As per tradition in many towns of the Veneto region and in particular after the carnival, in the small village of Camporovere di Roana, it is customary to celebrate Ash Wednesday with dinner all focused on the proposal of a menu completely dedicated to COD and STOCKFISH.
From 10 to 14 February 2024, and especially on Carnival Wednesday or Ash Wednesday, at the Locanda alla Stella, a menu based only on recipes with cod and stockfish is offered such as bigoli with cod, pizza with cod, creamed cod with croutons, gnocchi with cod, the classic polenta and cod and many other novelties all based on cod processed by their chefs.
Reservations are strongly recommended.
A bit of history... On April 25, 1431, Pietro Querini sailed from Candia to Flanders aboard the Carrack Querina with a cargo of 800 barrels of Malvasia and other valuable goods, equal to about 500 tons. It was shipwrecked and was hijacked due to repeated storms that destroyed the carrack by breaking the rudder and masts. On 17 December, the crew decided to abandon the half-sunken wreck and split up: 18 embarked on a schifo (sort of lifeboat) and 47 on a second, larger launch, including the three officers. There was no further news of the first boat, but the largest boat drifted for a long time between food rationing and continuous deaths, fortunately touching land on 14 January 1432 on the desert island of Sandøy, near Røst in the Norwegian archipelago of Lofoten, with 16 surviving sailors.
Querini and his companions lived for eleven days bivouacked on the coast, feeding on limpets and lighting fires to keep warm. These were spotted by fishermen from the nearest island of Røst, who came to their aid and hosted them in their homes. The population of the island of Røst, which the Venetians called Rustene, about 120 inhabitants, was dedicated to fishing and drying cod. The Venetians stayed about four months on the island, and Querini wrote a detailed report for the Senate, now preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library.
On 15 May 1432 Querini was helped by fishermen to leave for Venice; bringing dried stockfish with them. On the return journey he passed through Trondheim, Vadstena and London, where he was a guest of the then powerful Venetian community residing on the Thames. From there, after 24 days on horseback, the "capitano da mar" finally arrived in Venice on October 12, 1432. You were interested in the idea of stockfish, which immediately enjoyed great success and which the Venetians learned to appreciate, both for its gastronomic goodness and for its characteristics as a long-life food very useful both in sea and land travels, as well as for the characteristic of being a "lean food", so as to become one of the recommended dishes in the more than 200 days of lean man, fixed, together with food, on December 4, 1563, the date of the XXV and last session of the Council of Trent.
The adventurous story of the introduction of Stockfish, a name from the Old Dutch stocvisch, meaning "stick fish" or "fish dried on sticks", a word composed of stoc "stick" and visch "fish". But it could also come from the English stockfish, or "storage fish", brings us to the present day where we are waiting for you in our small mountain village, Camporovere di Roana, as if to similarly recall the small fishing community of the island of Røst.
Dishes and preparations that today we find on our tables declining them in various recipes and where, for us, the recipe of Baccalà alla Vicentina is the prince.
For information and reservations, you can contact Locanda alla Stella directly, by clicking on the green button below.
