There is a strip of Liguria, where the cuisine that everyone knows disappears to give way to another table, archaic and pastoral, unique in its kind, where even the resulting recipes have no variations or imitations. This strip of land at the extreme west of the region, dominated by the Ligurian and Maritime Alps, unites the Arroscia, Argentina, Nervia, Tanaro valleys and the territory of Brig, uniting Italy and France, Liguria and Piedmont. The agricultural and pastoral transhumance that characterized these places in the past has united the populations of the Ligurian mountains, the Cuneo area and the Occitan valleys, creating a unique gastronomy.
A Liguria without basil
A real food culture where basil is not present because, for obvious reasons of altitude, it cannot grow, and where the sea, still close enough, however, cannot bring its influence. Agriculture was subsistence: starchy, potatoes, leeks, turnips, legumes, garlic is cabbages. Poor ingredients that, together with wild herbs, chestnuts, nuts and dairy products, have completed the nutrition of the inhabitants of these valleys. The need to cook in the mountain pastures and the skill of the women to transform the few products available in the mountain huts have created a tasty and energetic gastronomic tradition which, at the end of the 1950s, the municipality of Mendatica wanted to enhance with the definition of Bianc kitchen”(For the poverty of the colors of the dishes).
Brus, a special cheese
In this land he found his environment the Brigasca sheep, now a Slow Food Presidium, an animal considered almost sacred by the inhabitants of the area, of which once there were also 60,000 heads, today about 1,800. It comes from La Brigue, a country that over time has been alternately French, Italian and then again Francese, but where Brigasco has always been spoken, a dialect understood on both sides of the border and which descends from the ancient language of Oc. Here the Brigasca sheep has always provided good milk, from which it has been obtained for generations a square toma, also known as Sora, and brus: a 10-day fermented ricotta with a slightly spicy flavor, still the protagonist of a festival that is repeated every year in August in that of Frabosa Soprana in the Cuneo area; to reiterate once again the link between the territories.
Rip and hunt there
Even the dishes have singular names like the land that generated them and among the most representative are the “sugeli” and the “streppa e caccia là”: children of a kitchen that had both male and female hands. The first are dumplings a little similar to orecchiette, seasoned with a white sauce based on brus, but which need a worktop and were therefore the prerogative of women, while the latter already rough in name (tear and throw there) share the same dough that could be prepared by shepherds even outdoors and then torn into pieces, to be flattened with your fingers before throwing them directly into boiling water along with cabbage leaves, turnips and potatoes. Tasting these dishes is an experience to do in the area, traveling the Strada della Cucina Bianca – Civilization of the malghe established to protect and enhance the territory: the route winds through tiny villages where transhumance has taken place for centuries and tells of a little-known Liguria.
by Laura Maragliano
on sale & Pepe Magazine of November 2020
portrait of Gian Marco Folcolini
photo of Francesca Moscheni's plate
in the kitchen Claudia Compagni
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