PASTISSADA DE CAVAL E PEARA' - two simple typical dishes
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area : Verona |
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category : social practices |
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A delicious and intelligent way for using secondary products in the kitchen, as well as depicting the spartan diet of people who experienced the nightmare of hunger and malnutrition; yet these dishes today are the quintessence of a rich, fascinating and varied cuisine whose simplicity and flavour has come to the fore again, especially in combination with other local produce (wine and vegetables).
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Can two dishes narrate the history of Verona? Veronese anthropologist Cesare Lombroso certainly and effectively believed so, since progress overlaps the past without eliminating it but embodying it in traditions.
This is the case for two specialities in Veronese cuisine, pastisada de caval and pearà or peverada (horse stew and bread sauce). “Pastissada” is a stew prepared with horse meat. But let’s take a look at the legend: this ancient dish is associated with the battle fought near Verona in 489 between Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, and Odoacer, King of the Heruli.
Theodoric’s troops won the struggle but thousands of men and horses lay slain on the battlefield. And while the local population suffered famine and hunger, all that horse meat became putrid because an ecclesiastic rule forbade its consumption. Theodoric annulled this ban and thereby allowed the consumption of horsemeat. To overcome the smell that all that hung meat emanated, the Veronese marinated it at length in full-bodied red wine with herbs and began cooking it for many hours over several days. They realised that every time it was cooked, the stew became softer and tastier to the point of becoming a dish of very tender, crumbly meat with a thick and delicious sauce. Pearà or peverada is also a typical example of Veronese cuisine and there are several stories associated with its origins.
It is said to be a distant descendent of legionnaire’s mush, a mixture of flour with pepper (hence the Italian peperata and Veronese dialect pearà or peverada) that was an integral part of food rations of Roman soldiers who, perhaps on passing through Verona, transmitted this custom also to the local population.
Another legend suggests that spicy sauce, on the other hand, was invented by a chef at the court of Queen Rosmunda who hoped to mitigate in part the terrible potion imposed on her by Longobard King Alboino, forcing her to drink from the goblet made from the cranium of her father, Cunimondo. The Veronese have always kept alive the use of their pearà, a dish made from poor ingredients (marrow, grated bread, oil, stock and plenty of pepper) that after lengthy cooking becomes a dense, uniform sauce thats the ideal accompaniment for mixed boiled meats.
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