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N
ot everyone comes to Italy and falls in love with
the country’s much-vaunted regional cuisine.
Take my sister Mary, who’s been visiting every
summer for the past 10 years or so. On her first
trip, I thought I’d impress her by taking her down
to Tuscany for a week. History, art, breathtaking landscapes, great
food and wine – it’s the regionthat encapsulates the tourist’s
Italian dream, or so they say.
We were speeding along Autostrada A12 on the way home to
Piedmont when she confessed. Sure, she’d enjoyed the ribollita,
the pappardelle, the wild boar stew, the Chianti, but something
was missing. After scoffing some of the finest dishes Tuscany has
to offer, she was craving something else. She was pining for a pie.
She lives in Newcastle in the north of England, pie land par
excellence. Be it pork or game, steak and kidney or meat and
potato, or even shepherd’s or fish, which don’t have pastry at
all, the pie is the soul food of the north, and it’s eaten not
every day, but almost – at least at my sister’s house.
The Tuscan pie fast had been too much for her. How
would she make it through the rest of the holiday without one?
I could read her mind. “Pity you don’t have pies in Italy,” she
was thinking. “I’ll show you,” I was thinking.Pie consumption in Liguria could rival that in the north of England, writes
JOHN IRVING, and its torta pasqualina comes with a side of Biblical signicance.
It was a Saturday, it was midday and we were entering
Liguria. An hour later, we were sitting down for lunch at a
hilltop restaurant – La Brinca in the inland village of Ne near
Genoa, run by a mate of mine, Sergio Circella. Sergio specialises
in traditional Ligurian fare, so I was pretty sure he’d have one
torta salata – savoury pie – or another on the menu. And he did.
The fact is that Liguria, from Ventimiglia in the west to La
Spezia in the east, is no less a region of pie-eaters than the north
of England. Hemmed in between the sea and the mountains,
with little fertile land to cultivate, it has always made a virtue
of necessity, making the most of garden vegetables and aromatic
herbs. One ingredient it has in abundance, though, is olives,
hence oil, which it once exported in return for grain, hence
flour. Necessity is also the mother of invention, and the exchange
gave rise to a rich array of focacce and, yes, pies.
Liguria, of course, was also a region of seafarers – Christopher
Columbus, first and foremost – and all this relatively non-
perishable proto finger-food proved ideal tucker for long voyages.
No other Italian regional food has less need of cutlery.
Unlike the French quiche or Spanish empanada, which
generally contain meat or cheese in some shape or form, the
Ligurian torta is filled with chard, spinach, artichokes, pumpkin,➤GOURMET TRAVELLER 75