Traditional Lombard Cassoeula

1. Blanch the rind in boiling water for 10 minutes, drain it, scrape it with a knife to remove excess fat residue and cut it into strips about 3 cm wide. If using the trotter, blanch it in the same water for the same amount of time.
2. Cut the ribs into individual pieces along the bones. Prick the cabbage pieces with a skewer at two or three points to prevent them from breaking during cooking.
3. Finely mince carrot, celery and onion. In a large, heavy-bottomed casserole, melt the butter with the oil over medium heat and soffritto the mixture for 8-10 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and lightly golden.
4. Add the ribs and brown them over high heat for 5-6 minutes on all sides, turning them frequently. Add the rind and trotter, stir and deglaze with white wine. Let the alcohol evaporate completely for 3-4 minutes.
5. Dissolve the tomato paste in two ladles of hot broth and pour into the casserole. Add sage and rosemary, lower the heat to minimum, cover with a lid and cook for 40 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, wash the cabbage, remove the toughest outer leaves and the central core, and break the leaves by hand into coarse pieces.
7. Add the cabbage pieces to the casserole and cook for another 10 minutes. Add the cabbage in two or three batches, stirring each time to wilt it and make room for the next portion. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
8. Continue cooking over low heat with lid for 45-50 minutes, stirring from time to time and adding hot broth if the bottom becomes too dry. The cabbage should be completely tender and the bottom thick and dark.
9. For the polenta, bring salted water to a boil in a large pot. Pour in the flour in a thin stream while stirring constantly with a whisk, then cook stirring with a wooden spoon for 40-45 minutes over medium-low heat until thick and dense.
10. Serve the cassoeula piping hot, with the polenta placed alongside or poured as a bed in the deep plate.

Cassoeula is one of the dishes most deeply rooted in Lombard culinary memory, born in the cold months as a concrete response to the necessity of wasting nothing from pigs slaughtered in winter. It is a generous stew that brings together in the same pot the less noble parts of pork, the ribs, the rind, the trotters and the leafy greens, together with winter cabbage which, touched by frost, acquires a particular sweetness and tenderness. The result is a dense, fragrant dish, with an intense and enveloping flavor, where the fattiness of the pork is tempered by the bitter vegetable quality of the cabbage until reaching a balance that is anything but accidental.

Born as food for the poor in the farmhouses of Lower Lombardy and the outskirts of Milan, cassoeula has become over time a collective ritual, consumed in neighborhood taverns on the Monday following the feast of Sant'Antonio Abate, January 17th, the traditional day of pig slaughter. Today it remains a dish for shared winter tables, to be prepared in abundant quantities and enjoyed the day after, when the flavors have further blended together. It is served almost always with polenta gialla made from bramata corn, which absorbs the cooking liquid and completes the dish in a natural way.

The cassoeula has significant variations even within the same Lombard territory, linked to farmstead traditions and local availability.

• Classic Milanese version: includes pig's ears and snout in addition to ribs, with a richer base of natural gelatin. It is the variant most documented in nineteenth-century historical recipes.
• Brescia version: tends to be drier, with less cooking liquid and cabbage broken into smaller pieces. Sometimes it includes the addition of a glass of red wine instead of white.
• Version with luganega: replaces the verzini with luganega spiraled, a typical Lombard sausage with thin casing, which releases less fat but more spice aroma.
• Version without trotters: widespread in families that prefer a cassoeula less gelatinous, with a cooking base texture closer to a traditional stew.
• Contemporary lightened variant: involves separate cooking of the fatty parts with subsequent broth degreasing, before proceeding with the cabbage.

Cassoeula, with its fatty structure and intense flavor of braised pork and cabbage, calls for beverages capable of standing up to the dish without masking its complexity.

• Bonarda dell'Oltrepò Pavese DOC (sparkling): its liveliness and slight tannicity cut through the fat and cleanse the palate between bites.
• Barbera d'Asti DOCG: natural acidity and ripe red fruit aromas balance the density of the sauce without overpowering the sweetness of the cabbage.
• Franciacorta DOCG Brut (metodo classico): a less conventional but effective pairing, fine bubbles perform the same degreasing function with different elegance.
• Lombard artisanal Bock beer: roasted malt and full body harmonize well with the umami notes of long-braised pork.

• Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container or covered with plastic wrap in direct contact for a maximum of 3 days.
• Before storing, wait for complete cooling to room temperature (no more than 2 hours).
• In the refrigerator, the fat will rise to the surface forming a solid layer: remove it partially before reheating, if you prefer a lighter dish.
• Reheat over low heat in a saucepan, adding a ladle of broth or hot water to soften the bottom.
• It can be frozen in single portions for up to 2 months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight before reheating.

In the farmhouses of the Lower Lombardy region, January has marked for centuries a precise ritual: the slaughtering of pigs, a collective event that involved entire families and marked the food supply for winter. Cassoeula is born from that logic of zero waste, gathering the parts that butcher shops could not easily sell, rinds, trotters, ribs, scraps, and cooking them slowly with cabbage harvested after December frosts.

The name probably recalls the cooking vessel, the casserole, although some nineteenth-century sources cite it as "bottaggio," a term of French descent that indicates a stew of mixed meat. The connection with the feast of Sant'Antonio Abate on January 17th is not accidental: on that day it was tradition that pigs would be blessed and often slaughtered, making cassoeula the natural dish for the following Monday in Milanese taverns.

In the twentieth century the dish passed through neighborhood trattorias, becoming a symbol of working-class conviviality in the expanding suburbs of Milan. Resisting gastronomic fashions, it has remained substantially unchanged, a fact that says something about the solidity of its internal logic.