COAST GUARD

Along Italy’s Adriatic coast, the sea connects the kitchens of those living on its shores. In her latest book, Adriatico, Paola Bacchia takes inspiration from the cuisine and stories of the coastline.

In her latest cookbook, Paola Bacchia takes inspiration from the cuisine of the Adriatic coast.

My father grew up on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Years later, in our home in suburban Melbourne, he told me that before the war his mother, my nonna Stefania, would wrap freshly fried sardines in paper and carry them down to the beach. They would sit on the rocks and eat the fish, still warm and so fresh they still tasted of the sea.

The Italian coast of the Adriatic Sea runs from the base of the peninsula at the Ionian Sea to the northern waters of the Gulf of Trieste, before it loops around to Slovenia and Croatia. If you follow it northwards from its most southern point, where groves of olive trees twist their roots into the undulating red earth, you will see a changing landscape. White-washed walled masserie, colourful villages and sea-facing piazze dot the 1,200-kilometre coastline, with the sea being a strong connector of those living on its shores.

The differences found along the coast are partly due to the presence of invaders – a 500-year-old Austrian legacy is revived in the kitchens of Italians who live in the Gulf of Trieste, and a spectacularly ancient Greek legacy inhabits the food of the Salento. There are places along the Adriatic coast where the mountains touch the sea, resulting in a happy marriage of ingredients that are not commonly associated with each other: mushrooms and clams, silverbeet and squid, and potatoes and mussels.

The recipes in Adriatico, and in these pages, are the result of a three-month research trip spent travelling the length of the coast. Many are traditional dishes that I saw on menus or tasted, others are adapted from older cookbooks I found on my travels, and still others are from local people I met along the way.