Liguria’s spectacular cuisine is often boiled down into just two internationally renowned players: focaccia and pesto. While they rightfully deserve their place in the spotlight, the fluffy and the basil-y often overshadow the rest of the region’s vegetable-forward, innovative dishes. Long before the country of Italy was unified, the port city of Genova was a leading maritime power, facilitating trade of spices, sugars, and even fish to the region, the rest of Italy, and Switzerland. And while the tables of the city’s wealthy were filled with elaborate and showy dishes (scroll down for a certain seafood tower), farmers across the rest of the C-shaped region struggled to eat, forced to work a land not conducive for growing any valuable crops or livestock. Ripieni became a staple of their diets, as stuffing something–vegetables, anchovies, squid, pasta dough–with leftover bread, eggs, cheese, and meat was an easy and cheap way to turn humble ingredients into a hearty, and tasty, meal. Foraging was and still is prevalent, and preboggion–the herbs that grow wild among the cascading slopes–are major contenders in most of the region’s dishes. Secondi sections of Ligurian menus are quite small, since the steep, hilly landscape is only optimal for cultivating rabbits and chickens; meat instead is most often used as a flavor enhancer for the more prominent antipasti and primi. 

Tiny but mighty, with some of the best vistas to boot, Liguria has proved that it knows how to make something out of nothing, and here are 20 somethings you must try.

Pesto alla Genovese

Genova’s famed green sauce has taken the world by storm, and rightfully so. Pesto alla Genovese is the simple combination of basil, pine nuts, extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano, Pecorino, and garlic, joined together via a mortar and pestle (hence the sauce’s name, which comes from pestare, to pound). Though it’s a staple of Ligurian cuisine, the recipe is only about 200 years old, first referenced in Giovanni Battista Ratto’s cookbook La Cuciniera Genovese. He took inspiration from the garlic-based and pounded aggiada, though ancient legend says pesto comes from San Basilio, a friar who lived in a convent on the hills of Prà (Genova), who crushed together some aromatic herbs with other ingredients offered to him by pilgrims. This green goddess is most often tossed with trofie–a short, twisted local pasta of durum wheat and water–or trenette–a long noodle that’s slightly thicker, wider, and more rounded than linguine (and also called trenette avvantaggiate). In Genova, you’ll often find both these pasta al pesto combos rounded out with green beans and potatoes, which are boiled together with the pasta, and topped with bright green basil and a drizzle of Ligurian olive oil. 

Salvia Fritta (Fried Sage Leaves)

Ligurians certainly know their way around an herb, and sage is no exception. These fuzzy, aromatic leaves grow wild among the drastic landscape, still harvested by hand via foraging. You’ll most often find the herb lightly dredged in a batter of all purpose flour, beer, water, and salt and pepper, then shallow fried for a few minutes per side until they are crisp, puffed, and golden. Extra crunchy, extra flavorful, and extra irresistible, they’re most often served as an antipasto or at aperitivo as a delightful accompaniment to the region’s crisp vermentino and sea views. 

Focaccia Genovese

She needs no introduction. Undeniably soft and fluffy, true focaccia genovese has a well-oiled, salty, and slightly crispy surface that’s recognizably dimpled, and the standard, undisputed recipe calls for just flour, Ligurian extra virgin olive oil, yeast, sea salt, water, and malt extract. With Greek and Etruscan origins, focaccia has many brethren across the boot, from focaccia barese in Puglia to pizza bianco in Rome and schiacciata in Florence, though unlike the latter, it’s never stuffed as a panino. Instead, focaccia genovese is eaten topped with thinly sliced onions or olives for lunch, sliced into strips to accompany a spritz at aperitivo, grabbed and munched as an on-the-go merenda, or… dipped into a cappuccino at breakfast. Yes, you heard us; in a country where a shot of espresso and overwhelmingly sweet brioche are the norm for the first meal of the day, Genova’s savory inclination is a wonderfully welcome change–though we didn’t need an excuse to start eating focaccia genovese as early in the day as possible. Here, where to find the best of the best in Genova, and here, a recipe to make the stuff at home in the meantime. 

Focaccia di Recco

If you know, you know. And if you don’t… Well, Focaccia di Recco is quite literally one of the most addictive foods to exist, and both us at Italy Segreta and food writer Fred Plotkin have declared it to be so. Gooey, cheesy, crispy, flaky, and melty–a dreamy and decadent cousin to Genova’s fluffy pride and joy–Focaccia di Recco is two super thin and elastic pieces of dough filled with tangy stracchino cheese. In the small seaside town of Recco, Focacceria Manuelina is credited with the now-famous recipe, named after the family matriarch who started the business in 1885. The focaccia has received IGP status, limiting its official area of production to Recco and its surroundings. You can find Italy Segreta contributor Laurel Evans’ recipe for it here, but really, you’ll want to try the real stuff in Recco.

Testaroli

In the borderland of Lunigiana, straddling the northern tip of Tuscany and eastern bit of Liguria, the rudimentary pastasciutta known as testaroli reigns supreme. This pancake-type product is made just of flour, water, and salt, cooked much like a crepe on hot cast iron pots called testi. The testi are heated up over an open fire and then removed to cook the testaroli; once crispy, the pancake is cut up into triangular pieces. Before serving, the testaroli are boiled and tossed with a sauce. The result is something a little bit spongy (almost like Ethiopian injera) and much chewier than your average pasta. Though most of their cousins on the culinary canon have cucina povera origins, testaroli actually came from the tables of the wealthy who could afford wheat flour. Today, you might find the strips tossed with pesto alla genovese, but Lungianian purists will tell you that the only way to serve them is with Parmigiano and extra virgin olive oil. 

Corzetti (or Croxetti)

Corzetti are some of the prettiest pasta shapes we’ve ever seen. These thin circles are cut out of a large sheet of dough, nowadays via carved wooden stamps but originally by a coin–their name comes from the 14th-century word for a Genovan coin, corzetto. Seizing the opportunity to turn anything into personal branding, regional aristocrats designed specific molds carved with their coats of arms to embellish the pasta. Though personalized pasta has fallen out of vogue, these stamps still bear flowery or nautical designs and simultaneously imprint the circle with a different motif on each side, resulting in pasta discs that look like medallions. Unfortunately, it’s quite labor (and time) intensive to stamp out every piece of pasta, so you only find it done the traditional way in a few restaurants, tossed with salsa di noci, pesto alla Genovese, or even a light sauce made with marjoram and pine nuts.

Turta de Gee

If you could bake spring into a pie crust, it would be this classic Genovese tart. Stemming from a long history of pie making in Genova, the “turta de gee“, so called in local dialect, is a combination of a sour cheese, marjoram, and bietole–a green and leafy type of chard–tucked neatly inside a crust of “pasta matta”, or crazy dough. The flaky, light, and fragrant dough is similar to shortcrust pastry, but earns its name because olive oil is subbed for butter–which was a cheaper and more widely accessible option. The dough is then topped with raw bietole and prescinsêua, a fresh Genovese cheese with a sour taste you’ll only find in and around the city. (If you’re making it at home, a combination of fresh ricotta and Greek yogurt will achieve a similar taste and acidity to balance the greens.) Enjoy slices of the flaky tart as an antipasto or primo, especially on and around Easter time, when you’ll find the tart called “Torta Pasqualina”.

Cappon Magro

You have to see this dish to believe it. Similar to those famed Jell-o molds made by U.S. housewives in the 60s and 70s, the dish is a sort of gelatinous salad shaped into a mound, adorned with lobster, shrimp, olives, and hard boiled eggs–a cacophony of colors, flavors, and textures. A mixture of vegetables, fish, shellfish, octopus, potatoes, and “sailor’s” biscuits made of flour, water, and yeast comprise the interior, bound together in flavor and in presentation with a special “green sauce”: parsley, basil, pine nuts, bread, anchovies, and oil and vinegar. It’s something you’d expect to find on lavish banquet tables, though it originated from a humble salad of leftover fish and vegetables mixed with unleavened biscuits soaked in water and vinegar. Given the elaborate preparation required, you’ll almost exclusively find this special dish indulged in during Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

Pansotti con Salsa di Noci

Pansotti (pansoti or panciuti in dialect) are Liguria’s perfect stuffed pastas. Their name comes from “pansa”, which in Genovese dialect means “belly”. Long sheets of dough made with flour, eggs, and white wine are filled, cut, and formed into either a handkerchief, ravioli, or tortellini shape. Inside is the creamy, sour Genovese cheese prescinsêua (or ricotta) with Parmigiano, greens, and preboggion–a variety of wild herbs foraged from around the hilly region. Most often, you’ll find these gems tossed in Liguria’s second most famous sauce: salsa di noci, the predecessor to pesto alla Genovese (by 300 years!). The creamy walnut sauce gets its texture from milk-soaked bread and its flavor from garlic, Parmigiano, Ligurian olive oil, and fresh marjoram. It’s a dish we’ve been known to stuff our little bellies with whenever we get the chance, and the sauce is also easily replicated at home (you can find Italy Segreta contributor Sara Cagle’s recipe here).

Cima alla Genovese

An ingenious way to turn slaughterhouse leftovers into something tasty, this famed meat dish doesn’t actually feature “meat”, in a technical sense. Veal stomach is filled with all sorts of offal, peas, eggs, and cheese, sewn closed, and then slowly cooked in a flavorful broth. It’s actually quite tricky to make right–the stomach can’t be overfilled and it has to be cinched nice and tight so you don’t lose any of the filling. After it finishes cooking, weights are placed atop the stomach to push it down and condense the flavors. Once it’s compact, the stomach gets sliced like salami and looks similar to porchetta. You’ll find the dish served cold or lukewarm as a secondo in some of the more classic Ligurian joints. 

Brandacujùn

Hailing from the less-traversed, but equally stunning, western side of the region–Liguria Ponente–this famed dish is shaken… not stirred. The name likely stems from the word “brandare“, which refers to the fact that the ingredients are “brandished” to combine. History points the dishes’ origin to sailors out at sea, who made humble meals with the ingredients always available to them–namely potatoes and stockfish (dried cod). They would hold bowls of both between their legs, which would get forcibly shaken while they were tossed around at sea. It’s made in a similar way today, where boiled potatoes, stockfish, parsley, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil are actually shaken in a lid-on pot until they emulsify and become dense and creamy. The resulting dish, with a texture resembling thick mashed potatoes, is served at room temperature with toasted bread and Taggiasca olives, either as an antipasto or secondo. The old Ligurian saying goes, “Branda, cujon! Branda, that ciu ti brandi ciu u is good!” (“Shake it, the more you shake it, the better it is!”), and we couldn’t agree more. 

Paciugo

A region with towns as colorful as Liguria’s deserves a dessert equally as colorful. Enter the paciugo. Invented in 1941 by owner Lina Repetto of Portofino’s Caffè Excelsior, the paciugo is nothing more than a glorified ice cream sundae, but the resulting product is so great it deserves its own article. Scoops of crema, raspberry, and chocolate gelato are combined with fresh fruit, whipped cream, and glazed Amarena cherries in grenadine syrup in a tall glass. The result is one creamy, sweet, and fruity mess (paciugo, in Ligurian dialect, means messy) that we crave all summer long.  

Farinata & Panissa

All forms of chickpea-based dishes exist across the Mediterranean, and Liguria is the lucky home to two. Farinata is a thin, flat, yellow savory pancake made with just chickpea flour, water, oil, and salt, while panissa are little squares of fried chickpea flour and water. According to regional tell-tale, the former comes from the 13th century, when a ship full of sailors returning from the Battle of Meloria against Pisa hit a storm, and rough seas overturned bags of chickpeas and flour onto the deck. With limited resources remaining and facing starvation, the sailors ate the sun-dried mush only to realize it was quite good–especially when mixed with olive oil and baked in a wood-fired oven. Naturally vegan, gluten free, and high in protein, the dish is served in establishments called “farinotti” or “sciamadde”–which translates to “flamed” after the wood fired ovens. The crispy, golden surface is often topped with rosemary, borage, artichokes, stracchino, onions, or anchovies, and in Savona, you’ll find a white version made with wheat flour. 

Panissa and farinata are practically the same, except the former is fried and made without oil while the latter is baked and made with oil. Panissa is similar to Sicily’s panelle, but not to Piedmont’s dish of the same name, which is a risotto of beans and pork rind. These crunchy little bite-sized fritters come from La Spezia and are eaten both hot and cold as a popular street food across the region.

Baci di Alassio

“One kiss is all it takes” sings Dua Lipa, but in the case of these kisses of Alassio, one certainly isn’t enough. Similar to Piedmont’s baci di dama, two chocolate and hazelnut cookies are kissed together with a rich, velvety, chocolate ganache. Unlike the mono-textural baci di dama, these biscuits are super crunchy on the outside, and melt into the soft chocolate filling. Alassio-based pastry chef Giovanni Cervo is credited for creating these romantic cookies in the 1920s, and the recipe is safeguarded and passed down amongst Alassio pastry chefs. Some variations replace the center with hazelnut or pistachio creams, and some add orange or walnuts to the dough, but the classic ultra-chocolate will always have our hearts. 

Pan du Ma (Anchovies)

In the region where the best type of Italian bread is produced (fighting words, we know), it’s high praise for something to be deemed “Pan du ma“, or “the bread of the sea”. But the anchovies from the clear blue waters of Liguria, particularly Monterosso, are so special that they’ve garnered this moniker. Harvested from June to September, after the little fish complete their big journey across the Atlantic, the favorable waters make for anchovies that are firmer and sweeter. While many do get salted and preserved, here, they’re best eaten fresh. You’ll find them simply marinated in lemon and olive oil, or stuffed with a mixture of leftover vegetables and milk-soaked bread and baked until just crispy. If you’re really an anchovy fan, be sure to visit Monterosso in July and September, to attend the fried anchovy festival and salted anchovy festival, respectively. 

Stoccafisso Accomodato 

Stoccafisso, or stockfish, is simply dried cod–though it’s not to be confused with baccalà or the like, for stockfish is made by long drying and maturing the fish in open air rather than with salt. The process, and the fish, both originated in Scandinavia, and though Liguria has quite a lot of sea and native fish, it has become a staple here due to the need to preserve fish for sea journeys. In order to eat the stockfish, it has to be rehydrated by boiling it in water and then removing the bones and skins. The classic Ligurian preparation gives this fish much flavor and character by “accommodating” it with potatoes, Taggiasca olives, pine nuts, tomatoes, garlic, onion, and parsley, with optional additions of capers, anchovies, raisins, or mushrooms. The resulting cozy secondo is similar to a thick stew, enjoyed in both homes and trattorias. 

Tomaxelle

Legend has it that in the 19th century residents of Genova were besieged by French, British, and Austrian armies; pushed to the brink of starvation, the Genovese finally decided to take up arms and fight back. Their weapon of choice? Tomaxelle. These were not, in fact, real weapons, but stuffed veal rolls, served to a group of Austrian soldiers taken prisoner. After all, what better way to prove that you’re far from surrendering, or starving, if you’re serving dishes as tasty as these to enemy prisoners? In reality, tomaxelle are nothing more than the leftover cuts of meat, often offal, mixed together with pine nuts, Parmigiano, tomato, peas, and spices, rolled inside thin slices of veal and grilled. But the juicy rolls are, once again, more than the sum of their parts. You’ll find tomaxelle most often as part of holiday celebrations, though they warrant a permanent spot on local restaurant menus. In their case, simple is not only better, it’s also victorious. 

Coniglio alla Ligure

As we hope you know by now, Liguria is more than just a colorful-town-lined coastline; hills and  mountains cover the majority of the region, particularly in the west, and these grassy landscapes are filled with rabbits as the terrain doesn’t allow for large game cultivation. The delicate, sweet meat doesn’t need much embellishing, and traditionally, they are made “alla Ligurie” with black Taggiasca olives, local wine (particularly Rossese di Dolceacqua), marjoram or other herbs, walnuts, and pine nuts. The result is a salty, umami, and slightly sweet sauce on the tender meat that rivals the other secondo options. 

Tuccu

Talk about a one-pot-dinner: this staple Genovese dish is both a primo and a secondo in one. Properly called “Tocco alla Genovese”, or “U tuccu zeneize” in dialect, Tuccu is a sauce with a “touch” of meat. Basically, one large cut of meat is browned and left to slowly cook for hours in a base of sofrito, dried mushrooms, pine nuts, red wine, spices, broth, and tomato until it practically falls apart. The meat-infused sauce is then tossed with cheesy ravioli, and the meat is served as a secondo. The standard recipe that we refer to today is thanks to violinist Niccolò Paganini, who simply wrote to his friend about his favorite way to cook meat; the letter is now preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress. Beloved by all, you’ll even find a mention of this dish in Fabrizio d’André’s song “Crêuza de mä”. 

Pesto di Fave 

Liguria strikes once again with a pesto variation, this time, featuring fava beans. From the Levante side of the region, it’s also called “pestun de fave” in Western dialect or more commonly marò, which likely comes from the Arabic word for seasoning “mar-a”. Broad beans are blended with garlic, pine nuts, mint leaves, Ligurian extra virgin olive oil, and pecorino to create a thick, flavorful spread that historically was a cheap and easy way to spice up plain bread or pasta, or to add some freshness to meat. Less oily than its Genovese counterpart, this is a pale green sauce worth keeping an eye out for. 

BONUS: Chinotto 

One of the only drinks to rival Italy’s fierce aperitivo cannon, the beloved, fizzy, canned Chinotto is named after a Ligurian-local citrus. Chinotti are small, round, green orbs that grow from Varese to Pietra Ligure, and have a distinctive flavor that develops as they ripen and turn orange. A Slow Food Presidia, these fruits are actually native to China, but have been grown in and around Savona since the 1500s when a Ligurian navigator planted some here. Far too bitter to be consumed fresh, you’ll find them candied, turned into syrups, or sitting in a glass vase in French and Italian cafe counters, doused in maraschino and waiting to be served as a digestivo.