A weekend in Franciacorta, in the company of the fish of Lake Iseo: a trip to Clusane - Part II. — travel diary by Francesca Bertha

The story

The old Clusane atmospheres accompany us also when we sit at the table in the room with a rustic yet elegant charm. The walls dating from the eighteenth century are the perfect frame for an environment of great style, where there's also room for a touch of cheerfulness given off by the numerous likeable roosters on display, recalling the name of the trattoria. But the true visual thread running through the rooms is represented by the period photographs that adorn the walls, taken by Carlo Lanza, uncle of Abele and Giulio, who was a highly esteemed photographer as well as a primary school teacher.

The images he took about sixty years ago, which capture moments of the life of the village and of the fishermen, compose a precious itinerary entitled "Clusane com'era" (Clusane as it was), which in the village it's possible to follow by following the panels displayed in the places where the photo was taken. We remember having seen one, for example, on the lakeside, near the monumental cauldron that was once used by the fishermen to dye the nets with chestnut husks so that the fish couldn't see them. Thanks to those black-and-white photographs we seem to hear the voices of the fishermen and see them at work, but we can also imagine chatting with the girls sitting in the boat mending the nets and hooks, and whose beauty certainly not even the fish could resist.

"Our uncle, Carlo Lanza, was born in 1908 and we organised a first exhibition in 1998 on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, and another ten years later, to celebrate his centenary. The captions in dialect and in Italian, which add at times poetic notes to the images, are the work of Don Pierino Ferrari, a passionate parish priest of Clusane from 1982 to 2004, also the author of a beautiful dialect song that talks about Clusane," the Vitali brothers recall. The trattoria that is about to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Vitali-Colosio management has always been an important point of reference for fish cuisine in Clusane and continues to be so, offering the traditional dishes revisited only as much as necessary to make them lighter and in tune with today's tastes.

Our lakeside dinner begins with a rich fish starter that includes fried small fish, smoked trout served with extra virgin olive oil, lemon, parsley and pepper, fish in carpione in wine vinegar, the very tasty dried sardine with toasted polenta, a pike salad with sautéed vegetables, but there's also no shortage of land snails with smoked pancetta. Among the first courses of homemade fresh pasta we taste the linguine with lake prawns and the casoncelli caserecci alla camuna, with butter and sage and a filling of meat, cheese, bread and mortadella, but we're also lucky enough to taste the risotto with perch fillets. We're particularly won over by a very tasty typical speciality with a curious story: the tagliatelle with coot salmì, made with the salmì ragù of the lake bird, macerated with wine and vegetables.

On Lake Iseo the coot is considered a bit bird and a bit fish, the latter because now and then, in the attempt to get food such as algae or their roots, it in turn gets caught in the fishermen's nets, with the result of being caught together with the fish, the real ones. Its amphibious reputation goes so far as to allow its consumption even during Lent. We wash these delicacies down with excellent Franciacorta white wines, in the spirit of the motto we read on the wine list: "The art of eating well is civilisation, the art of drinking better is culture". Among the main courses we taste the exquisite fillets of pike-perch, which can be enjoyed both with sage and with white wine, but all of us couldn't wait for her to arrive at the table, the queen of the lake, namely the tench.

Clusane is known as the village of baked tench with polenta, a traditional dish now with municipal denomination (De.Co.) to which a festival is also dedicated during the summer. The tench in Clusane is an institution, and so it is also at the Antica Trattoria del Gallo, where it's prepared with a filling of breadcrumbs, aged grana cheese, spices, parsley and a hint of garlic, butter, olive oil and bay leaf.

"Traditionally baked tench was prepared using lard, but for reasons of lightness people have gradually moved to limiting butter in favour of olive oil, and in the filling too, today people tend to avoid garlic and moderate the spices," the owners explain to us, but we can guarantee that baked tench with polenta remains a very pleasantly tasty dish that satisfies wonderfully, also thanks to the polenta, which is cut with a white cotton thread at the moment the tench is served, arriving in the dining room on a trolley – and, Giulio explains to us, once during festivities it was the red thread with which the polenta was cut that gave a festive tone to the meal. Our dinner at the lake ends in great sweetness thanks to the tasty homemade desserts, including tiramisù, panna cotta and some very good home-made cakes.

When the next day we set off again for the city, the tranquillity of the lake, its blue, the colours of the boats and the chatter of the ducks remain in our hearts and will be a call to return here as soon as possible: we'll do it perhaps during the warm season, taking advantage of the possibility of using some bicycles made available by the Hostel del Gal to take a few rides around the lake, and in July we'll try not to miss the next Week of Baked Tench.