Eating the lake's fish

Lake Como has a cuisine of its own, made with the lake's fish: above all shad, whitefish and perch.

The traditional dish is missoltini with polenta. Missoltini are shad caught in summer. In the traditional method they are salted for two or three days, dried in the sun for about ten days and pressed into tins with bay leaves. Prepared this way, they keep for months. Before serving they are warmed over embers or in a pan and dressed with a dash of vinegar. Whitefish is eaten grilled, or smoked, a traditional preparation from Lenno. Perch comes as fillets browned in butter, often on top of a risotto. The other traditional way of keeping fish is carpione: the fish is fried, then laid under vinegar with onion and herbs. Missoltini are found above all in the trattorias of villages where commercial fishing carries on, such as Gravedona, Domaso, Dervio and Bellano.

1. 01Professional fishermen may use shad nets from mid-June to the first days of August. Missoltini are made in those weeks and eaten in the months that follow.
2. 02Missoltino is in Slow Food's Ark of Taste, its list of traditional products at risk of disappearing. Few people still fish the shad.
3. 03Over half the missoltini on sale are oven-dried. To know whether yours were dried in the sun, ask whoever serves them.
4. 04Each species has a closed season: perch from mid-March to the end of May, whitefish from November to January, shad from mid-May to mid-June.
5. 05Bellano and Dervio are on the railway between Lecco and Colico; Gravedona and Domaso are reached by boat or bus.
6. 06In summer some villages hold a festival for lake fish: the Sagra del Misultin at Dervio in late June, Agoni in Contrada at Bellano in July and, in late August, the Sagra del Missoltino at Mezzegra, held since 1964.

WhereGravedona ed Uniti · Domaso · Dervio · Bellano · Tremezzina