Bona Sera Supper Club

Venice is beautiful but Saturday it poured rain with thunder and lightening; nevertheless the Fairy and her party set out for the Pescheria and Rialto market again (Friday’s attempt was unsuccessful due to arriving at the market at the wrong time and missing the veg and fish action).

Campo S. Barnaba veg barge

We made it to Campo S. Barnaba, where we found a floating vegetable and fruit barge full of gorgeous produce. We bought local mushrooms (Trenti), fennel, tomatoes and parsley.

Campo S. Barnaba

Next we headed off to Campo Santa Maria Margherita, a great square with fish vendors, vegetable and fruit stands, cafes and a great collection of people from our Dorsoduro neighborhood.

The fish we found here was so good and exactly what I was looking for, and given the weather, we thought it best to cut our trip to the larger Pescheria short and scurry back home to plan for an early early supper.

Campo Santa Maria Margherita fish vendor

I bought scampi, mussels, vongole, squid and scallops which were cleaned for me on the spot and delivered on the half shell. I will spare you the picture of the sardine I found inside a squid body while cleaning them, but dang! That’s fresh!

Fagioli and artichokes at Campo S. Maria Margherita, Dorsoduro

The problem was that everything looked so great…I bought the fagioli that I had seen earlier at the floating stand, nectarines, peaches, strawberries and artichokes. All very cheap, local and incredibly fresh. The artichokes had to have been picked that morning.

After more rain and visiting the local wine shop, where people bring in their own plastic liters and bottles for fill-up (watch for next post), we made our way back home to cook.

Dinner: artichokes, fruitti de mare, pasta fagioli

I boiled the artichokes, drizzled with olive oil and parsley (curiously, parsley was the only herb we ran across in Venice…), made a caprese from the tomatoes at the market and some buffalo mozarella. I combined the seafood and dressed it with olive oil and fresh lemon juice, olives and tomatoes for hte fruitti de mare over arugula.

Pasta fagiole

And for the pasta I sauteed cippolini, garlic, speck, the local mushrooms, tomatoes, fagioli (after boiling of course), parsley and arugula and finished with pecorino, mozzarella, olive oil and parsley.

I almost passed out from the bliss…and we paired the meal with local wine from the Vineria Nave de Oro, which I will elaborate about in my next post…great local Prosecco and Cabernet Franc, cheap! Ciao!

This entry was posted on October 12, 2009 at 8:12 am and is filed under Bad Fairy Does Italy. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.