A Cinque Terre Nonna Cooks the Five Towns’ Most Unsung Dish

She rarely cooks stuffed mussels because they’re no small feat. This classic Cinque Terre recipe takes the time they take, and during summer, 79-year-old Grazia Andreotti has little time for herself since the Cinque Terre became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and a National Park two years later. Andreotti is the tutelary deity of the historic restaurant Da Aristide in Manarola, one of the five Cinque Terre towns. But now that she gave the helm to her daughter and granddaughter, that time is there. Even if, as she indomitably specifies, "I always make pesto for the restaurant.”

If the voices of vacationers have unfortunately decreased over the last year, she on the other hand has "the pleasure of hearing the singing of the birds, the voices of the neighbors, the waves." Sounds that she had not heard in the village since she arrived here from La Spezia, a nearby city in Liguria, in 1964, following her husband Aristide, the restaurant’s owner and namesake. At the time, theirs was the only spot in the village open all year round and outfitted with a bar and public telephone. Two years after her arrival, she began taking care of the cooking and went on to  raise four children while doing so.

The small kitchen, complete with a balcony equipped with herbs including thyme and marjoram, displays all the essential local cooking tools: a mortar and pestle, a cutting board, a mezzaluna, a vegetable mill, and a crockpot. In addition, just above the house, the magic touch: two bands, as the terraces of the Ligurian countryside are called, "lent" to Grazia by a friend to make a vegetable garden in exchange for a few baskets of tomatoes, green beans, and artichokes. Her son-in-law tends to it, contributing to the rebirth of the Cinque Terre landscape.

That's why these stuffed mussels in terms of flavor, texture, scent do not resemble anything you eat around. "Not to mention when, as was the custom in the past, each shell was tied with a thread to dress this Cinderella of the sea as a princess,” explains Andreotti.

A word of warning: The Italian word for mussels is cozze, but in Liguria, the dish is referred to in local dialect as muscoli ripieni. If you speak Italian and you find yourself looking for this dish when you’re in Liguria, don’t call it cozze. Here Andreotti's recipe so you can the stuffed mussels at home. 

Muscoli Ripieni all’Antica (Old-Fashioned Stuffed Mussels)

“I buy 2½ kilos [5 ½ lb.] of mussels, which means about 8 apiece for four people. I choose ten and open them over the fire with a little water to add them to the filling. I keep their water and filter it with a cloth. I prepare the filling by mincing the already open mussels, 1½ hectograms [5 oz.] of mortadella, the squeezed crumbs of 2 machete (hard rolls) dipped in milk, a clove of garlic, from which I remove the core, a sprig of parsley, one of marjoram. I place everything in a bowl with two handfuls of Parmigiano Reggiano and two eggs, mix. I open the other mussels with a small knife at the end of the valves, stuff them with the filling and close them again.

For the sauce, brown a clove of garlic and parsley in the pan, add a can of peeled tomatoes and the water from the mussels. I arrange the stuffed mussels in the sauce and let it cook slowly for twenty minutes.”

Editors' note: This story was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated.