cover, along with a garlic clove and parsley (if using—see Notes) until quite tender, about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

Meanwhile, prepare the pork rind: 

Raw pork rind

Pre-boil the rind for about 15 minutes. Remove the rind and let it cool for a few minutes. When it is cool enough to handle, cut it into thin strips. (Some recipes will tell you to trim of the fatty underside with a knife, but this is a bit too fussy for my taste and, anyway, I like the fattiness!) Then simmer the strips in water to cover, lightly salted, with the celery and onion. They will be done when they are tender but still have some bite to them, which will take, say 45-60 minutes.

Prep'd and ready to go...

Prepare the tomato sauce in a large casserole large enough to contain all the ingredients. A terracotta or enameled cast iron pot would be ideal. Make a soffritto by sautéing the onion, garlic and parsley gently in lard (the traditional choice) or olive oil, seasoning while the odori are cooking. Add your canned tomatoes, puréeing them by passing them through a food mill into the pot. Let the tomatoes simmer until they have reduced into a sauce, about 15-20 minutes.

Now it's time to put it all together: Add the pork rind to the tomato sauce and let them insaporire (see Glossary) for a minute or two, then add the cooked beans. Mix everything together well. Add a bit of the pork rind water and/or bean water if you find that the mixture is a bit dry. Simmer it all for about 30 minutes to allow the flavors to get to know each other.

Serve hot. Like many long-simmered bean dishes, fagioli con le cotiche are even better if allowed to rest overnight and reheated the next day.

NOTES: Raw pork rind can be hard to find in the States. I am fortunate enough to have a farm supplier close by that has it, but where I live, in any event, you will rarely (if ever) find it in a supermarket. I suppose that butchers will also carry it or take an order. Unfortunately, there is no real substitute for it in this dish. After all the name of the dish is 'beans and pork rind' in Italian! But if you were to substitute pork belly or some other fatty cut of pork, I would venture you'd wind up with something quite tasty. 

The basic building blocks of this recipe—simmer the beans, simmer the pork rind, make the sauce and mix it all together and simmer for a bit more—is common to all the recipes you'll see for this dish. But like so many classics, there are variations on the basic theme, and they revolve mostly around three factors:

First, the ratio of bean to pork rind. In some recipes, the ratio is 2:1, or even greater, so that the pork is really only there as a flavoring agent. In these versions, the dish can serve as a a contorno. In other recipes, the ratio can increase to as much as 1:1, so that the pork is there as an equal partner, so to speak. In these heartier versions, the dish graduates to a full contorno or even a piatto unico or one-dish meal, accompanied by nice crusty bread and followed by a green salad and perhaps a piece of fruit.  I just use as much of each as I have on hand, since it will be delicious no matter what! (By the way, if you have any left over, these beans go great with pasta.)

Second, the dish can be more or less in rosso, by adding more or less tomato, depending on your preference. And you can use canned tomatoes passed through a food mill (my preference) or a passata di pomodoro.

Third, the aromatic vegetables (aka odori) that make up the soffritto for the tomato sauce and are thrown in to simmer with the pork and beans vary from recipe to recipe. The above options are the ones I like, but for example, many recipes will tell you to make the tomato sauce with a classic soffritto italiano of onion, celery and carrots. Personally, I don't care for the sweetness that carrots lend to beans, and prefer to stick to the allium family. Some recipes will have you simmer your beans with no aromatics at all, since they will be absorbing the flavors of the tomato sauce and pork in the final stage anyway. And the pork rind, too, can simply be simmered in lightly salted water.

Some recipes also call for adding a bit of prosciutto fat to the soffritto, but personally I'd call that gilding the lily, especially if, as I like to do, you are cooking with lard. Even I have limits to my pork fetishism.

Another Milestone for Memorie di Angelina

Folks, we've hit another major milestone. There's been a surge of interest in the blog in the past few weeks, and we now have over 23,000 followers through the various readers and social media! That's more than double the number we had just a few months ago. It all happened so fast that I didn't have time to notice when we hit the 20,000 mark...

And there's been a similar surge of interest in Gnocchi ai funghi, our Facebook recipe exchange club. We're up from a bit over 5,000 members a week ago to over 7000 this morning. Besides all the posts from this blog, the club features rotating feeds from some of my favorite food blogs, plus interesting food-related links with news items, videos and online resources.

In any event, a heartfelt welcome to all our new readers. I hope you'll enjoy the site and please don't hesitate to leave a comment and drop us a line. Your feedback is what makes this labor of love worthwhile!

Cheers,
Frank

PS: Speaking of comments, I've received a number of messages from readers who have been having trouble leaving comments here. If that's been true for you, please drop me a line at gnocchiaifunghi@gmail.com. I'd like to get a sense of how prevalent the problem is.

Costolette di maiale ai funghi

You could probably devote a small cookbook just to Italian veal chop recipes, but with the price of veal being what it is, I usually do what many Italians do and turn to pork. The taste of pork is different, of course, but most veal recipes translate quite well into oinkier versions. I was reminded of one of my favorites the other day reading fellow blogger Paula of bell'alimento: who recently featured a lovely recipes for pork chops in mushroom cream sauce. Well, as any regular reader of this blog will know, I am practically addicted to mushroom cream sauce. I love it on ox tongue, with egg pasta, gnocchi or canederli and, indeed, it goes particularly well with pork chops.

In any event, here's my version of the dish:

Ingredients (for 4 people)

4 thin-cut rib pork chops (bone in)
250g (1/2 lb.) of fresh mushrooms (oyster mushrooms are particularly nice), roughly chopped
1-2 shallots, finely chopped
250ml (1 cup) cream, or as much as you need to make ample sauce
Olive oil
Butter
Flour
A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

Directions

Dry your chops  well with paper towles, dust them with flour and brown them in olive oil over  a moderate flame until nice and golden brown on both sides. Remove them from the skillet and set aside til later.

Add the mushrooms to the skillet and sauté them in the remaining oil. Season the mushrooms with a bit of salt and pepper as soon as you've added them to encourage the mushrooms to exude their liquid. Depending of the type of mushroom you are using, they may exude quite a bit of liquid. Let all of that liquid evaporate, then continue sautéing until the mushrooms start to brown nicely.

Add a dab of butter and the chopped shallot to the mushrooms. Allow the shallot to sauté lightly, literally for just 30 seconds or so.

Now for my little 'trick': add a ladleful of homemade broth to the mushrooms, and let that evaporate completely as well. This gives an extra layer of savory flavor to the dish, and is especially nice if you're using the kind of mild cultivated  mushrooms you are likely to find in most supermarkets. If, on the other hand, you are using wild chanterelles or cèpes (porcini) you can skip this step if you like to maintain that pure mushroom flavor.

Now add your cream and let it reduce down over fairly high heat until you see that the fat has separated out as pictured below:

At this point, you can leave the dish if you want until you are ready. A few minutes before you want to serve the dish, turn back on the heat to a moderate flame and add the chops back into the skillet on top of the cream sauce,along with any juices that may have accumulated—those juices have a lot of flavor, so don't throw them out. You will want to loosen the sauce with a bit of milk or water; then turn the chops in the sauce until they are well coated.

Continue cooking for a few minutes, just long enough to warm the chops through and thicken the sauce yet again, this time to a consistency just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, adding a bit of finely chopped parsley as they cook. Serve immediately, topped with some more finely chopped parsley.

NOTES: This recipe is a bit modified from the traditional one that calls for braising the chops in the sauce. Most modern pork, as we all know, is raised lean, and rib/loin chops are simply too lean for braising. So I just brown them nicely and put them back in the pan just long enough to warm through and absorb a bit of the flavor of the sauce. In this way, the pork is nice and flavorful but does not dry out, as they would if you tried to braise them.

For this recipe, you need thin-cut chops that will cook in the short period of time called for. And, in any event, thin cut chops are more typically Italian, as they allow for a nice balance of flavors between the meat and its condiment.

As for the mushrooms, just about any variety will do, even those cultivate button mushrooms that can be a bit boring. Of course, wild mushrooms will give the dish all the more character. This time, I used a mixture of oyster mushrooms and the ones that Italians call chiodini, meaning 'little nails' or pioppini. I think the name in English is black polar mushrooms. Their scientific name is Lyophyllum shimeji, and I believe that they are Japanese in origin. You can also used dried mushroom, which will give the dish a more intense mushroom flavor or, using an old trick I learned from Marcella Hazan, mix some dried porcini and their liquid with cultivate mushrooms to mimic the flavor of the real deal.

The original recipe that inspired this dish was a veal chop recipes that I found long ago in Giuliano Bugialli's Foods of Italy. The original, if I remember correctly, called for browining the veal chops in butter rather than oil and using, of course, fresh porcini mushrooms. The dish comes from Emilia-Romagna, which may be obvious from the generous use of butter and cream. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced that book somewhere, but this recipe—for reasons you may well imagine—stuck in mind...

Some new features for Memorie di Angelina

My great-aunt, second from right, visits family in our ancestral
home town of Apice, in the province of Benevento.

Dear readers,

Those of you who follow this blog on a regular basis may have noticed a few changes around here—all aimed at making your experience here richer and more enjoyable, and making it easier than ever for you to get to the information you're looking for. Here's the low-down:

• A new look: Nothing too drastic, but I've snazzed up the graphics a bit with a slightly different color scheme and some new and hopefully more readable fonts. The new 'deco' look reminds  me of Angelina's salad days...
  

• Just below the blog banner at the top of the page, you'll see some links to what Blogger calls 'pages': permanent content that you can easily access anytime. Now the Master Recipe Index to all the recipes on this site, basic information on The Italian Pantry, my take on the essential features of Italian Food Culture, my recent series on Authentic Italian Cooking and a Glossary of Italian Cooking Terms are all just a click away.
  

•  A small but really useful new widget in the upper right hand corner "Search This Blog" allows you to do a Google search of the entire contents of Memorie di Angelina, plus all the content that is hyper-linked from this site and the blogs on my blog rolls and websites on my Useful Links list. Pretty cool, don't you think? 

• Finally, I've reorganized my ever-expanding blogroll. It seems I'm always discovering more fantastic food blogs that I want to share with you. It was getting a little unmanageable to list them all in a single blog roll. So now you will find two blog rolls on this site: on the left hand column, there's my Great Italian Food Blogs and on the right-hand column More Great Food Blogs, with links to my favorite non-Italian foodies. As ever, you'll see the title, a small thumbnail shot and a snippet from each of the latest blog posts from my favorite foodies, so you can tell at a glance if something entices you. Just a click will take you to them... 

Now don't forget the other ways to access information on the site:

• On the right hand column, you will still find links to all the posts on Memorie di Angelina relating to Italian Food Culture and Basic Recipes and Italian Cooking Techniques—everything from making your own fresh pasta at home, to primers on making polenta and minestrone, to tutorials on trimming artichokes and roasting peppers, to tips on buying canned tomatoes. 

• The Recent Posts widget on the left-hand column, like the blog roll, shows you the 10 most recent recipes featured here on Memorie di Angelina, along with a thumbnail photo and snippet.
  

• The label cloud will bring you to all the recipes under a particular category. Want to see all the posts here that feature recipes for dishes from the Campania region? Just click on "Campania" and you'll good to go. Want to see Angelina's signature dishes, just click on "Nana".
  

• And don't forget the Useful Links, which can be found in left hand column, a bit further down. There are some wonderful websites featured there with incredible online resources for the curious student of Italian cookery—and cooking in general. 

And, last but not least, do check out The Italian Pantry Online, which you'll find in the right-hand column, just below the blog roll. I've associated with amazon.com to bring you an assortment of real Italian food products that I've selected myself for the Italian food enthusiast. It's a great resource, especially for those of you who may not have ready access to Italian specialty shops. If I've mentioned an ingredient in my posts that you can't find near where you live, chances are you'll find it there.

Well, I do hope that these features, new and old, will help make this site more than just your average food blog—I like to think of it as your 'one stop shopping' resource with everything you need to know to make great authentic Italian dishes at home.

And, of course, if there's some other feature you'd like to see here, don't hesitate to drop me a line at gnocchiaifunghi@gmail.com. If there's a way to do it, I'll try to get it done.

Buon appetito and happy cooking!

Frank

Baccalà mantecato

A not-so-distant cousin of Provençale brandade de morue, baccalà mantecato is one of the signature dishes of Venetian cuisine and a staple of those wonderful hidden-away Venetian bacari, or wine bars.

The name of the dish comes from the verb mantecare, which is a culinary term meaning to 'beat' or 'whip' or simply to 'stir vigorously' so as to create a creamy consistency. It is the same word used to describe the final stage of making a risotto, when you stir the rice vigorously to incorporate grated cheese and butter, to creating that luscious creamy consistency that we all know and love. The technique serves the same purpose here, but in a wholly different context.

Ingredients (for 4-6 servings)

250g (1/2 lb.) salt cod, soaked for 24 hours and cleaned of any stray bones
1 clove garlic, very finely chopped (optional)
Olive oil, about 100g or as much as you need
Salt and pepper, to taste
chopped parsley

Directions

Cut the salt cod into manageable pieces and place them in a saucepan. Cover with water and bring to a gentle simmer. Add a small pinch of salt, a slice or two of lemon and a bay leaf. Continue to simmer for 20 minutes, until tender but not yet falling apart. When done, transfer the pieces of salt cod to a large bowl with a slotted spoon.

Start to break up the salt cod pieces with a sturdy wooden spoon. When the fish has broken up into shreds, add the garlic (if using) and then start to drizzle the oil into the fish. Stir with the wooden spoon, incorporating the oil slowly into the fish as you stir, as if you were making mayonnaise. Continue like this until the fish has formed a nice, but not entirely smooth paste. There should still be small bits of fish here and there. If you find the paste a bit too thick, you can add a spoonful or two of the cooking water. Taste and adjust for seasoning—you may not need any salt, but you probably will, as salt cod can be surprisingly bland after it has soaked. Mix in some chopped parsley.

Baccalà mantecato should be served at room temperature, typically on top of crostini di polenta as shown in the picture above. In Venice, polenta blanca or white polenta is the most autentic choice, but yellow polenta as shown will certainly do fine if you, like me, you don't have any of the white variety on hand. It can also be served with soft, hot polenta for a more substantial dish

NOTES: To make crostini di polenta, simply make a batch of polenta using the usual method, pour it out on a wooden board or baking sheet, in a thinnish layer, to cool completely. It will have hardened enough to cut into rectangles or square pieces. Grill or griddle your crostini on each side until lightly spottled. These crostini have many other uses—they are perfectly delicious slathered with gorgonzola cheese, for example.

If you are being a bit lazy, you can—if you must—blend the salt cod in a food processor,  drizzling the olive oil through the spout as you use the pulse function to avoid overblending. Of course, this method does not produce a dish with quite as much character but it will certainly save you some effort. What you should avoid, however, is using a blender, which will purée the fish rather than producing the typically 'rough' texture that characterizes the dish.

The recipe given here is from the Dogale Confraternita del Baccalà Mantecato, one of the many confraternita or associations (literally 'brotherhoods') in Italy charged as guardians of the most significant traditional local dishes. This one is, of course, based in Venice. The original recipe calls for stoccafisso, or stockfish, which is another form of preserved codfish, wind-dried rather than salt-cured and so much harder. It requires several days of soaking. It is a rarity in the US, but salt cod is a perfectly acceptable substitute, in my humble opinion. The original recipe does not call for garlic, but most recipes (even Italian ones) will include it these days. For a more assertive flavor, some recipes call for a fillet or two of anchovy.

Many recipes you will find, perhaps most, call for a mixture of milk and oil, often in a 50:50 ratio but sometimes mostly milk (or even cream) and only a bit of olive oil.  I have read—though I can't find the source now for the life of me—that the all-oil version is typical of Venice itself, while the milk and oil version comes from the inland areas around Vicenza. In the old days, olive oil was probitively expensive outside areas where olive tree grew, which meant most of northern Italy outside Liguria. Venice, itself, however, was lucky enough to have olive oil production nearby, where a micro-climate allowed for it. I now begin to doubt this explanation, however, as  its seems that there is olive oil production in several areas in the Veneto (something I never knew until I looked into it) including around Vicenza. In fact, olive oil from the Veneto has its own DOP designation. In any event, the oil you use should not be too fruity. A lighter Ligurian or Provençale olive oil (assuming you don't have access to the local variety!) would probably be the best choices. Avoid those fruity Puglian or Sicilian oils which, as wonderful as they are, would be too 'heavy' for this dish.