Venice, Veneto. The lean-day pasta of the Venetian calendar — eaten when meat was prohibited. The bigolaro press is a traditional Venetian tool; bigoli are listed in Venetian cookery documents from the 17th century.
Bigoli in salsa is the quintessential Venetian lean-day pasta: thick, rough-surfaced, wholegrain spaghetti-like pasta (bigoli) tossed with a slowly melted sauce of anchovies and sweet white onion cooked in white wine. The onion is cooked so long it completely caramelises and dissolves; the anchovies melt into the oil. The sauce is sweet, savoury, and unctuous — and the roughness of the bigoli surface is essential for gripping it. A dish eaten on Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday in Venetian tradition.
Sweet caramelised onion and melted anchovy create an umami-and-sweetness combination that is deeply savoury without being salty. The wholegrain roughness of the bigoli holds the sauce in every groove. This is a dish where the pasta texture is as important as the sauce.
Bigoli are made from wholegrain flour (or a durum-and-00 blend) extruded through a bigolaro — a traditional brass-die pasta press that creates a tube the thickness of a pencil with a rough, porous surface. The die hole is key — smooth extruded pasta won't hold the sauce. The salsa: sweet white onion cooked slowly in olive oil and a splash of white wine for 30-40 minutes until completely soft and golden, then salt-packed anchovies added and dissolved over low heat. No browning — this is a sweet, gentle sauce. Toss the cooked bigoli directly in the pan with a few tablespoons of pasta water.
If a bigolaro press is unavailable, fresh spaghetti pressed through a pasta machine works, but the rough surface of extruded bigoli is the technical advantage of the dish. The onion-to-anchovy ratio is approximately 3:1 by weight — the onion sweetness must dominate. Venetian tradition uses sardines or anchovies packed in salt rather than tinned; desalt the anchovies before using.
Using smooth spaghetti instead of bigoli — the sauce slides off. Rushing the onion — it must caramelise fully for sweetness, not just soften. Burning the anchovies — they should melt gently, not fry. Over-salting — the anchovies provide all the salt needed. Adding cheese — traditionally no cheese on fish pasta in Venetian cooking.
Giorgio Locatelli, Made in Italy; Russell Norman, Polpo: A Venetian Cookbook