🧅 Bigoli in salsa

Bigoli in salsa is a first course from Veneto: thick, long bigoli pasta with a sauce of onions and salted sardines stewed slowly in oil. The Accademia Italiana della Cucina includes it among its recipes for the Veneto region.

Bigoli look like thick spaghetti with a rough surface; traditionally the dough is pressed through a bronze die with a hand press called a bigolaro, which is why the Accademia's recipe calls them 'bigoli al torchio', bigoli from the press. The rough surface holds a dense sauce well.

For four people the Accademia uses 800 g of bigoli, 80 g of salted sardines, two onions, a glass of oil, salt and pepper. The salted sardines are washed and cleaned well and cut into small pieces, and the onions are thinly sliced. Both are fried together slowly in the oil with two spoonfuls of water. When the mixture has softened and the onions are golden, it is stirred for a few minutes so that onions and sardines break down into a smooth sauce. The bigoli are boiled in plenty of salted water, drained al dente, dressed with the sauce and finished with a little raw oil.

The Accademia stresses that no other flavourings are added to this simple dish: it is traditionally a popular one because it is very cheap and easy to make. The onion can be replaced with two or three well-crushed garlic cloves, which makes the dish tastier but heavier. There is no cheese: the flavour comes from the fish, the onion and the oil, so the key is to stew slowly and not let the onion brown too far.