Ligurians, whose ancestors once dominated northwestern Italy and southeastern France, were noted as seafaring traders long before their famous son Christopher Columbus opened channels for foods from America. Pasta tubes called macheronis were cooked in the 13th century by the Genoese, who spread the cult of noodles to other Italian ports and over the Apennines to Emilia. Ancient Ligurians made polenta and breads from the flour of dried chickpeas and chestnuts. It's been speculated that a form of pasta originated there as the lasagnette strips of chestnut flour that still appear on menus.
Liguria remains an active producer of pasta, though based almost entirely on wheat. Preferred with pesto are slender trenette noodles or the short, spiraled trofie or troffiette. The sauce was made by pounding fresh basil in mortar and pestel with garlic and pine nuts (or walnuts), then blending in olive oil and grated Pecorino Sardo and Parmigiano Reggiano in equal parts. Some include potatoes or green beans with the noodles. Pesto, now often made in blenders, also flavors minestrone.
A pungent garlic and vinegar sauce called aggiadda or agliata goes with soups and baccalà. Beyond basil, parsley, rosemary, marjoram and thyme, cooks use a mix of wild herbs called preboggion, which includes borage, chervil, chicory and other greens in season, to flavor pasta and soup. Other pastas include a type of ravioli called pansòuti, dumplings called fregamài and testaroli, small, round or figure-eight stamps known as corzetti, the lasagne-like picagge and the thinner mandilli de saea (silk handkerchiefs).
Chickpea flour and olive oil make a tasty tart called farinata, or panissa when made with onions and fried. Here torta (cake) is rarely sweet. Torta pasqualina and torta verde are laden with vegetables, torta marinara with fish. Bread usually comes in rolls or as focaccia with oil, onions or cheese. The region has its own pizza dell'Andrea (after the heroic Admiral Andrea Doria) with onions, garlic, tomatoes, black olives and anchovies, or with sardines as sardenaira.
There's also a sweet pizza among Liguria's desserts, which range through ring-shaped biscuits called canestrelli, fried pastries called böxìe (little lies), apple and raisin fritters called friscieu, Genoa's Easter fruitcake pandolce and the chestnut-pine nut tart called castagnaccio.
Seafood restaurants along the Riviera offer sea bass, prawns, scallops, oysters, lobsters and on occasion cappon magro "lean capon," the wittily ironic name of a monumental salad that contains plenty of fish but no fowl). Coveted are gianchetti or bianchetti (larval anchovies and sardines available only briefly each year) and datteri (date-shells so rare that fishing is banned). Yet housewives rely on mussels, squid and other humble fish for soups called buridda and ciuppin. Recipes abound for anchovies and sardines (fresh or preserved), the dried tuna (or, in the past, dolphin) called mosciame and dried cod baccalà and stoccafisso.
The resourceful use of meat in the diet relies on the versatility of veal in roasts and stews, the breast loaf called cima ripiena, the rolled filets called tomaxelle, fried skewers called stecchi and as a source of tripe. Rabbit is popular, braised or stewed, as are poultry and lamb. Liguria produces little cheese, though Parmigiano Reggiano, pecorino, fresh ricotta and the acidic curds called prescinseua are prominent in cooking.
The region's olive oil known as Riviera Ligure is protected by a DOP. Ligurians prize their limited sources of wine, first among them the white from the seaside terraces of Cinque Terre, either dry or sweet as Sciacchetrà. Cinque Terre lies in the Riviera del Levante to the east of Genoa, where the Colli di Luni zone is noted for fine white Vermentino. The Riviera del Ponente to the west offers white Pigato and Vermentino and red Rossese di Dolceacqua and Ormeasco, from the Dolcetto grape.
