Green Sauce, aka Bagnet Verd

 

I want to get better at writing, so here's my first substack! My hope is that you'll find some things I find interesting... interesting too. At the very least, I hope you'll be inspired to knock up a simple green sauce this week.

 

 

 

I was in Piedmont (north-west Italy) last month visiting my partners family, when we were treated to a splendid bowl of salsa verde. Keen to show off my Italian food knowledge to compensate for my Italian language non-knowledge, I thrust an excited finger in the bowls direction and exclaimed "salsa verde, mi piace!".

 

Then came the inevitable rebuttal, "it's called bagnet verd, and it's from Piemonte". Salsa verde was from this lesser known region and it was called something different? It was a lightbulb moment: I will start a substack and tell the people of Britain what I have learned today.

 

 

Salsa (sauce) verde (green). That's in Italian.

 

In Piedmont dialect, it's Bagnèt (sauce) verd (green).

 

It's a piquant sauce, meaning it has a sharp taste to it. A zing, if you like, provided by the salty, umami-rich anchovies. It's best used to liven things up a bit. I think it's best utilised on those slightly dull, but very healthy and necessary midweek things like brown lentils, beans and less exciting vegetables. Dollop a few spoonfuls of salsa verde on top and suddenly things get a lot more exciting.

 

The recipe can trace its origins back to the court of King Carlo Alberto in the 19th century. Things like boiled meat and boiled ox tongue were a popular menu feature (and very much still are today in Piedmont) and maybe someone thought they could do with livening up a little. A strong piquant sauce is also effective in disguising the taste of past-its-best meat.

 

 

The beauty of a salsa verde is that there aren't rules. You get given the basic ingredients: parsley, anchovy, capers, olive oil, possibly garlic. Then over time you develop your ideal ratio and manufacturing technique (chopped with knife? mashed with pestle and mortar? blitzed with blender?).

 

Except here's a curveball you didn't see coming: the true salsa verde (bagnet verd) contains stale bread! And vinegar!

 

Yuck? Or yum? Let's find out!

 

 

Before we find out if soggy bread = yuck or yum though: a mention of olive oil, which will be a running theme throughout these substacks. The keener eyed geographers amongst you might have noticed two things: 1) Piedmont is a landlocked region, so where did the anchovies come from?! And 2) Piedmont gets really cold winters because it's literally at the foot of the alps, so how do olives grow there?!

 

Two very good questions with one very good answer: Liguria. The ancient trading route from Liguria to Piedmont is to thank for olive oil and anchovies in our bagnet verd.

 

Bordering Piedmont to the south is this coastal region shaped like a setting sun around Genoa. Famed for foccaccia, pesto, trofie pasta, beautiful seaside villages, iconically symmetrical sun-lounged beaches and rude, tight-fisted locals (I'm reliably told).

 

Also really good olive oil, from the acclaimed taggiasca olive variety. Ligurian olive oil is quite difficult to find outside of the region because despite its high reputation, it can't compete on scale (and price) with the bigger producing regions like Puglia, Sicily and Tuscany. So if you find taggiasca olive oil from Liguria, give it a whirl.

 

 

I found this ingredient list from a local website: https://langhe.net/ricetta/bagnet-verd/, which I deem to be an authentic source, if you'll pardon the pun.

 

 

-Fresh parsley, 50g

-Anchovies, 2 fillets

-Stale bread

-White wine vinegar, 1/2 glass

-Garlic, 1 clove

-Olive oil, a few glugs

 

 

As I said earlier, 3 ways to manufacture this thing: Knife, Pestle or Blender. I've picked the path of least washing up, so it'll just be the knife.