Tramontana: Northern Italian Recipes From Sea To Summit

The old salt roads of northwestern Italy once carried one of the Mediterranean’s most valuable commodities from the Ligurian coast inland and upward through Piedmont to the Alps. Simon Bajada follows these routes in Tramontana, using them to explore how dramatically the cooking changes between sea and mountain. 

More than 70 recipes trace that progression through Liguria, Piedmont, and the Aosta Valley, ascending from the olive oil and vegetables of the coast toward the butter, buckwheat, fontina, meat, and game of colder country. There are focaccia and farinata, pasta with walnut sauce and veal agnolotti, chestnut gnocchi and polenta enriched with mountain cheeses.

Bajada is particularly attentive to dishes that reveal the history of a place. Aosta’s carbonada valdostana, a wine-braised beef stew whose name derives from cooking over coals, is paired inevitably with polenta; delicate Ligurian canestrelli achieve their unusually tender texture with cooked egg yolks and starch; buckwheat gives an older regional character to crepes filled with fontina and cooked ham. 

A former chef as well as a food and travel photographer, Bajada photographed the book both on location and in the studio. Tramontana is ultimately less of a survey of northern Italian cooking than a journey along one historic route, showing what happens to a cuisine as the Mediterranean gives way to the Alps.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.