Recipes have secret powers.
They can hold our multiple selves.
Celebrate our uniqueness and our shared humanity.

Recipes weave together stories, places, and people.
Made of ingredients, technique, memories, and time.
They are artifacts of our lives.

With this recipe, I bring together many members of the family.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?
From Modena to Mirandola.
From Osteria Francescana to Casa Maria Luigia.
From the past to the future.
And back again.

Credits: Sueo

What connects this journey? A lumpy sausage called cotechino.
Have you ever seen cotechino?
It may not be pretty. But, it is very tasty.
Legend has it that in 1511, Pope Julius II della Rovere had his sights on the city of Mirandola.
The townspeople survived the year long siege by creating a sausage with all the remaining parts of the pig including the skin and bones, all ground into a blob that became known as “the emergency sausage”.

Today cotechino is made with prestigious parts of the animal with a small percentage of ground skin, a source of both flavour and texture. Cotechino is well known in Italy and served from North to South during the winter holidays – mostly at Christmas and New Year’s – where its humble beginnings take on an important role around the family table.

When we opened Osteria Francescana in 1995, I became obsessed with adding cotechino to the menu in a non-traditional way. At first we deconstructed it into a rational cube steamed in Lambrusco and covered with a translucent pink Lambrusco film. Modenese could not believe that cotechino could look so good!

Then I experimented with more recipes to prove that cotechino could be eaten 365 days a year, not only at Christmas. In fact, it turned into the filling for ravioli, served with creamy lentil puree in the heat of summer. Next came From Modena to Mirandola, to tell the story of the journey my mother Luisa took by bicycle to meet my father Alfio while they were dating during the war. We served it as a pre desert after the main course as the bridge between savory and sweet, between two bordering regions of Italy, between ingredients from the past and ones belonging to the future.

Credits: Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef and Letizia Cigliutti

In 2019, we opened Casa Maria Luigia and, at the beginning, breakfast was the only meal we served. We knew it had to be unforgettable. So we included cotechino on the menu.
From Modena to Mirandola is inspired by a dish that my grandmother Ancella prepared for her special Christmas morning feast. We roast cotechino in our wood-fired oven and serve it with an almond, butter sbrisolona cookie, a dollop of bright yellow zabaione, and a swirl of extra old balsamic vinegar.

I could have never imagined that this cotechino would travel so far to arrive in the Emilian countryside, a place we call Our Home Away from Home, to become the cornerstone of our hearty breakfast recently voted the best breakfast in Italy.

I hold all of our recipes dear to me.
They are like fairy tales, where characters face near impossible challenges to overcome prejudices, where ingredients become more than the sum of their parts. Where, as in this case, we pay homage to the past while stepping into the future.

This recipe is that bridge between my mother and father; my grandmother and Osteria Francescana; our past and our future.
This is what I call Tradition in Evolution.

Credits: Matteo Carassale per Cook Corriere della Sera

And at the end of a year of celebrations—12 questions, 12 recipes, 12 stories—we clap our hands to the first 30 years of Osteria Francescana with gratitude and an overflowing well of hope for the future generations of recipes to come.

Cooking is a journey.
Where are we going?
Forward and backwards.
Backwards and forwards.
A recipe is a never ending story.