Bagna cauda for the anchovy-shy
The warm garlic and anchovy bath that quietly wins every party. Melting, not fishy and gone before the coats are off.
At a Glance
Story
Bagna cauda is Piedmontese for "hot bath," and that is exactly what it is, a communal pot of warm garlic and anchovy kept over a low flame while everyone dips raw vegetables into it. It belongs to the grape harvest, when the whole table would gather round a single earthenware fojot and go at it for hours, classically with cardoons. The garlic sits in the fat rather than frying in it, which is why it turns sweet and mellow instead of sharp, and a little cream is the modern kindness that keeps the whole thing from splitting.
Ingredients
- 8 cloves garlicthinly sliced
- 1 × 2 oz tin anchovy filletsdrained (do not be stingy, they are the point)
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- ½ cup heavy cream
- black pepperto finish
- raw vegetables for dippingfennel, endive, radishes and peppers
Method
The dip that converts the people who swear at the door they cannot abide anchovies. Nobody needs to know what is in it until the pot is empty, and by then they have had six pieces of fennel and are asking for the recipe.
- Put the garlic and butter in a small heavy pan with the olive oil and set it over the lowest heat you have. You are poaching the garlic, not frying it, 8 to 10 minutes, until it is soft enough to crush against the side of the pan and smells sweet rather than sharp. Do not let it take on color.
- Add the anchovies and stir them into the fat, pressing with the back of a spoon until they melt away completely, 2 to 3 minutes. This is the whole trick: cooked like this they dissolve into pure savory depth and stop being anything anyone would call fishy, which is why you never confess how many went in.
- Pour in the cream and warm it through gently, another 2 to 3 minutes, until the sauce is glossy and loose enough to coat a spoon. Do not let it boil or it will split. Grind in plenty of black pepper. It needs no salt, the anchovies have seen to that. Taste, it should be rich, garlicky and deeply savory.
- Tip it into a warm bowl and get it to the table while it is hot, ideally over a candle warmer or the lowest flame so it stays molten. Serve with a platter of raw vegetables for dipping and torn warm bread underneath to catch the drips. Keep it warm, a cold bagna cauda is a sad, greasy thing, and this one never gets the chance.
For a crowd
Bagna cauda is happiest scaled straight up, so triple everything and build it in your widest pan. The one rule is heat: a cooling bath turns greasy and sullen, so decant it into a small slow cooker or a fondue pot set on low and let people graze for hours the way Piedmont intended. Lay out the biggest platter of raw vegetables you can bear, and warm the bread just before it goes down.
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