On Sunday 10 August 2025, we had our neighbors the McKinnons and the Hylanders over for a feast of two lesser-known regions of Italy: The island of Sardinia and skinny little Liguria, home of Genoa and the Cinque Terre, pressed between the mountains and the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This dinner was special for me because it included two dishes that I had wanted to make for years: the pasta and the fish.
We started with a Ligurian Farinata, a flatbread of chickpea four and water seasoned with rosemary leaves. Served hot from the skillet, it's crispy on the outside and soft inside, delicious and gluten-free.
The pasta course was the Ligurian Pansoti, a hyperlocal ravioli stuffed with wild herbs and local cheese and served with a Genoese Walnut Sauce.
The herb mixture in the filling of the Pansoti (also spelled Pansotti) is called Prebuggiun (ore preboggion - these names all come from the Ligurian dialect). I had to make the prebuggiun and the pasta and assemble it myself in the traditional shape. This was the most time-consuming part of this dinner. They're generously filled; Pansoti comes from the Ligurian word for "paunchy".
We had a vegetable side dish of The Sultan's Onions, mild pearl onions simmered in vegetable stock with sweet sultanas (golden raisins). This Genoese dish is always a crowd pleaser! The key to it is the mild braising of the onions in a veggie stock, with or without white wine, but definitely with some golden raisins (sultanas) plumped up in hot stock or hot white wine.
I'll admit that I also made a wonderful Genoese Spinach dish, but I ruined it by leaving it too long warming after it was ready. Popeye was a tough guy, but his favorite leafy green doesn't handle prolonged heat as readily as our favorite underdog sailor.
The fish course was the Sardinian Trote alla Vernaccia, a 15-year bucket list item for me!
It took about 10 years to find the wine. There are oceans of Vernaccia di San Gimignano available, it's a fine dry white wine made from the Vernaccia grape in Tuscany, but the Sardinians have a different idea. The Vernaccia di Oristano is a fortified wine made like a sherry, aged in oak and chestnut barrels, and it's considerably more expensive. They are nothing alike and one cannot be substituted for the other.
The meat course was a
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dish not typically Ligurian or Sardinian but common throughout Tuscany and to the northwest of that multiply-blessed region. Nonetheless it would have fit well on the table of either a Sardinian or Ligurian family.
Choose a tender loin of pork, from the fattier rib end if it's available. Braise it in a copious amount of good dry Marsala, add the chestnuts late in the cooking, then while the meat rests, whir the cooking juices all together into a thick, awesomely irresistible sauce.