Online, you can find dozens of recipes for potato gnocchi with clams posted by as many Italian food bloggers.

In this way, the recipe is everyone’s and no one’s. Yet, like so many other dishes, this one has its own history that no one remembers or that some people spread with mistakes attached, like the ones told by the impromptu historians who have been crowding the web and social media for the past few years.

One example. If you visit the web, you can read the true history of potato gnocchi, which has existed since the ancient Romans days. But potatoes arrived in Europe when the gladiators had already disappeared for a few centuries.

This preamble is helpful to emphasize two things.

The first is the difference between food bloggers and food writers. Although the latter category is included in the former, food bloggers share a recipe. In addition to the dish, the latter adds several informations. These can be personal, which means the author writes a memoir blog, geographical (local or regional cuisine), social or historical.

If you frequent my blog, after a messy start despite the name, you know I write a memoir seasoned with flavors of Via Emilia.

The second issue concerns the growing number of people who boast historical knowledge that they do not have and who are filling the web with misinformation.

For some time now, surprised by the flood of gastronomic historians without titles and skills in historical research, a discipline that you don’t make up but study at university, and increasingly fascinated by the dynamics that link the evolution of cuisine to many branches of history (human beings, social, economic not to mention the impact on geography and landscapes), I have expanded my narrative to include historical notes of the recipes I publish.

If you are wondering about my expertise, I have worked for more than 20 years as a researcher in contemporary history at the University of Bologna. For that reason, I don’t consider myself important. Still, every once in a while, someone needs to remember that every field requires specific studies and training. These things make a person into a professional.

Since history cannot be invented, I studied it and then taught it, but most importantly, I learned the art of research.
I have worked in dozens of institutional and private paper and digital archives and produced oral history studies by meeting the witnesses of specific historical moments.

My recipe for eggless potato gnocchi topped with clams is no different or better than many others. The most relevant difference is that here, you will find the reason why this recipe belongs to the poor cuisine of Romagna.

Potato gnocchi with clams: cucina povera of Romagna

Romagna cuisine can be declined in the plural since it includes seafood, lagoon, plain, and mountain cuisine. That classification is also valid for other Italian regions except for the lagoon, which is peculiar only to certain precise areas.

This potato gnocchi with clams is a peasant, seafood, and winter recipe.

Before explaining this last statement, I must say something about potato gnocchi, which is considered a local recipe along the Via Emilia. Indeed, many people from Emilia-Romagna would be surprised if someone told them that potato gnocchi did not originate here. But the truth is that the origin of the preparation is uncertain.

In support of what I am writing, traditional Italian cookbooks from the early twentieth century include potato gnocchi among the specialties of Bologna. Interestingly, The Talisman of Happiness speaks of it instead as a typical dish of Roman trattorias served on Thursdays, hence the Italian saying Thursday gnocchi.

In general, we can consider potato gnocchi as a typical Italian dish of peasant tradition from North to South.

Once, potato gnocchi was, especially in winter, without eggs. Like strozzapreti, they were typical of this season when hens lay fewer eggs.

Clams from the Adriatic sea were inexpensive condiments perfect for seasoning pasta. Gnocchi, strozzapreti, and quadrucci with clams enjoyed more than one Romagna lunch. They were also used to make delicious soups with vegetables; I really like the spring one with clams and light zucchini.

In the Adriatic sea in front of my region, clams are small, tasty, and are called poveracce or poverazze. And not for the fact, as some write, that it was a poor man’s food but for the dotted shell that resembles ground pepper.

What is certain is that poveracce were picked early in the morning by women along the beach and was also a food of the seafood cucina povera.

Finally, one last cooking note before I leave you with the recipe.
Emilia-Romagna is a northern Italy region; traditionally, animal fat was used to cook fish (butter and lard).
Olive oil, which is very expensive, only entered our kitchens after the 1950s.

Cucina povera of Romagna

I’ll point out another recipe from the seafood cucina povera of Romagna: Baby octopus stew and chickpea polenta.

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