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Passport & Plate - Ancient "Pisarei e Fasò"

Ingredients
Ingredients for the Pisarei: -150 gr. bread flour;
- 50 gr. bread crumbs;
- 150 g hot water;
Salt (qb).

Ingredients for the sauce: - 140 gr. of dried pinto beans;
- 25 gr of lard;
- a clove of garlic;
- Half an onion;
- 150 gr of tomato puree
- Grated Grana Padano
- Extra virgin olive oil;
- Salt.

 

How to prepare this recipe
The night before, soak the beans in cold water. The next day,
boil the beans with a piece of onion bringing them halfway through cooking.
Then prepare the pistes chop the bacon, garlic, onion, and parsley, and sautè in apan with drizzle of extra virgin oil.
Add the beans and gone and complete the cooking of beans by adding, when necessary, a bit of water from cooking the beans.
Adjust salt. Prepare pisarei sifting the flour to form the fountain, make a hollow in the center, put the bread crumbs and salt and pour over the hot water required to produce
a soft and elastic dough.
Form of sausages with a diameter of a little finger, cut small pieces and crush them with your thumb to form the dumplings
the size of a bean.
Pisarei cook boiling salted water and, just come to the surface, drain with a slotted spoon (making them stay moist,
as they say in dialect "basott") and season them in the pan with the sauce. Serve and finish with grated Parmesan and chopped garlic.

 

The story behind this recipe
Did you know that Pisarei e Fasò....have an uncertain origin, but certainly very old. It seeems that this simple dish from Piacenza to date back to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims along the Via Francigena to go to Rome were in inns and convents of the province of Piacenza, a bean soup made of bread and flour dumplings served with sauce of beans, bacon and pork rinds, perhaps of the rich kitchen scraps. it is a dish that is part of the rural tradition prepared with ingredients quite poor: the flour was mixed with stale bread to spare and were used ingredients derived from the slaughter of the pig and from the garden.
There are several versions of the dish: from recipe to recipe,
may change the proportions of flour and breadcrumbs, and in some locations, however, are used instead of bacon rind and pork sausages.
Curious anecdote told by Anna Gose in "the Italian regional recipes" the author relates that once, when it was presented in the future family-in-law, the mother-in-law controlled the right thumb of the girl to make sure there no streets, signs of inequivocal of its ability to prepare pisarei.
The origin of the word Pisarei there are several explanations,
but the most reliable are two: the first is derived from the mispronunciation of the word Piacenza Bissa, that snake snake-like shape of the strips of dough before being cut, the other does derived from the Spanish word Pisar.