Capponadda – The typical local crunchy salad
Capponadda is a Ligurian salad whose main ingredient is galletta del marinaio, a typical dry flatbread that gives the dish an incredible crunchiness. Despite its name, this traditional Ligurian recipe is not related to aubergine caponata. At most, Genoese capponadda bears some resemblance to Tuscan panzanella, as both are salads with bread.
For our capponadda, we used the ‘gallette del marinaio’ (sailor’s biscuits) from Panificio Maccarini in San Rocco di Camogli, still made by hand in the old fashioned way. Panificio Maccarini’s ‘gallette del marinaio’ (sailor’s biscuits) are dry crumbs and are pierced one by one before baking to prevent them from swelling during cooking.
As the name suggests, the galletta del marinaio was once the bread kept on board during long sea voyages, one of the foods of Genoese sailors. They keep easily for a few months: to eat them, you first have to soften them for a few seconds in water and vinegar. You can buy the original sailor’s biscuits here.
Capponadda – The typical local crunchy salad
INGREDIENTS FOR CAPPONADDA
Dressing
HOW TO MAKE CAPPONADDA
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Soaking the sailor's biscuits
Take the first sailor's galette and rub a clove of garlic against it (as you do with bruschetta). The crackers are dry and keep well for a long time. For this same reason, sailor biscuits should be soaked in water and vinegar before being used.
So take a deep dish and pour half a glass of water and three tablespoons of vinegar into it. One after the other, dip the sailor biscuits into the water with vinegar. Hold each wafer in the water for about 25 seconds (a few seconds less is better than a few seconds more), turning it over from time to time so that the liquid is absorbed on each side.
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Make your own salad
We soaked our biscuits in water and vinegar. Now we let them rest for 10 minutes on a flat plate, after which they will be soft enough to break. In the meantime we can start to compose our salad. It goes without saying that since it is a salad, everyone can put in whatever they like.
The capponadda is mainly a seafood salad, so with tuna in oil and anchovy fillets. It is said that in the oldest recipes dried tuna fillets were used: the flavour of this ingredient is very strong, however, in case you can try adding a little grated botargo you have at home to the tuna in oil.
Taking a cue from another Ligurian salad, the cundigiun, other ingredients could be: green beans, peppers, cucumbers, boiled eggs. If you also want to put onions in it, then perhaps it is better in this case not to season the sailor's biscuits with garlic: however, it is really the good thing about capponadda to have such tasty crunchy bread on the plate!
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Dressing and eat it whenever you want
We finish our capponadda by dressing it with good taggiasca extra virgin olive oil, very little salt (there are already anchovies), oregano and a few leaves of fresh basil. There is no need to add vinegar or acidic seasonings because by soaking the galettes in water and vinegar we already have our sour element in the salad.
You can eat the capponadda immediately or you can also prepare it and then eat it a few hours later and it becomes a perfect lunchtime salad.
