Venetian cuisine facts for kids

Venetian cuisine comes from Venice, a famous city in Italy, and the wider Veneto region. This type of cooking has a long history, going back hundreds of years. It's quite different from other foods you might find in northern Italy, or even nearby countries like Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. Still, it shares some tasty similarities too!

Food and drink have been super important in Venetian culture for ages. This picture shows a 16th-century painting where noble people are enjoying merenda, a mid-afternoon snack. They're eating bussoli, which are special sweets from Vicenza.

What Makes Venetian Food Special?

The food in Veneto can be split into three main types, depending on where it comes from: the coast, the flat plains, or the mountains. Each area, especially the plains, has its own unique dishes. Every city even has its own special recipes!

Polenta: A Venetian Favorite

The most common dish you'll find is polenta. It's a creamy dish made from cornmeal and cooked in many different ways across Veneto. Long ago, polenta was a main food for people who didn't have much money. In Veneto, the corn is ground very finely, so when it's cooked, it becomes smooth like a pudding.

Coastal Delights

Along the coast, especially near the Venetian Lagoon, people mostly eat delicious seafood. Imagine fresh fish and other treasures from the sea!

Plains: Meats and Risottos

In the flat plains, it's popular to enjoy grilled meats. This often includes a mix of pork, beef, and chicken, cooked on a barbecue. These meats are usually served with grilled polenta, potatoes, or other vegetables.

Other popular dishes here include risotto. This is a creamy rice dish cooked with many different ingredients. You might find it with vegetables, mushrooms, pumpkin, or even radicchio. Some risottos are made with seafood, pork, or chicken livers.

Fresh, handmade pasta is also a big deal. You'll find Bigoli (a thick pasta like Udon), fettuccine (long, flat noodles), ravioli, and tortelli. These are often filled with meat, cheese, vegetables, or pumpkin. Gnocchi, made from potatoes, are another favorite. These pastas are usually served with a meat sauce called ragù, often made with duck. Sometimes, mushrooms or peas are added, or simply melted butter.

Mountain Meals

Food from the mountain areas often features pork or game meat, served with polenta. You'll also find mushrooms and cheeses made from cow's milk. Some dishes here are influenced by Austrian traditions, like canederli (dumplings) or strudel (a sweet pastry). A special mountain dish is casunziei, which are handmade fresh pasta similar to ravioli.

Common Flavors

Venetian cooking uses many tasty seasonings. These include butter, olive oil, sunflower oil, and vinegar. You might also find kren (horseradish), senape (mustard), mostarda (candied fruit in mustard syrup), and salsa verde.

Venice and the Lagoon: Seafood Stars

The city of Venice and its surrounding lagoon are famous for their unique seafood dishes.

• Bigołi in salsa: This is bigoli pasta served with a sauce made from anchovy and onion.
• Fegato ała venesiana: A fancy Venetian dish of liver, chopped and cooked with onions.
• Mołeche: These are fried soft-shell crabs. They are very special because the crabs only have soft shells for a few hours when they shed their old ones in the lagoon.
• Pasta e faxioi: A simple but tasty bean soup with noodles.
• Połenta e schie: Small lagoon shrimp, fried and served on a bed of soft, white polenta.
• Rixi e bixi: A simple but delicious risotto with pancetta (a type of bacon) and peas, cooked in broth.
• Rixoto de gò: Rice made with gò, a type of fish found in the Venetian Lagoon.
• Sarde in saor: Fried sardines marinated in vinegar with fried onion, raisins, and pine nuts. It's left to sit overnight for the best flavor.
• Sepe al nero: Cuttlefish cooked with their own ink from the lagoon.

Sweet Treats from Venice

Venice has many famous desserts:

• Baicołi: Light, crispy biscuits.
• Fritołe: Delicious fried doughnuts.
• Pinza: A cake eaten around the Epiphany holiday. It's made with cornmeal and mixed dried fruits like figs and raisins, plus nuts.
• Xałeti: Cornmeal biscotti (cookies) with raisins.

Verona: Hearty and Historic

Pastissada de caval is a rich, slow-cooked horse meat stew.

Tortellini di Valeggio are delicate, handmade pasta parcels.

Verona offers a range of hearty and historic dishes.

• Brasato all'Amarone: Braised beef cooked with Amarone wine, often served with polenta.
• Gnocchi: It's a tradition to eat homemade potato gnocchi on Venerdì Gnocolar, the last Friday of Carnival.
• Lesso e pearà: Lesso is mixed boiled meats. In Verona, it's served with pearà, a thick, peppery sauce made from meat stock, bread, and ox marrow. This was once a special meal for holidays like Christmas.
• Pastissada de caval: An ancient horse meat stew from the Middle Ages. It's slow-cooked with spices and vegetables until the meat is super tender, and served with polenta.
• Polenta e renga: Polenta served with special oil-preserved herrings. These herrings are boiled or grilled, then pickled in olive oil with garlic, parsley, and capers. This dish is traditionally eaten on Ash Wednesday.
• Riso Vialone Nano: A special type of rice from southern Verona. It's perfect for making amazing risottos.
• Risotto all'Amarone: Risotto made with the local Amarone red wine. It's a specialty of the Valpolicella wine region.
• Rixoto col tastasal: Risotto made with seasoned ground pork, the same kind used for salami and sausages. The name tastasal means "to taste salt," as it was a way to check the seasoning before making sausages.
• Tortellini di Valeggio: Handmade fresh tortellini pasta, filled with a mix of beef, pork, and vegetables. They are usually served with melted butter and sage. These are typical of Valeggio sul Mincio.

Verona's Sweet Treats

• Mandorlato: A hard torrone (nougat) made in Cologna Veneta.
• Nadalin: An older version of Pandoro. It's flatter and firmer.
• Pandoro: The famous traditional Christmas sweet yeast bread, now enjoyed all over Italy.
• Tiramisù: A relatively new dessert, said to have been created in Treviso in the late 1960s.

Vicenza: Unique Flavors

A vineyard near Vicenza. Veneto is one of Italy's top regions for making wine.

Vicenza has one of the most unique food traditions in Veneto. People from Vicenza were sometimes called magnagati or mangiagatti (meaning "cat eaters"). This nickname came from times of great hardship, but cooking cats is now illegal in Italy.

Here are some typical dishes from Vicenza and the surrounding area:

• Asiago cheese: A well-known cheese from the region.
• Bacałà ała Visentina: A famous dish made with dried codfish.
• Bassano del Grappa asparaguses: Special asparagus from Bassano del Grappa.
• I bixi de Lumignan and i bixi de Borso: "Bixi" means peas, referring to peas from these towns.
• Cren: Horseradish, often grated and mixed with vinegar to make a sauce for boiled meats.
• Nanto truffles: Delicious truffles found near Nanto.
• Paèta al malgaragno: Young turkey with pomegranate juice.
• Rixi e bixi: The same rice and peas dish found in Venice.
• Rotzo potatoes: Potatoes from Rotzo.
• Rubbio celery: Celery from Rubbio.
• Semi-liquid polenta: Sometimes served with tomato sauce.
• Serexe de Marostega: Marostica cherries.
• Torexani de Breganse: Young pigeons from Breganze.

Other Regional Favorites

Tiramisu, a well-known dessert from the Veneto region.

Beyond the main cities, Veneto has many other delicious regional dishes.

• Bigołi co'ł'arna: Bigoli pasta served with a rich duck meat sauce.
• Bixàto (or Anguilla): Eel, a common dish in the Po River delta. It can be roasted or fried.
• Carpaccio: Thin slices of raw meat or fish.
• Casunziei: Handmade fresh pasta, often filled with different ingredients.
• Frittura di pesce: Fried seafood served with polenta. This is a typical dish along the Adriatic Sea coast.
• Galletto alla brace: Grilled cockerel.
• Gallina alla canèvera: An old dish from Padua or Vicenza, dating back to the Middle Ages. It involves boiling hen meat with vegetables inside a pork bladder.
• Gnocchi burro, zucchero e cannella: Potato gnocchi served with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Sometimes, grated Grana cheese is added.
• Gran bollito veneto: A mix of boiled meats, including beef, hen, beef tongue, and cotechino (a large pork sausage).
• Grigliata mista: Mixed grilled meats like pork ribs, sausages, chops, chicken breasts, bacon, and beef ribs. Always served with grilled polenta.
• Maiale al latte: Braised pork cooked in milk.
• Oca in onto: A goose marinated in salt or herbs and its own fat, then cooked. This is typical of the Padua area.
• Pasta e faxioi ała veneta: A soup made with pasta, beans, and bacon.
• Pastìn: A food from Belluno, made of mixed pork and beef meat. It's often eaten with polenta.
• Patata mericana: Sweet potato, a typical fall dish. It can be boiled or roasted.
• Połenta bianca: A type of polenta made from white corn. It's common in the plains, especially around Padua, Venice, and Treviso.
• Połenta e oxełi: Small game birds like larks or quails, roasted on a spit and served with polenta.
• Porchetta trevigiana: Roasted pork, often served inside a panino (sandwich).
• Radicchio alla griglia: Grilled endive leaves, a specialty from Treviso.
• Rixoto coi figadełi: Risotto made with chicken livers. This was a main dish at wedding banquets for common people long ago.
• Sfilacci di cavallo: Shredded dried horse meat, typical of Padua. It can be used with bigoli pasta or eaten alone. It's also popular on pizza today.
• Soppressa: A soft, typical salami, traditionally containing garlic.
• Spezzatino di musso: Donkey stew, served with polenta.
• Tripe ała veneta: Tripe cooked with vegetables, butter, and olive oil, then served with grated grana cheese.

Regional Desserts

• Fugasa: A sweet bread eaten at Easter.
• Galani (or crostoli): Light, crispy fried pastries.
• Tiramisu: One of the most popular desserts in Italy and Europe! It's made with fresh eggs, mascarpone cheese, Marsala wine, and savoiardi (ladyfinger biscuits) dipped in dark coffee.

Drinks from Veneto

Veneto is also known for its drinks.

• Prosecco: A very popular sparkling wine. It can be secco (dry) or amabile (a bit sweet).
• Bianco di Custoza: A wine grown near Lake Garda in the Custoza region.
• Spritz Veneziano: A popular orange-colored drink.