Jota — Friulian Sauerkraut and Bean Soup

Trieste and Friuli — particularly the area where Austrian and Italian culinary cultures overlap. The bean-and-sauerkraut combination reflects the Austro-Hungarian influence on Triestine cooking, where the city was the main port of the Habsburg Empire.

Jota is the soul of Triestine and Friulian winter cooking: a thick, deeply flavoured soup of cooked kidney beans, sauerkraut (crauti), potatoes, smoked pork (cotenna, pancetta affumicata, or ribs), and browned flour for body. It occupies the intersection of Central European and Mediterranean cooking cultures — the sauerkraut is Austro-Hungarian; the olive oil and bean base are Italian. The flavour is sour, smoky, rich, and filling — the antithesis of delicate.

The sourness of the sauerkraut, the smokiness of the pork, the earthiness of the beans, and the thickening of the browned flour create a flavour profile unlike any other Italian soup — sour, smoky, rich, and substantial. This is a border-culture dish, and its flavour expresses that borderland.