Cassoeula

A peasant dish born of the winter pig slaughter, when the perishable, lesser cuts had to be used up at once. Its season and meaning are tied to the feast of Sant'Antonio Abate on 17 January, the day that traditionally closed the slaughtering period — the saint long associated with pigs and pork fat. The first clear written references to cassoeula by name appear around the early 20th century, though a related Catalan-Aragonese dish, cassola de carn, is recorded as far back as the cookbook of Ruperto de Nola in the early 16th century, which has fed a popular tale that the dish arrived during Spanish rule of Milan; this Spanish-soldier origin is a legend rather than documented fact. The name most likely comes from the local word for the pot or stirring spoon — cazzuola / casseruola.

Rich, sticky and unctuous — the long-cooked rind and trotter dissolve into gelatin that coats the lips, and the meat falls off the rib bones. The Savoy cabbage, cooked down for an hour or more, turns silky and sweet, soaking up the pork fat. The verzini add a peppery, meaty bite. It is deeply savoury and frankly fatty; a good cassoeula is balanced by the cabbage and a thread of wine acidity, while a poor one feels only greasy.

The dish works on collagen: the rind, trotter and ear are dense with connective tissue that, held at a low simmer for two to three hours, breaks down into gelatin — the source of the glossy, lip-sticking body of the sauce. Browning the pork first builds Maillard flavour before the long wet cook. The Savoy cabbage is added in stages and cooked down until its fibres soften and it drinks up the rendered fat; its sweetness and the wine's acidity offset the richness. A long, gentle cook, never a hard boil, keeps the meat tender and the fat emulsified rather than split.