Bagnun (fresh anchovies soup)

The sparkling skin of the anchovies, the intense smell of fresh tomatoes and basil, the bright green and red colors: all this let me foretaste a dinner outside in a light summer night. The bagnun is a poor dish, the fishermen of the Easter coast of Liguria prepared it on board or ashore once back from fishing. It is quickly ready, few ingredients and a fire suffice. I can imagine a fisherman who cooks the bagnun for all his mates ashore between the boats while the others bent repair the nets. He uses part of the catch, the poorest and more abundant, the anchovies, some tomatoes picked in someone’s garden and some of that hard and dry bread which never goes waste and fills so well the stomach when generously dunk —the so called “sailors’ crackers” . Today very little remains of fishermen cooking their meal ashore. But the taste and aromas of what they cooked still remain instead well alive in the memoirs of our elderly and in our traditional cooking books. These simple favors which accompanied our maritime history are celebrated each year in Riva Trigoso, a small fishermen village near Sestri Levante, where since 1960 each third week-end of July the Bagnun Festival takes place . You will find there smiling old men — wearing blue and white stripy t-shirts and the typical Ligurian blue fishermen berets with a red pom-pom — helping generous free bowls of bagnun freshly cooked in food stands set up along the promenade. You have to que a bit but it is worthwhile! If instead you cannot wait and wish to prepare it at home maybe in a clear summer evening – remember that it is so easy that fishermen cooked it on their boats – you will find here below the traditional recipe. I did not have the “sailors’ crackers” – sadly so difficult to buy in town – so I used the classic toasted slices of rustic bread which are always great to mop up the gravy!