I made a lovely visit up to Providence, Rhode Island a few weeks ago. It’s a great small city with a lively old Italian neighborhood and lots of interesting people there doing great things with food. I trekked up there for the fun of doing a local television show about “the diversity of Italian food” (an impossibly huge topic) with Alan Constantino--owner of the great Venda Ravioli shop--and Mary Ann Esposito, the legendary host of PBS’s Ciao Italia of the longest running cooking show in America. It was great fun. We began with the old question “Is there such a thing as Italian food?” Before we knew it the time was up. I began to think I’d like to do a ten-hour documentary. Then maybe we’d go beyond scratching the surface.
Anyway, I wanted to bring Mary Ann a gift of something from Liguria of course. So I made corzetti--these round circles of pasta, which are like large coins, imprinted with a design-- essentailly a culinary woodcut. You need a special wooden carved stamp to make them. Here they are drying on my porch.
Corzetti are very typical of Liguria and also of Provence, France, which is not surprising as the two regions share a long culinary history
. Crozetti also appear in the earliest know Italian cookbook--Il Liber Coquina, from Naples, and written in Latin--associated with the Angevin Court of the 13th century. Now of course food history always acts as a detective’s tale. One door leads to many more. I could go on and on about this book Il Liber from Naples, with its French connections. But I’ll stop right here and save that for another day. Back to Genoese corzetti....
The Genoese have two versions. One is from the Val Polcevera and is made in a figure 8 (yes, completely different shape and same name). The other is the type made with the stamp, which, over history became designed with insignias and coats of arms for a given family.
My friend Sergio Rossi--food historian in Genoa and ever my adviser in such matters--wrote me that corzetti also share a history with orichiette in the South of Italy. And he has a very special way of proving it.
Sergio has spent time studying the ways of the Tabarchi Genoese on the small island of San Pietro off the coast of Sardinia. This is an insular community descended from fishermen who left Liguria in the 16th century and settled on an island near Tunisia. Because of their isolation, they kept extraordinary connections to their Ligurian cultural roots and still speak a variation of Genoese dialect (with other influences) and have kept many old recipes. For a scholar of Genoese food (such as Sergio is), this is like finding a tiime capsule. He is writing a book about these people and sent me a photo of their corzetti--ancient style--in a very old fashioned oblong, not round, shape and yes--clearly ressembling orecchiette.
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Please visit Sergio’s website which is written in italian. But even if you don’t read the language, you’ll enjoy seeing his photos... http://www.civiltaforchetta.it/ (And visit here for his visit to the extraordinary Tabarchi culture. http://www.civiltaforchetta.it/cucinatabarchina.htm)
As soon as you make corzetti, you realize that this is not every day food. It is time consuming and impractical. You must stamp each, one by one. First you cut out the circle with one side of the stamp. Then you imprint each side. The result, however is beautiful.
I made these with a simple pasta dough. (For one pound of pasta: 2 cups flour, 1 egg, a little water, salt, and olive oil makes about a pound), but the recipes I’ve found often call for more egg yolk--this makes sense for a special rich dish.
Of course the trick is to find a corzetti stamp. Not so easy. You can go to the medieval district in Genoa or to a guy named Franco Casoni in Chiavari (though each time I went the shop was closed.) Or you can order them online from Corti Brothers or or A.G. Ferrari Foods.
But what a beautiful dish they are. In Liguria, they are often served with a simple sauce of oil, marjoram, and pignoli. But I have also had them there with a walnut sauce. My oldest Genoese cookbooks (by Ratto father and son from the 19th century) recomms corzetti dressed with a sugo of veal or beef. I may make them for Easter as a first course.
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