Tordello | What the tordello says

The meat-stuffed pasta that gives identity to Lucca & Versilia

Pizza is Napoli speaking. Focaccia and pesto are Liguria speaking. Cassoeula is Milan, bagna càuda is Piedmont, orecchiette con cime di rapa is Bari, and on it goes: every Italian region and most Italian towns have a single dish that the place uses to tell the world we are us, and we are not them. The tordello is Versilia speaking. Specifically, the tordello is the way the towns of northwestern Tuscany, in three small contiguous corners called Lucchesia, Versilia, and Lunigiana, distinguish themselves from each other and from the much larger Tuscany around them. It is a half-moon of fresh egg pasta, filled with meat, chard, cheese, and a wild creeping thyme called pepolino, served under a meat ragù. It is also a sentence in the Italian conversation about what Italian means at all.

You have to remember, eating in this country, that Italy is younger than the food. The unified Italian state is a hundred and sixty years old, the Republic is younger than most grandmothers, the standard Ital…