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L’Anciua Sestri Levante – The anchovies of our sea, handmade preserves

While for many people in the Tigullio area, the anchovy is part of the local tradition, for Michele Senno it is something more.
Michele grew up in a family that has lived off the sea for at least a century, and when his grandfather Bruno would return from fishing with his gozzo (a typical boat), the whole family would gather on the shoreline to help out, even children like Michele, who thus learnt the secrets of anchovy processing: what might have seemed like a game when he was a child, years later became a profession.

To this day, Michele, with his workshop L’Anciua, has remained one of the last truly artisanal anchovy makers in business and his anchovies are sought after by the best Italian restaurants – such as ‘Cracco Portofino’ – because to make an excellent product, it is not enough for the raw material to be of high quality, you also need experience.

L'anciua sestri levante

Michele’s work always starts with a simple phone call, when local fishermen call him to give him the hoped-for news that it was a good catch and that there might be anchovies that are good for him. This only happens on a few days because while an anchovy caught in the Gulf of Tigullio is certainly an excellent fish, there are few anchovies that Michele thinks can be turned into preserves: he is not satisfied, they have to be the right size. So Michele immediately heads to the port of Sestri Levante, chooses the best fresh fish for processing and within a few hours cleans it by removing the head and entrails, then salting it.

The curing of the anchovies in salting will last a few months until it is time to fillet the fish, a step that is obviously done in the old-fashioned way, by hand: craftsmanship in this case is not a fad to be exhibited for the sake of storytelling because the care one puts into handling the fish really makes the difference.
As you can imagine, no matter how large local anchovies may be, they never reach the size of fish from other seas; for this reason, only by cleaning them by hand can the flesh be kept intact so that the fillets in the jar are soft and firm and have nothing to envy from maxi anchovies such as those from the Cantabrian Sea, despite the fact that the raw material from which they are made is much smaller. The difference with respect to industrial production can also be seen in the quantity processed: if in one hour a company cleans 100 kilos of anchovies Michele can only prepare 1 kilo, and in fact his anchovies in oil are true limited editions, with a maximum of 100 jars per week coming out of his artisanal anchovy factory.

Lavorazione artigianale delle acciughe liguri
Fresh Italian anchovies are generally smaller in size than those from the colder northern seas. Michele's hand processing, however, allows him to obtain anchovy fillets that are as good as those from the Cantabrian Sea.

However, after cleaning the anchovies that were under salting for Michele comes the moment of drying: he could use a dryer as everyone else does, but this would ruin the fillets which he then leaves to dry slowly and at a low temperature so as not to stress the flesh; in this way the final flavour will be much less salty than other anchovies on the market, and on the palate you will only taste the delicate flavour of the fish.

At every stage of its processing, Michele favours flavour and the decision to use extra virgin olive oil instead of seed oil is always explained in this perspective. Apart from the oil, he adds nothing, no preservatives or anything else. The canning is obviously done by hand and by eye (not even with scales… so we have revealed the mystery if you find a few more fillets in the jar than the declared weight).


Michele’s artisanal anchovy production also includes his personal jarred reinterpretations of two classic Ligurian recipes. L’Anciua’s version of ‘La Sardenaria’ is inspired by the famous focaccia, typical of the Ponente Riviera: You can find the same ingredients in jars, tomato, Taggiasca olives, garlic, oregano and anchovies; in this case, however, semi-dried tomato is used instead of sauce, making it a perfect condiment for canapés, bruschettas, appetisers and even pasta. The same use is recommended for ‘U Punetin’, another jarred speciality that instead takes its inspiration from a traditional Levante dish, anchovy bagnun.

la produzione dell'anciua
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