Venetian cuisine, from the city of Venice, Italy
or more widely from the region of Veneto, has a centuries-long history and differs significantly from other cuisines of northern Italy (notably Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol), and of neighbouring Austria and of Slavic countries (notably Slovenia and Croatia), despite sharing some commonalities.
Overview
Cuisine in Veneto may be divided into three main categories, based on geography: the coastal areas, the plains, and the mountains. Each one (especially the plains) can have many local cuisines, each city with its own dishes.
The most common dish is polenta, which is cooked in various ways within the local cuisines of Veneto. Polenta once was the universal staple food of the poorer classes, who could afford little else. In Veneto, the corns are ground in much smaller fragments in comparison with the rest of Italy: so, when cooked, it resembles a pudding.
Typical of many coastal areas, communities along the coast of the Laguna Veneta serve mainly seafood dishes.
In the plains it is very popular to serve grilled meat (often by a barbecue, and in a mix of pork, beef and chicken meat) together with grilled polenta, potatoes or vegetables. Other popular dishes include risotto, rice cooked with many different kinds of food, from vegetables, mushrooms, pumpkin or radicchio to seafood, pork meat or chicken livers. Bigoli (a typical Venetian fresh pasta, similar to Udon), fettuccine (hand-made noodles), ravioli and the similar tortelli (filled with meat, cheese, vegetables or pumpkin) and gnocchi (potatoes-made fresh pasta), are fresh and often hand-made pasta dishes (made of eggs and wheat flour), served together with meat sauce (ragù) often made with duck meat, sometimes together with mushrooms or peas, or simply with melted butter.
Cuisine from the mountain areas is mainly made of pork or game meat, with polenta, as well as mushrooms or cheeses (made by cow milk), and some dish from Austrian or Tyrolese tradition, such as canederli or strudel. A typical dish is casunziei, hand-made fresh pasta similar to ravioli.
Among the typical seasoning of Venetian cuisine, you can find butter, olive oil, sunflower oil, vinegar, kren, senape, mostarda, salsa verde.
The following are dishes typical of the three subregions of the Veneto. The page for Venetian language provides additional information on writing and pronouncing the dishes' names.
Venice and the lagoon
Bigołi in salsa: bigoli pasta served with an anchovy and onion sauce. Fegato ała venesiana: a high-class Venetian plate of liver, chopped and cooked together with chopped onions. Mołeche: fried soft-shell crab of the species (Carcinus maenas). Mołeche are very valuable because the process of molting in the brackish lagoons only lasts a few hours, after which the shell hardens and the crab is again called maxenete. Pasta e faxioi: bean soup with noodles (typically long pasta rough). Połenta e schie: small shrimp from the lagoon (gray mud, gray-brown from boiled), fried and perched on a bed of very soft, white polenta. Rixi e bixi: a poor but tasty dish consisting of a simple risotto with pancetta and peas cooked in a broth. Rixoto de gò: rice prepared with goby (of the Gobius ophiocephalus species), also known as gò, typical fish of the Venetian Lagoon. Sarde in saor: fried sardines, dipped in partially fried onion in the same oil in which the sardines are fried, raisins and pine nuts (traditionally only by winter to increase the calories), other spices and sprinkled with plenty of vinegar. One leaves everything to marinate at least one night. Sepe al nero: cuttlefish cooked with their ink lagoon.
Among the many Venetian desserts, the most well-known are: Baicołi (or baicoli). Fritołe (or frittelle). Pinza (or pinsa): an Epiphany cake based on cornmeal and mixed dried fruits (usually figs and raisins) and nuts. Xałeti (or ): cornmeal biscotti with raisins.