Venice isn’t really pasta country. As Hedy Giusti-Lanham and Andrea Dodo put it in their lovely 1978 cookbook The Cuisine of Venice and Surrounding Northern Regions, now sadly out of print, “In and round Venice, a series of polenta dishes will be mentioned first, then some rice dishes and at the end a couple of pasta dishes. It is really from Bologna southward that pasta is king”. That said, Venice does boast at least one iconic pasta dish the locals dub bigoli in salsa.
Bigoli is Venice’s signature pasta, a kind of thick spaghetti, sometimes made fresh and sometimes dry. Some rather dubious local lore has it bigoli is the pasta that Marco Polo brought back from China. True or not, they have a unique chewy texture that catches sauces beautifully.
To make bigoli in salsa, you dress these long stands with a simple sauce of onion, simmered low and slow in olive oil so as to coax out its inherent sweetness to the full, to which you add a good dose of anchovies. The onion and anchovy cook together until they meld into a creamy and intensely savory sauce. A sprinkling of fresh parsley can add a bit of color if you like to this admittedly rather monotone sauce.
Don’t let the rather monotone look of the dish fool you. The sweetness of the onion and the intensely briny savor of the anchovies deliver a veritable explosion of favor in your mouth.
Be aware, however, that this is definitely a dish where you will taste the anchovies. They’re not just there for their umami as in so many other dishes, but for their own unique assertive flavor that is admittedly not for everyone.
The main challenge for the home cook is sourcing the bigoli, a regional pasta that can be hard to find outside the Veneto, let along Italy. But you can buy them online or, in a pinch, substitute similar long pastas. Honestly, this sauce will be equally delicious no matter what pasta you pair it with.
Bigoli in salsa was traditionally a dish for meatless holidays like Christmas Eve and Good Friday, but today it is enjoyed year round. And it’s a good thing, too, as it’s too tasty to limit to just a couple of days a year.