anolini

Anolini are small ring-shaped or half-moon stuffed pasta, about two centimeters across, filled with a dense mixture of braised beef, Parmesan, breadcrumbs, and egg, and served in capon or beef broth. They are the Christmas pasta of Piacenza, and the city guards the recipe with the seriousness that other places reserve for religion. The name comes from the Latin anulus, meaning ring, transmitted through the northern Italian dialect form anolino, which describes the pasta's circular shape. A similar shape appears in Parma as anolini di magro, filled with cheese rather than meat in observance of the Advent fast, but in Piacenza the meat version is definitive.

The first documented recipe for anolini appears in Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera dell'arte del cucinare, published in Rome in 1570. Scappi was chef to several popes, most notably Pius V, and his encyclopedia of Italian cooking is one of the most important culinary documents of the sixteenth century. He describes a pasta ring stuffed with spiced meat as typical of the Po Valley, the fertile plain between the Alps and the Apennines that produced the wheat, cattle, and dairy that made northern Italian cooking famous. Piacenza sits at the western edge of that valley, where the Po meets the Trebbia, and its anolini reflect the agricultural richness of that junction.

By the eighteenth century, anolini were established as a feast-day food in Piacenza. Municipal records from 1762 show that the Brotherhood of San Giovanni Battista served anolini in brodo at its annual Christmas banquet, purchasing four capons specifically for the broth. The broth is as important as the pasta: a properly made anolini broth requires capon or mixed beef and chicken, simmered for hours until it turns clear gold, and the pasta is cooked directly in the broth so the two flavors become inseparable. Cutting corners on the broth is considered a form of disrespect to the dish.

The debate between Piacenza and Parma over anolini has never been resolved, and both cities claim the definitive version. The two versions are genuinely different: Piacenza's filling is richer and darker from the braised beef, Parma's is lighter and more Parmesan-forward. The argument will continue long after the last bowl is finished. In Piacenza, anolini are not a regional curiosity but a civic institution, the pasta that tells you the year has ended and a new one is about to begin.