The typical recipes of the Veneto

We would have volumes to write about Veneto, volumes in quarto, loaded with documentation and citations, full of codices and comparisons and cross-references: each province has its own cuisine, each cuisine its recipes, each recipe its variations. Desperate undertaking to describe them in a few lines, if it weren’t for that single factor that unites them, a truly unique and precious condiment: happiness. Cheerful dishes and cheerful wines, just as the vernacular is serene.

So much so that one could not formulate a more pertinent and fitting consideration, for all the provinces and not only for the beloved “pavano” than that of Ruzante: wherever you find it seems that “el sippia el paradise on earth, so much more beautiful and better because in that one does not se ghe magna and in this yes”; dishes, wines, people and serene climate.

Whether you’re sitting in Feltre enjoying the warm composure of risotto with Lamon beans, or in San Polo di Piave for the chromatic cascade of prawns, or in Breganze for the Torresani scottadito, or in Venice for the savory liveliness of the saor or the sizzling moleche or the spicy cavroman, both in Padua for the delicious bigoli in sauce and in the Ampezzo region for the rustic and fragrant casonzei: in short, the sum: wherever you are, wherever your legs or the devil have taken you ( degli offizi), wherever you sit, bogoeti aio e oio, sope coade, guinea fowl with peverada, bisate al larin, geese in fat, light in tecia, schie ballarine, coi de anaro with pien, cheerful dishes.

So let us anticipate the wines a little: in fact, they add happiness to happiness: now rustic (just remember the Friularo, which fascinates you full of scents of cherry and attacks you with a touchy yet pleasant roughness), now mild (with the Bardolino it almost seems to gather in itself, through grace and compliance and complete balance, the enchantment and enticements of the lake, and with Soave, all played in the taste and in the perfume, for the nuancas of almond and vine flowers, elderberry and cherry tree), now full and pleased.

The Veneto has an infinite wealth of both immediate and acquired foods. Among the immediate ones we mention: the excellent rice from Polesine and Verona; maize also from Polesine to which, who knows why (unknown in Turkey), the name of maize was given; the white truffles from Este and Polesine, and the black ones from Verona; the many mushrooms of Cadore and Belluno, including morels, and the particular ones called bums, especially black and white, of Montello; blueberries and raspberries from Alpago; beans from the Belluno area, among which those from Lamon are particularly known and renowned, for their characteristic flavour; Bassano asparagus; the pumpkins of Chioggia; Lumignano peas; peaches from Monselice and Pescantina; the two famous radicchio, the variegate of Castelfranco Veneto, a real edible flower, and the radicchio of Treviso.

Not to mention the many freshwater and seawater fish, farmyard animals (the very famous Paduan geese and Vicenza ducks), hunting and game meat.

Starters

First courses