The renga is a must during Lent. On Ash Wednesday, which is also the first day of Lent, Venetian tradition dictates that you eat the lame... which, as I was saying, should not be missing.
The renga in Lent
Lent was once represented by a puppet of an old lady, called “the old woman,” adorned with necklaces of dried fruit and displayed in the square. Renewing rites propitiatory which date back to ancient times, it was burned or drowned as a metaphorical elimination of poverty. Or as a purifying and propitiatory act for the good harvests of the new season, of Roman origin. With the dinner of the lame so we say goodbye to Carnival and move on to Holy Easter.
But what is the lame? It's nothing but Herring, a foreign fish, has been a regular visitor for centuries. It lives in the cold waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. What interests us is the female specimen, while the male, the scopeton, which is less valuable and sought after, but I'd say it's fine all the same. The herring left the North Sea, passing through Venice, and settled inland, taking the name “renga".
Venetian cuisine
This simple fish quickly proved to be ideal for the needs of Venetian peasants, especially during Lent. It was a humble yet nutritious food, easy to preserve even when refrigerators were not available. This fish had enormous economic importance in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages and into the 500th century. It represented a source of protein food when agriculture provided too little to live on.
It was preserved either by drying or in salt. Its placement in salt led to the development of a large salt trade. And so the “renga” It arrived in barrels heading south. It reached Venice. La lame In Parona, a very famous town in the province of Verona, the Renga workshop still exists. Until the end of the 800th century, when the Adige River was still navigable, the small town of Parona was an important river port for trade.
Companasego
As navigation in the city was prohibited on weekends, the sailor-merchant drivers of timber boats and barges who descended the Adige, docked and stopped in the small port of Parona. Therefore, having refreshed themselves in the inns, the payment was often The "parona" of the same ships offered in exchange goods from their cargo, including barrels of smoked herrings in salt.
This is how the parone learned to cook renga and thus to propose this fish, originally from the distant seas of northern Europe, combined with the typical flavors of Venetian cuisine such as polenta. The imperative during the days of Lent was to eat lean food and the list of things to bring to the table did not offer many choices: fresh or salted fish, Smoked and marinated. A true 'companasego' of the poor, a symbol of the poverty of the period., was therefore the humblest herring.
The Days of the Renga – The Renga in Lent
Dry, but with a strong flavour and pungent aroma, cheap, just one was enough for the whole family and on special occasions it was customary to enrich it with polenta; in fact, just a small piece was enough to flavour a large quantity. The custom of a time In Veneto and Friuli, it involved dabbing a smoked herring over slices of bread to flavor them. It's said that in the humblest homes, they hung it from a beam or on the edge of the fireplace, and rubbed it directly over the bread. The custom of eating this fish was so strong and deeply felt that Lent was also called "the days of the herring."
