Cucina Povera (or why Synthesis is more than the addition of the parts)

This is an original recipe that was conceived and executed in Munich during my last visit to Manolis and Marion in November 2009.

Marion (Manolis’ wife for the uninitiated) who is an accomplished cook, had prepared among other dishes salt cod in a tomato sauce, and cheek peas in the oven. She had also bought a wonderful delicious sausage from Spain, the one with whole chunks of fat in it. They are very delicious, but require a robust stomach.

As we were discussing about food and tastes, it became apparent to me that the next day we will have a lot of leftovers, a little bit of each dish and a few pieces of the sausage (chorizo). One of the themes of the conversation was the combination of pork products with seafood in Catalonia and the Basque country.

I therefore thought of combining the pieces of sausage left with the cod, and add some cheek peas to the lot. The container of all of these would be a mix of eggs and thinly sliced peppers. I even created a drawing of the dish.

Please disregard the rather dramatic “Teufels Dreieck” which means “Devil’s Traingle” in German. It was the tentative name for the dish, but it was dropped after Athina commented that it was rather unsuitable for such a nice tasting dish.

The dish remains without name to date, but as it is a classical example of “cucina povera”, or “cooking with leftovers”, I decided to name the article accordingly.

Take a deep round baking dish and put the slices of the sausage in a way that they form a triangle.Put in a very hot over (250 Celsius) and let the sausage fat to soften for 10 minutes.

Add thinly sliced peppers, the more colors the better, and then the cod flakes and the cheek peas.

Whisk 6 eggs and pour them over the triangle. Bake in 200 Celsius for 20 minutes and serve piping hot.

The result was more than rewarding. The mix of the sausage and the salted cod worked beautifully, the fish standing up to the ferocious attack of the strong animal. The cheek peas acted like the buffer zone between the two war camps, while the eggs and the peppers softened the impact of the competing tastes. What a dish!

Therefore, in food as in life, we can safely conclude that synthsesis is more than adding things together. This is a good example of the case.