Long live buridda!

 

Though in Liguria the word buridda is instantly associated with stockfish or cuttlefish, there is much more to know about it. Buridda, in fact, probably derives from the Arabic language: it also influences the Provençal bourride, and its meaning hints at boiled stews. This symbol of Ligurian traditional cuisine, in fact, was a mixture of fish cut into small pieces (conger eel, dogfish, whatever the sea provided), stewed with olive oil, pine nuts, mushrooms, capers, parsley and/or other flavourings. Poor, humble, tasty fish - nothing is wasted in Liguria.

Today it is cooked mainly with stockfish or cuttlefish. The use of peas or artichokes also depended on the different seasonality of the vegetables. In the Savona area, old recipe books did not mention mushrooms, onions and carrots, but chard, olives and anchovies - thus differentiating the local version of buridda from the Genoese one. Sometimes a few anchovies are added and stir-fried with the other ingredients.

As for stockfish, in the first half of the 15th century, Venetian captain Pietro Querini was shipwrecked close to the Lofoten islands, where he had to remain for a few months due to adverse weather conditions... On his return Querini drafted a detailed report for the Serenissima, and described a stockfish recipe in which: "they beat them with the back of an axe, shredding them like strings, then mix in butter and spices to add flavour". Venetians understood the potential of stockfish, as their fierce rivals, the Genoese... In 1476, a young Columbus embarked in Noli on a merchant flotilla bound for Flanders. In 1927, Spanish historian Cuneo Vidal wrote that Columbus also had to buy batches of stockfish to be imported into Italy. Northern cod merchants landed mainly in the port of Imperia: Pieve di Teco and Badalucco were the hubs whence it was brought to Padania. In Badalucco, inhabitants survived a Saracen siege for weeks feeding on precious stockfish.

Nowadays, buridda, stockfish and brandacujùn are symbols of Ligurian cuisine. Ideal wine matching calls not only for great whites like Pigato, but also reds like Rossese or Ormeasco. Buridda is no longer the lean dish of Fridays, the preparation being too long, but the dish of festivity, of tradition, of a past that has become history.

My English abstract of the article published in Liguria Food

Luisa Puppo 

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