Italy’s most beloved Lent recipes

It’s Lent and that means taking a break from meat, and for many of us, from wine or chocolate. But as Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza notes, Lent does not have to be just a time of self-denial. It can also be a season of transformation, one that leads us to grow tiny habits that bring more holiness into our life.

When it comes to cooking, Lent can become an occasion to harness the value of frugal foods and the joy of transforming humble ingredients into nourishing meals.

The following Italian Lent recipes ideas invite us to do more with less, to tap our creativity, and to see the value that more frugal foods can bring to our life.

Since at least the Middle Ages, Lent has inspired Italians to switch their cooking from “cucina di grasso” (literally fat cuisine) mostly based on animal products like veal, butter, lard, or pork  to “cucina di magro” (lean cuisine), based mostly on vegetables and fish.

Here are some ways in which Italians turn Lenten foods into nutritious meals. 

This humble dish is made of polenta, a coarsely ground cornmeal typical of northern Italian cuisine, and herring, small oily fish that were usually either preserved in salt or dried. As noted by Massimo Lanari in “La Cucina Italiana,” this dish is particularly popular in north-east Italy, where locals celebrate Ash Wednesday by eating polenta with herring following an episode from 1499 in which they successfully pushed back an attack by the Ottomans during Lent, leading to celebrations based on cucina di magro. Herring is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and protein, while polenta provides carbohydrates, fiber, and protein, making this recipe a nutritious food for Lent. Here you can learn how to make a great polenta.

From Tuscany to Sicily, this hearty meal based on nutritious beans and carbohydrate-rich pasta is a classic Lent dish. To make a tasty pasta e fagioli, make sure to soak the beans overnight and then boil them with a whole garlic clove, sage leaves, two tablespoons of olive oil and salt. When they are tender, drain them and pass some of the beans in a food mill to make a bean paste. In a separate pot, boil a short pasta of your choice. Add the pasta to the beans and bean paste and let the mix simmer for a few minutes before serving. More details can be found here. 

A traditional dish from the coastal region of Liguria, cappon magro looks like a church dome made of different layers of food. At the base of the dome we find a layer of breadcrumbs soaked in olive oil and vinegar. Then, multiple layers of boiled or roasted vegetables like green beans, artichokes, and potatoes, and baked or grilled fish like sea bass and hake alternate each other all the way to the top. At last, the dome is coated with salsa verde (a green sauce made with capers, pine nuts, anchovies, garlic, eggs, parsley, breadcrumbs, green olives, and extra virgin olive oil). Here you can learn to assemble this “dome” according to an expert. 

Typical of the northern Italian region of Piedmont, this Lenten version of lasagne highlights the value that humble ingredients can bring to our diets. The usual meat-based sauce of lasagne is replaced by a nutritious filling based on olive oil, anchovies, parmesan, and pepper. To make it, you can follow the recipe for a traditional lasagne and replace the meat sauce with an anchovy sauce made by cooking chopped anchovies in a casserole with olive oil, sage, garlic, salt, and pepper. 

Typical of Naples, this humble dish is made with partially cooked pasta boiled in water and then fried in a pan with olive oil, olives, raisins, pine nuts, herbs, and anchovies. Despite its name, this frittata has no eggs but instead relies on the pasta’s starch to bind ingredients together. Here you can find a detailed recipe to make this ingenious Lenten dish.