Anchovies in salt, the recipe.
This morning I prepared a small dish of salted anchovies and later I will explain how I did it. While I was cleaning the anchovies that I put in salt last summer, I remembered the salting operation that my maternal grandfather did while I, as a child, watched him carefully. This is a bit of a long story but if you want to read it I would like to tell it to you... We have to go back a long way in the years, when my grandfather told me these stories. He and his brothers were very young and lived near the waterfall, in Riva Trigoso, in the western area. Life was hard and the shipyards were still in their infancy so the means to survive were really limited: many men went sailing others survived by working as farmers/fishermen because both the land and the sea, alone, did not allow them to survive and people had to adapt by doing both jobs. This is exactly what my grandfather and his brothers, nicknamed the "buluin", did. In the summer, therefore, they devoted themselves to fishing for anchovies that was done near the coast, following the shoals towards the Cinque Terre. The boat was a gozzo with a lateen sail, the net was called “manata” and the fishing was done more or less like today but without the help of the lampara; before leaving, the women prepared the barrels of salt and the fishermen followed the coast fishing and salting, until the barrels were full of anchovies and they could then return home. At night they stopped in the small ports, eating fish with the little they received, exchanging the higher quality fish that remained in the nets for anchovies with biscuits and vegetables, while the wine and oil (and often biscuits too) they brought from home. Thus, out of necessity, many dishes were born that later became typical of our cuisine, the best known of which is the “bagnun”. I can almost see my grandfather when, after removing their heads, he would place a layer of anchovies, head and tail, in the glass jar, alternating them with a thin layer of coarse salt. The meticulousness with which he performed this operation was the guarantee of a quality finished product. After a few months the anchovies were ready to be consumed.

I try to prepare the anchovies like my grandfather did, although I'm not sure if he followed the same procedure: first I carefully remove the fish from the arbanella. Then I try to slowly remove as much salt as possible from the anchovies and wash them lightly with a mixture of vinegar slightly diluted with water, opening them to remove the bones. This operation must also be done carefully, trying not to break the fish. Finally, I remove any small bones or salt residues from the fillets and then I squeeze them to remove the vinegar residues and place them on a plate that I have moistened with extra virgin olive oil. I then sprinkle a little chopped garlic and oregano on the fillets and finally cover them with olive oil again. The dish is ready. Enjoy your meal.

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