Pearà (Veronese dialect term, literally "peppered") is a traditional Veronese

sauce In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. ''Sauce'' is a French wor ...

made with

bread crumbs Bread crumbs or breadcrumbs (regional variants including breading and crispies) consist of crumbled bread of various dryness, sometimes with seasonings added, used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thicken ...

, beef and hen stock, beef marrow and

black pepper Black pepper (''Piper nigrum'') is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in dia ...

. It is served exclusively together with bollito misto, making ''Lesso e pearà'' (''lesso'' is Venetian for ''bollito''), a typical dish unique to Verona and its surroundings.Il Torcolo - Pearà
It should not be confused with ''pevarada'', a sauce made with chicken livers, with which it only shares the use of pepper.

Ingredients and preparation

Preparation of pearà is closely linked to that of ''lesso'', from whose stock it's made and whose meats it accompanies. Stock is made by simmering beef, hen and herbs ( carrot,

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onio ...

and

celery Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, ...

); the complete recipe also includes calf's head and

oxtail Oxtail (occasionally spelled ox tail or ox-tail) is the culinary name for the tail of cattle. While the word once meant only the tail of an ox, today it can also refer to the tails of other cattle. An oxtail typically weighs around and is ski ...

. Pearà requires a long, slow cooking; for its thermal properties, a traditional

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

pot is to be preferred. First off the bread crumbs are mixed in the pot to the melted marrow and butter; afterwards scalding hot stock is added with a ladle while stirring continuously. The pot is then left to simmer for at least two hours, to obtain the desired creamy and thick texture. The sauce's namesake - abundant, freshly ground black pepper - is added towards the end of the cooking. Some recipes also add olive oil and grated

Parmesan Parmesan ( it, Parmigiano Reggiano; ) is an Italian hard, granular cheese produced from cows’ milk and aged at least 12 months. It is named after two of the areas which produce it, the provinces of Parma and Reggio Emilia (''Parmigiano'' ...

History

The origin of this poor, peasant dish of Veronese cuisine is unknown. Legend has it that it was the court cook of Alboino, King of the Lombards, who invented it because he needed a food that would give strength back to Rosmunda. She had been forced to become the king's wife and was starving to death after having been obliged to drink from a cup made from the skull of her father Cunimondo, King of the

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, killed in battle by Alboino himself. The version of illustrious Veronese experts is that the origins of ''pearà'' are to be found in its simplicity and cheapness.

Recommended accompaniment

Pearà is eaten after first course of broth, such as paparele, tortellini di Valeggio or gratini in broth, and is accompanied by boiled meat and bitter wild herbs tossed in the pan. This denotes that 'pearà' does not denote a mere dish, but a certain type of meal in its entirety. The typical cuts of boiled meat are tongue, chicken or whole capon. The presence of

cotechino The ''cotechino'' (, ) is an Italian large pork sausage requiring slow cooking; usually it is simmered at low heat for several hours. Its name comes from ''cotica'' (rind), but it may take different names depending on its various locations of pr ...

is probably a recent addition (it is not part of the broth preparation). The fact that it is traditionally served with boiled meat underlines how central the preparation of a good broth was.

The cheese dispute

There are disagreements over whether or not to use cheese: on the one hand, one school of thought maintains that pearà is an essentially poor dish – made only with "leftovers" from other dishes, such as pieces of stale bread and ox marrow – and therefore, in “respect of its poverty,”

Grana Padano Grana Padano is a cheese originating in the Po river Valley in northern Italy that is similar to Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. There are less strict regulations governing its production compared to Parmigiano Reggiano. This hard, crumbly- textur ...

cheese should not be added; but the fact that it is a poor man’s dish is in contradiction with the fact that it is accompanied exclusively by boiled meat (the family Sunday dish) and that its qualifying ingredient is pepper which, as an Oriental spice, was certainly not originally an ingredient for the poor. From the differences of opinion, it can be deduced that in the Veronese tradition, this is a dish which has always had a rich version (with cheese and lots of pepper) and a poor version (without cheese and with little pepper), whereby butter and cheese could be added in varying quantities to the leftovers mentioned above, such as stale bread and ox bone marrow. Even bread in

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was not exactly a food for the poor, as the staple food ''par excellence'' was polenta (see the matter of eating only polenta and the plague of

pellagra Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3). Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia, and sores in the mouth. Areas of the skin exposed to either sunlight or friction are typically affected first. Over t ...

in the Veneto and elsewhere) and therefore the availability even of stale bread was also linked to a higher-than-average state of wellbeing. The fact remains that in the relatively recent past, it was a common festive dish for a population of lower and middle income, since the wealthy population had a diet that was strongly influenced by French cuisine, then a point of reference for the wealthy and aristocratic, based on other foodstuffs and recipes. It can certainly be said that the widespread addition of cheese is therefore relatively recent.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peara Cuisine of Veneto Italian sauces