The cooking of Liguria and Italian Cuisine

Liguria, popularly known in America as the Italian Riviera, is the second-smallest of Italy's administrative regions. Approximately 2,000 square miles in size, it stretches 200 miles from the French border town of Menton around the curve of the part of the Mediterranean known as the Ligurian Sea. The region is divided into four provinces, each of them named for its principal city: Imperia, Savona, Genova and La Spezia. Each of these towns is a port, but the coast is quite steep, and the interior of the region includes both the Ligurian Alps in the west and the Ligurian Apennines in the east. The name of the region is taken from the ancient Ligurii, a group of warring tribes who were driven out of the area, from the fourth century B.C., by Celts and various Middle Eastern settlers.

Genova (known in English as Genoa) is the

. . .
that incorporated the region's pine nuts. But, in the centuries since then, Genova's "culinary sophistication grew" considerably (Andrews xl). The ingenuity of the Ligurian cook is represented in some unusual ways. One characteristic of the cuisine is the tendency to develop dishes that are substitutes for other foods. This came partly from the centuries in which the Catholic Church forbade eating meat on Fridays, other fast days, and throughout the Lenten season. But, it also derived from shortages of various foods. One of the most famous Ligurian examples of meatless cooking was the "meatless capon," or cappon magro, an "astonishing salad-to-end-all-salads" (Chamberlain 6). Magro, which literally means "lean" or "meager," is used throughout Italy to indicate that a dish is meatless and suitable for consumption on fast days. But, in addition to the ironic chicken-without-meat implied by the name, the word magro also appears to refer to the type of fish that was originally used in the dish--the capone, a rather magro fish that was not much sought after (Andrews 54). Cappon magro was the dish that the fisherman got when his efforts were not successful enough to pull in something better than capone. This salad, though i
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
May-July September-November, Catholic Church, Genovese Ligurian, Marcella Hazan, Russia Asia, Liguria Liguria, La Superba, Italian Riviera, War II, Instead Ligurian, salsa genovese, cappon magro, olive oil, pine nuts, andrews xl, italian riviera, genova la spezia, ingredients hazan, sixteenth century, french riviera, anchovy fillets, salsa di noci,
Approximate Word count = 2623
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)