Time.news – What does it mean to live and feed, cultivate, in a lagoon city? One of all, Venice, the lagoon city par excellence, the most famous in the world. Made of islands and islets, ghebi – or canals – and sandbanks. Where herbs are everything. They are the main food but also its side dish.
A book, Erbario Lagunare (pp. 212, Publisher Il Leggio, 28 €), or a “Sentimental gastronomic journey among the spontaneous herbs of the Venetian territory”, written by Caterina Vianello and Marco Bozzato, tells them after having divided them into three groups: the wild between ghebi and salt marshes, the wild ones of the field, the wild ones of the river.
The Lagoon, the authors write, is a magical place, “a labyrinth of brackish water, shades of green, brown and blue”, places that deserve respect, with which to have a slow attitude, and above all they deserve to be safeguarded by anyone you visit them. Respect also from those who practice cooking and use their herbs. Places to which they are no strangers, however, not even fish and lagoon game.
However, herbs are the masters in this volume, because at the same time they are also a sort of tool for interpreting and interpreting society, the relationships between social classes and the different modes of consumption: taste and economic availability on the one hand , the need to appease hunger and poverty on the other. Similarly, herbs as part of a gastronomic system (the recipes received, which are then those of the wealthy classes, see the herbs in addition to many other ingredients) on the one hand and herbs sometimes as the only raw material, translated into an expedient to survive and accompanied by little else, on the other, as the authors recall.
Referring to the ancient herbariums, which include glasswort, purslane, sea fennel and elecampane with the characteristic saline note that unites them. And then, among the field species, we find sorrel, leek, carrot and wild Jerusalem artichoke with infinite pairing potential. As well as the recipes are endless: dishes such as cuttlefish tagliatelle (with elecampane, glasswort, purslane and sea fennel), “suchete in barena” (with sand barena honey and mugwort) or banana twist (with sea fennel) have almost become a must for each chef and the related gastronomic proposal, chef who has already been accustomed to the use of herbs in the kitchen for some time.
Reading the book is also a good way to get to know and deal with a trip to take a walk in the lagoon and get out of chaotic Venice and from the usual tourist circuit San Marco-Rialto, where the whole world is concentrated in an obsessive and compulsive way in an unbearable crusher. Unbearable, now, even for those who visit for the first time and ask: “But where did I end up?”