Recipes

Aggiadda

Aggiadda, or garlic, is a garlic-based sauce excellent for accompanying vegetables, meat and fish. Here's how to prepare it.

Ligurian or Sardinian? When we talk about aggiadda, in one way or another, we risk displeasing someone. This garlic-based sauce , often called simply garlic , has Ligurian origins but also spread to Sardinia at the hands of sailors. We will discover all the details of this fascinating story below.

Now let's just take a look at the ingredients. To prepare the aggiadda you need stale bread and vinegar . The bread, after being soaked in vinegar, was pounded in a mortar together with plenty of garlic (6 cloves are used in the traditional recipe). The sauce obtained was then used to season fried or roasted fish, or to accompany vegetables.

Preparation

How to prepare the aggiadda recipe

First, soak the crumbs of the two stale rolls in vinegar .

Once rehydrated, squeeze it and transfer it to the mortar or a mixer. Add a pinch of salt , the peeled and cored garlic and blend until you obtain a creamy consistency (a bit like that of pesto ). If needed, you can add a little vinegar left over from soaking the bread.

Reheat the sauce in a saucepan before serving.

Here is a video to prepare it with the traditional mortar procedure. It goes without saying that with the mixer everything is much faster. The only difference is that you will get a smoother, less rustic sauce.

Among the various combinations, in addition to roasted and fried fish, this sauce goes well with potatoes: potatoes all'aggiadda are an amazing side dish, ideal for accompanying your second courses.

Variants

The intense flavor of vinegar, as well as that of garlic, are far from the flavors we are used to. For this reason it is possible to create lighter variations by reducing the garlic cloves (you can go down to two) and opting for varieties with a more delicate flavor such as that of Vessalico. As for vinegar, however, to soften its flavor you can mix it with dry white wine .

There is also a "red" variant of the "agliata" prepared by adding tomato pulp and capers.

Conservation

The aggiadda can be kept in the refrigerator for 3-4 days . Our advice is to heat as much as you need from time to time.

Origin and history

We mentioned that the aggiadda is typical of both Liguria and Sardinia. To explain why we need to take a step back in time. We are in 1500 and Ligurian sailors colonize an island in Tunisia called Tabarka. This is how the Tabarkina culture was born, a mix of Ligurian and North African traditions.

They are the ones who use the few ingredients available to make this sauce based on garlic (with known antiseptic properties), vinegar and leftover bread, ideal for preserving and seasoning the fish. From Turkey the sailors landed in southern Sardinia , in particular on the islands of Sant'Antioco and San Pietro , creating a real colony.

For this reason, in the two island villages of Carloforte and Calasetta , the Ligurian and Tabarchine traditions are still kept alive by the locals today. Here the Ligurian cuisine of focaccia and pesto blends with the African cuisine of couscous and the seafood cuisine typical of Sardinian cuisine.