EAT LIKE A VENETIAN
Collection of home-cooking classics shows off the Italian city’s best-kept secret
From labyrinthine canals and narrow alleyways to grand palaces and art museums, visitors have valued Venice’s many charms for centuries.
But it’s the beauty of Venetian cuisine, author Skye McAlpine says, that remains the city’s bestkept secret.
“It’s almost as if Venice belongs to the world rather than to the Italians or to the Venetians,” says McAlpine, who has called the city home since age six. More than 20 million people visit Venice each year, which is an especially significant number given the population of the historic centre is roughly 55,000.
Spice is quite unusual in other Northern Italian cuisines, but in Venetian cuisine it’s essential. As McAlpine underscores in her debut cookbook, A Table in Venice (Appetite by Random House, 2018), spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and saffron are central to seafood and fish dishes, risottos, pasta sauces, and desserts. “Venetian is what we think of (as) Italian. It’s simple: simple ingredients, simple flavours, local, seasonal. It’s a lot of seafood because it’s on the sea but there are these layers of spice,” she says. “And I think that really adds a level of interest and flavour to the food.”
In presenting the 100 recipes in A Table in Venice, McAlpine highlights characteristic locales and habits: vegetable recipes from the historic Rialto Market, fish and game from the Venetian lagoon, and the “cultural institution” of lo spritz (drinks and small bites to “tide you over until dinner”). The recipes are representative of home life in the city — dishes McAlpine grew up eating — and can easily be achieved in kitchens around the world.
Recipes excerpted from A Table in Venice: Recipes from My Home by Skye McAlpine (Appetite by Random House).