Peasant Recipes and Italian Lent

Acquacotta (cooked water) recipe

Acquacotta (cooked water) and pancotto (cooked bread) are two typical recipes of the season and Lent. They are too typical dishes of the cucina povera.

The acquacotta was a minestrone where there was not even a little meat stock to flavor the contents of the pot. Furthermore, people used to cook it with a few vegetables.
They often had only potato skins and little else.

The pancotto was also an uninviting meal. It was stale bread cooked in a liquid, usually water, to make it soft and eating.

Of course, these foods, which constituted the diet of the poorest peasants, were also suitable for the Lenten season when the Catholic precepts of abstaining from meat and rich foods were still widely observed in Italy.

Poverty and abstention from meat obliged to a diet of minestrone and pancotto for forty days.

Researching the Italian food traditions connected to Catholic precepts, I read a chronicle from the 1800s where was described the triumphant gesture of a schoolmaster from a small town in Romagna who, at the end of the Lent, tired of eating bland pancotto, broke the pot in the public square.

Today, the dishes of the cucina povera of the past are richer in taste and flavor and, indeed, have become delicious and stylish.

I am sharing the recipe for acquacotta.
Next time, I will leave you the one for pancotto in the pan.

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Spring acquacotta soup recipe

Is it soup? Yes, it is.

Often in Italy, minestrone is associated with something boring.
I'm sure announcing an acquacotta soup will arouse a pinch of curiosity, perfect for whetting the appetite.

Recipe
Serves 4
List of the Ingredients

3 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 or 2 artichokes
100 g shelled peas
80 g shelled broad beans
8 asparagus
water, about 1 1/2 liters
grated Parmigiano, about 20 g
olive oil, coarse and fine salt to taste.

Optional

4 eggs
wine or apple vinegar, 4 tablespoons
coarse salt, to taste

Method

Clean the vegetables.

Take artichokes and remove the outer fibrous leaves. Slice about 3/4 inch to an inch off the tip of the artichoke.

Cut carrots and celery into small pieces.

Separate the heads of the asparagus from the stalks. Slice the latter into rounds and cut the heads in half.

In a saucepan, add some olive oil and sauté the artichokes over low heat for about two minutes before adding all the other vegetables, leaving peas and asparagus heads aside.

Add more olive oil and stir again.

Pour in a liter of water, add coarse salt, and cook for 15 minutes on medium-low heat, then add peas and asparagus heads.

Add more water if needed. Then stir, cook for another 5 minutes, and turn off.

Add Parmigiano, stir, and let rest for a few minutes.

While the acquacotta is still cooking, bring plenty of salted water with vinegar to a boil in a pot.

With the handle of a wooden spoon, create a vortex in the water.

Now, helping yourself to a coffee cup, pour one shelled egg at a time into the vortex and cook for 2-3 minutes over low heat.

With a slotted spoon, scoop out the egg, and place one poached egg in each acquacotta dish.

If you prefer, you can put a sliced hard-boiled egg.