Crudita

Crudités are simply raw vegetables eaten with dips or in salads. There are two important speciality erudite, one from Piedmont and the other from Tuscany. The first is the famous bagna caôda, meaning ‘hot dip’ in Piedmontese, which is based on a sauce of anchovies, garlic and butter, all dissolved together and kept warm in special terracotta containers heated by candles. Into this aromatic mixture, one dips selected tender autumn or winter vegetables, the whole accompanied by bread and washed down by plenty of Barbera wine. The classic vegetables for bagna caôda are Jerusalem artichoke, cardoon, celery, peppers, artichoke and carrot, but any tender raw vegetable will do. Because of the amount of garlic used it can be a rather antisocial meal; however, if the garlic is softened in milk first, it is far less pungent.