Panissa

Rice, beans, salami, and vegetables: panissa is the rich and robust dish with which the city of Vercelli identifies itself. Served on Sunday as a blessing and acknowledgment of well-being, it has been considered simple country food in Piedmont for more than two centuries, although families of every background eat it with pleasure.

Rice, first planted in Piedmont in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, is to the Piedmontese what bread is to other regions of Italy: a basic ingredient o