Typical dishes of Lake Como

Are you visiting Lake Como and would like to taste typical dishes? Let’s discover the famous food locals love to eat at Lake Como. If you like to cook, you can try these famous dishes with our recipes!

Traveling means discovering and expanding our knowledge, not only in terms of geography but also in terms of the origins, traditions and tastes of the visited country.

Lake Como’s traditional food offers a variety of delicacies from lake to lands and mountains.

The flavours of the lake use fish as a basic ingredient with some famous recipes like:

Pesce in Carpione

It is a traditional method we use to preserve the fish without the need for a refrigerator.

It’s usually served cold and it’s amazing as both a starter and a main course. Start to cook Pesce in Carpione with this first step: gut, clean, scale and dry the fish. Then season it all over with salt and pepper and dust it with flour. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the fish on both sides until golden. Remove and set aside on a large plate. Mince together half an onion, one garlic clove, some celery and one carrot, stir fry these vegetables in some olive oil and after 3-4 minutes add some thyme, one or two cloves and a spoonful of whole pepper grains. Lastly, add half a glass of vinegar and half glass of dry white wine: bring to a boil, then pour this sauce over the fish, adding some parsley. Let it cool before eating.

From the valleys and the mountains comes instead the tradition of “polenta”.

Polenta toc

We usually use different types of flour with butter and cheese, and we cook Polenta in a copper pot on the fire. The tradition says no plates are needed! Everyone gets a bite directly from the pot, in a friendly atmosphere.

Once it was prepared only at weddings and baptisms. In fact, given the large amount of butter and cheese required, Toc was a rich dish, suitable for celebrating special occasions.

Cook the polenta with local cornmeal. When it’s cooked, add the butter and then the cheese, cut into small pieces, mixing them little by little. It isn’t an easy preparation, and if you get one step wrong, the polenta releases the butter and it’s no longer edible.

If you want to dabble in cooking with our recipes, please share your photos with us and send us your comments.

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