If the salmon goes upstream in rivers to spawn, here you will find a fish that does even more and has even climbed mountains. Of course it certainly has not done so alone, but the roads it has travelled, since the distant Middle Ages, are still there to tell you stories of men and women who lived on salt and anchovy, creating a close bond between the sea and the hills of Langhe Monferrato Roero.
If you go in search of the food and wine delicacies of these lands, you will realise that it is not the carp, not even the tench and even less the trout that is the fish most commonly found in Piedmontese cuisine, but rather the anchovy that arrived in these valleys, far from the sea, following the Saracens at the end of the 10th century. Another theory traces the arrival of the anchovy back to the time when salt smuggling was widespread: it seems that in order to hide the precious cargo, which was burdened with high customs duties, some traders used to cover the barrels containing rock salt with layers of anchovies. This product soon conquered the palate of the people of Piedmont, resulting in an increasingly widespread and highly profitable trade that gradually supplanted the smuggling of the precious sodium chloride crystals.The salt routes from France and Liguria through the mountains thus became the anchovy routes, even creating a new profession, that of the anchovy seller (anciué in dialect) and deeply affecting the local cuisine. Therefore you will find this tasty little fish with its intense flavour in Bagna Cauda, but also as the absolute protagonist of anchovies in green sauce, or with baked peppers with anchovy sauce, with Jerusalem artichokes, stuffed courgette flowers and even as a winning pair with trout: so many dishes that would not please our palates today if the anchovy had not climbed the Alps and the Apennines.
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