When a dish of the Piedmontese peasant tradition can become innovative and change a menu
Sometimes to move forward you have to take a step back. This is what the guys from Rossorubino enoteca did. They stopped, they thought about how and why it was time to change something in their proposal. True, what they were doing liked the clientele, but it conflicted with their idea of catering.
They thus became aware of the fact that they no longer identified themselves in the dishes and recipes they proposed. They asked themselves a few questions, trying to unravel a skein made up of cooking and wine. And they understood that they had to go back to their starting point: the wine, in fact.
But wine alone is not enough, of course. It takes something special and original, something unseen. Thus they started from their Piedmontese origins, or rather Monferrato, from a hamlet of Montiglio, a few kilometers from Cocconato d'Asti, and from the dishes told by recipe of the Schiciola.
The schiciola yesterday and today
In the mid-nineteenth century, Monferrato and Langa were not Unesco World Heritage Sites, but a rural reality that fought against hunger. At the time, resources were scarce and were wisely combined in what we still call today recipes of poor cuisine or of the peasant tradition.
Egg was used to make the fresh pasta dough richer. Is exactly from the agnolotto dough the story of schiciola. When the agnolotti were prepared and the filling was finished, what to do with the scraps of the dough? A intelligent recycling. By frying the strips of pasta in lard you had a nutritious mixture, to be accompanied by a slice of salami or a piece of cheese.
In modern times, talking about lard may seem like a heresy, with the dietician who watches our every step. And, probably, it would be difficult to digest. With the chef Elizabeth Desana, the wine shop team has studied a 2020 version of schiciola recipe: stone-ground type 1 flour from ancient grains, double leavening to improve digestibility, always eggs in the dough, but cooking in the oven, to give crunchiness and lightness .
Thus a poor and simple dish from the past inspired the Rossorubino boys, a sort of tradition that becomes innovation and vice versa. The versatile schiciola: as an aperitif, while drinking a glass of wine, as an appetizer for a dinner, it stimulates sharing, presented in wedges it invites to tasting in company, with different toppings it satisfies everyone, in a traditional or gourmet version.
The schiciola: available every day from Rossorubino, via Madama Cristina 21 in Turin.
Hours: lunch (12-15) Saturday and Sunday, kitchen open from 12 to 17.30, classic menu and sinoira snack.
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