Bagna Caoda (Hot Sauce) is a traditional Piedmont brown sauce with a smooth texture. The ingredients for this sauce are: butter, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and salted anchovies.
Cream is added to make this sauce more delicate. The addition of half a glass of red wine and a spoon of vinegar makes the colour brown and gives it a more sour taste.
Production Area
All over Piedmont
How it is made
The garlic is peeled and finely chopped. If one wishes to achieve a less aggressive aroma, the garlic is soaked in milk a few hours before its use, and is made to drip and is dried.
After melting the butter in a pan over a very slow fire, the garlic is added and sauteed. Then the strips of anchovies are added and oil is poured in a bit at a time. Then the mixture is stirred with a wooden spoon: the Bagna Caoda sauce has to cook until the anchovies have disintegrated completely.
History
The origins of this condiment dates back to the late Middle Ages when the winegrowers celebrated the tapping off of the new wine, with an unusual dish: a rustic dish, with distinct flavours that contradicted the usual glazed and fragrant meals of the lords. They chose to accompany the delicious vegetables of Piedmont with a prized garlic (prescribed by the Medieval Statutes and the Agrarian publishings as an obligatory cultivation for every owner-farmer) salted anchiovies in barrels and olive oil, which is scarcely produced in Piedmont.
The "Bagna Caoda" became a festive dish of the winter season. It is said that in the past, there were variants of the original recipe like the Bagna Càuda Madama Reale. The famous " Royal Madame" is Giovanna Battista di Savoia-Nemours, who requested its preparation in court, but it seemed too pompous and baroque, nothing like the spirit and significance of the true "Bagna Càuda." The chefs of the court began to serve several dishes dipped in the bagna cauda and other baroque sauces.
Interesting features
The Bagna Caoda is usually served with traditional vegetables of Piedmont like grilled peppers, cardoons, boiled cauliflower, radish, leeks, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and lettuce, steamed potatoes, baked onions and red chard.
It also goes well as a pasta sauce and with boiled or scrambled eggs.
