Food and wine in Verona and Valpolicella

It is quite difficult to reconstruct the make up of typical Valpolicella cooking. In fact, due to the nearness of Verona, the area has always suffered from a certain 'culinary subjection' toward the city, also because it is a holiday area. For this reason, Valpolicella's food and wine scenario should rather be framed in the sphere of Veronese cooking and, more generally in that of the Veneto. Popular cooking has always used local products, and Valpolicella has always had a large variety of crops and, therefore, raw materials available in the vegetable garden or in the field of the house. In this way, traditions have consolidated which, to this day, can be enjoyed at the tables of restaurants, trattorias and taverns of Valpolicella.

The first course par excellence in Valpolicella was pasta: with vegetable, with potatoes and beans, or with rice and vegetables, with potatoes, peas, celery and leeks. The main Sunday dish was home-made pasta, fettuccine and tagliatelle, served with boiled hen and beef, broth, stale bread, eggs and cheese. Among the pasta dishes, the "bigoli" deserve a special mention. They are a type of home-made spaghetti, sometimes prepared with bran rich flour or also with hard wheat.

In Verona and in Valpolicella, bigoli are seasoned mainly with pieces of mixed meat flavoured with onion, sometimes also with roast meat sauce, and are sprinkled with plenty of grated cheese.

In Valpolicella winters, potato gnocchi were a never to be missed dish. After being neglected for a long time, they are now coming back into fashion and, according to tradition, they are still prepared by the men in the house. The gnocco, which began as the typical dish of carnivals, is now one of the main specialities of traditional Verona cooking: an exquisite mix of potatoes, white flour and eggs, to be enjoyed with tomato sauce or with sugar and cinnamon. Its origin coincides with that of the Verona carnival, to be precise, with the "Gnocco Bacchanal" feast. To this day, it is the most spectacular event in Verona, and is also known as the "Function of the Gnocchi" or the "Feast of Plenty".

The typical dish of Valpolicella is boiled hen, beef, tongue and cotechino (spiced pork sausage). Pork from meat butchered in the winter was all preserved, only the liver was served immediately with onion. The celebrated soppressa, sausages and cotechino, and excellent salami are obtained from pork. However they have never been as highly considered as the DOC wines of Valpolicella.

Sauces play an important role in typical Valpolicella cuisine. The most famous and characteristic sauce is the pearà, made with stale bread, broth, beef marrow, cheese, pepper, vinegar, hard boiled egg, anchovies, horseradish and soaked bread.

The cooking tradition of Valpolicella accompanies every dish with polenta at all times of the day: sweet in the morning, and fresh in the evening.

Another of the typical foods of Verona and Valpolicella is the "pastissada de caval", a recipe handed down for one thousand and five hundred years. Legend has it that at the end of the battle fought in 489 between Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and Odoacre, king of the Barbarians, hundreds of horses perished on the battlefield. As the inhabitants of Verona did not want all that meat to be wasted, they cut it up and put it to macerate in Amarone della Valpolicella wine, seasoning it with spices and vegetables, so that it could be eaten when necessary, cooking it on a low flame. Even today, outside Verona and Valpolicella, the "pastissada de caval" is known as a horse meat stew cooked for many hours together with a rich, particularly aromatic sauce.

In the lower part of Verona, on the borders with Lombardy, toward Mantua, there are some vast paddy fields, and their recognised centre is the town of Isola della Scala. The type of rice produced in the Verona province and protected by the DOP mark, is the Veronese Vialone nano (dwarf) rice. The classic recipe of Verona and Isola della Scala is a risotto made very tasty with salami pasta, and generously seasoned with Padano parmesan cheese.

More than forty different dishes have been created in Verona with Vialone rice. Among the most famous are: "risi e bisi", rice boiled with peas, "riso e figadini" and "riso al tastasal". Talking about food in Verona and Valpolicella, we should also mention the pumpkin tortellini, made with pasta dough rolled as thin as silk, cut and knotted like a handkerchief, and enriched with a delicate pumpkin filling.

Among the starters of Verona and Valpolicella, we should also remember the typical "sfilacci di cavallo", a very appetising dry meat to be tasted with oil and lemon just like Bresaola (horse ham).

Among the cheeses produced in the zone of Verona and Valpolicella, the typical one is Monte Veronese, a cheese with much in common with Asiago. This is a cows' milk cheese, with half cooked paste. There are two types: one with whole milk, and the other with partially skimmed milk. The typical zone of provenance of the milk and of the production of the cheese, includes all the northern part of the province of Verona.

All these exquisite dishes should be accompanied by Veronese wines, by virtue of the long list of DOC wines that the city of Romeo and Juliet can boast: Valpolicella, in its versions Valpolicella Classico and Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Recioto, Amarone, but also Soave, Custoza, Lugana and Lessini Durello.

Verona Apartments, Farm Holidays, Bed and Breakfast, Country House Hotels, Residencies in Verona, Valpolicella, and Lake Garda,

advise all those wishing to enjoy the typical food and wine of Verona and Valpolicella to find accommodation in the following structures:

San Ciriaco Relais Country House Hotel and Bed and Breakfast for Farm Holidays in Verona Valpolicella (Italy): the ideal place for those wishing to stay in a completely relaxed and reserved manner, in a hilly zone immersed in greenery.

Residenza San Tomaso furnished apartments for rent B&B in central Verona for those looking to go to the opera or cinema, or to go shopping on the streets of central Verona, walking around in comfort.