Lake fish

In Peschiera and Carzano, the culinary tradition of drying and preserving fish has continued for centuries. The fish dried in the sun and preserved in oil are sardine, chub and perch. This is technique: freshly caught fish is cleaned with a single cut under the head, if it is a sardine; open and headless, if it is the chub. Washed and dried, it is spread out for 24 hours in salt, in an amount proportionate to the weight of the fish. Then, removed from the salt and washed again, the fish is hung on hooks fixed on a special frame in parallel rows until the entire layout of the rows is filled. There are also some fishermen who totally respect the tradition and thread the fish into the threads stretched on the “arches” (ash or hornbeam branches bent into an arch and held in position by a thread at the end). On the lakefront between Peschiera and Sensole you can still see numerous arches like these.

The fish is exposed to the sun for 5 or 10 days, depending on the more or less hot climate. When drying is at the right point, it is artfully stored in iron containers, pressed and separated from the air by a layer of oil. After a few months of maturation, the sardines become almost golden in color and the chubs a lobster pink: they can be eaten cooked for a few minutes on the hot embers, seasoned with oil, parsley, garlic and served with polenta. It is a dish with an intense and particular flavour, which according to oral tradition dates back to about a millennium ago, when fishermen had – according to a precise obligation – to deliver a certain number of dried sardines to the monastery of S. Giulia in Brescia. This fish, kept pressed in oil, lasts up to a year: for this reason it has always been the dish of the poor people, a brilliant invention of fishermen who only caught large quantities of fish at certain times and therefore had to be able to keep it without a refrigerator.