Cappon magro
Cappon Magro can be defined as one of the richest and most sumptuous dishes of the Ligurian tradition, particularly Genoa’s one.
According to legend, the Order of the Minims’ friars of Saint Francis of Paola invented it and in 1880. They drew up a recipe book titled Cucina di Strettissimo Magro (Very Lean Cuisine), where 476 “poor” recipes are published.
And so, from a simple seafood salad as it was traditionally, over the years, it became an impressive and spectacular dish
Ingredients
Sauce:
1 bunch of parsley
1 clove of garlic
42 g of pine nuts
20 g of capers
10 g of pistachios
4 salted anchovies
50 g of breadcrumbs
10 olives
Salt, to taste
1 glass of oil
1/2 glass of vinegar
Dip for 12 people:
125 g sailor’s biscuits
1 small cauliflower
150 g of green beans
1 white celery
2 carrots
1 bunch of salsify
1 bunch of asparagus
6 artichokes
1 lobster
36 olives
8 g of salted anchovies
20 g of tuna mojama
36 g of capers
36 g of mushrooms under oil
24 oysters
30 shrimps
1 kg of cod
300 g of eel
Preparation
Take the ingredients you need to prepare the sauce and blend them together (according to tradition they should be crushed in a mortar). Add half glass of vinegar and one of EVO oil to the mixture.
For the dip, rub the sailor’s biscuits with garlic; immerse them in a bath of water, vinegar and salt; then put them between two plates to revive.
Clean and boil the vegetables.
Cut the cooked vegetables into chunks and dress them separately in different plates, all the vegetables with oil, salt and vinegar. Boil the cod and the lobster; shell them, cut them into slices, and season them.
Once all the ingredients have been prepared in different plates, take a medium-sized oval plate, roll out a layer of previously prepared biscuits; distribute some slices of mojama, some small pieces of vegetables, some capers, some salted anchovies, some pieces of boiled fish; the result will be a stratified mountain of all the ingredients. Remember to keep aside thirty pieces of cod.
Once you finished stratifying, cover the entire dish with the sauce previously prepared, giving it the appearance of a velvety green meadow.
Once you did it, fry the shrimp, the remaining cod pieces, and about thirty pieces of eel. Create skewers with freshly cooked fish, olives and mushrooms under oil and arrange them along the perimeter of the Cappon Magro. Finally garnish the dish with the oysters.
