THE WONDERS OF LOCAL CUISINE, The Wonders Of Local Cuisine

Hi, I am Rick, your personal guide, and together with MyWoWo I’d like to welcome you to the wonders of the local cuisine of Como and its lake.

A wide variety of fine products are produced here, such as extra virgin olive oil, traditional cheeses like casoretta, zincarlin and semuda, and Terre Lariane wines like Sorsasso and Domasino.

The food that reigns at the table is polenta, made with water and corn flour, especially delicious in the version called polenta concia, seasoned with butter and sage.

Among first courses, the most characteristic is rice with perch fillets, one of the most prized freshwater fish in the lake.

The classic version calls for boiled rice, seasoned with butter and sage, but more elaborate versions can also be found where the rice is deglazed with white wine and cooked with hot broth. Fried perch fillets are then placed on top of the rice, for a really tasty dish.

Anyone visiting Lecco should not miss a delicious first course typical of the neighboring Valsassina region, the scapinasc, ravioli filled with bread, butter, sausage, amaretti cookies and sultanas, seasoned with butter, sage and garlic.

Among the fish main courses, you must try the missoltini. They are agoni, fish similar to herring, which are sun-dried and stored for several months between bay leaves, pressed into wooden containers called missolta, from which they take their name. They are served roasted on the grill and seasoned with oil and vinegar.

For those who like strong flavors, there is fish in carpione: fried agoni or alborella, marinated for at least 24 hours in oil, vinegar, garlic, onion, thyme and other spices.

To end on a sweet note, there is miascia, a simple, flavorful cake made with stale bread, fresh fruit such as apples or pears, sultanas, and dried fruit and nuts.

Of more recent origin is the Resegone cake, created by three Lecco confectioners as the city's iconic cake. A corn flour pastry base is filled with blueberry jam and covered with a buckwheat flour dough.

I bid you farewell you with an interesting fact: Perch, originally found in Italy only in the pre-Alpine lakes, was already so popular in the 18th century that it has since been spread throughout the peninsula and today can even be found in Calabria.

What else can I say but... Buon appetito!