Traditional Dishes

All the tables of the inhabitants of Senigallia, its surroundings and other areas of the region are absolutely laid with excellent pasta dishes, a must of which is renowned vincisgrassi.
What is intriguing about this rich dish is the name, which is believed to originate from Prince Zu Windischgrätz, commander of the Austrian army in Ancona during the war against Napoleon in the early 1800s. However, the term first appeared in an eighteenth-century book by Marche native chef Antonio Nebbia: princisgrassi, which means “tasty condiment”, namely fat for the prince. It is a rich dish mainly eaten on holidays or on Sundays and is obtained with various thin layers of egg pasta, stuffed with meat sauce and cheese, and cooked in the oven in large trays. Egg pasta is often made at home or by talented cooker kings and queens; duck or wild boar are traditionally used to prepare the sauce, and occasionally chicken giblets are browned in the sauce for seasoning. All such intense flavors make lasagna (and egg pasta in general) an excellent dish of the Marche tradition.

The most substantial first courses remain, together with vincisgrassi (also excellent in the tomato-free or fish sauce variants), stuffed cannelloni, Parmesan-based passatelli, in broth or dry, gnocchi and ravioli, both to be tasted stuffed with fish, meat or vegetables.

Marche meat is certified for its quality and considered among the best national ones. In the appropriate season, you can also enjoy game. Since pork excels, do not miss porchetta, a strong and tasty dish cooked for a long time with aromatic herbs on the wood and which always goes well with a glass of local red wine. Among sausages, you are spoiled for choice between various preparations: from lonza to tender ciauscolo salami and seasoned local ham, which is rightly quite salty to accompany lightly salted bread.

Speaking of starchy foods, you should definitely try the tasty and traditional crescia, similar to piadina but thicker, fluffier and crunchier, mostly cooked on the grill and accompanied by local cold cuts and succulent herbs sautéed in a pan with sausage. Looking like panettone but tasting like cheese, Easter pizza is a side dish typically enjoyed on Easter meals but also used throughout the year, excellent both on its own and stuffed in layers.

For carnival, bakeries and pastry shops brighten their windows with a wide variety of fried doughnuts such as stuffed castagnole, zeppole, frappe and cresciole.
In local kitchens, farmyard animals are usually cooked on the spit or in potacchio, a culinary braising-like process typical of Marche, which is perfect for rabbit dishes.

Three delicacies from Marche, the result of a poor but precious and rare culture, can be enjoyed at the end of summer: farmers chop figs with a little anise liquor and a few walnuts, and then wrap this sort of salami, also called lonzetta or lonzino di fichi, in leaves. Tasty and invigorating, it is eaten at the end of a meal with a piece of cheese and a good glass of red wine.
Grass pea is a legume that does not need particular crops, even grows in difficult conditions, resists drought, and also adapts to low fertile soils and low temperatures. Like all pulses, it has interesting nutritional characteristics, both for the high content of proteins and starch and for the low amount of fat. In addition to being a tasty food, it can also be kept dry for a period of two years and is suitable for tasty soups such as the grass pea soup, widely celebrated with a village festival.
Sapa is a syrupy natural sweetener, once used to add taste and flavor to food and drink. Grape must is boiled for a long time and slowly, until it is reduced to a quarter and can be flavored with lemon peel. Sapa is dense, dark, syrupy, sweet, full-bodied. Bottled for a long time, it is ideal for flavoring meats, fruit and desserts. All these specialties can be purchased in several good shops or in country farms.

The flavors of the land alternate with those of the sea, stewed, with shellfish, clams, lobster, squid ink.
Those who love fish will appreciate tasty variations of brodetto, the famous fish soup whose first property is the freshness of the Adriatic seafood: it seems to have first been made in the open sea out of fishermen’s galleys. The various types of fish, sea bass, mullet, sole fillets, scampi and squid, are cooked in water and vinegar broth to obtain a fairly dense cooking base, flavored with herbs and accompanied by slices of browned bread with oil.
Fish is also cooked on the grill with traditional breadcrumbs to wrap grilled sardines, inevitable in local grills. However, fish can be tasted in various cooking modes: fried, in foil, roasted or simply in a pan to preserve sea taste. Worth trying is delicious cuttlefish with peas, a dish that is never missing on the tables of local gourmets.
Also coming from the sea, stock fish is a broth-like dish also cooked in the hinterland following the rule “when in Rome, cook as Romans do”.