Tale summary
Il cacciucco ( the word with 5 C) is a typical dish of livornese cooking. It is a poor dish because it is made with reject of fish. This is the story of the name Cacciucco. Once upon a time … in 1600 there was Ahmet, a child, who lived with his parents in a small town in Turkey. His father was a fisherman and he brought Ahmet on boat. Ahmet dreamed to go to the other shore and one day the father brought his child to sell fishes, he was very happy. Ahmet liked to stay at the tavern of his mother, who was a skillful cook and she cooked “balik çorbası”, a special soup made with little fishes, that her child loved. Ahmet became a young man and he met Ozgur, a rich merchant who went to Livorno, a multiethnic city. So also Ahmet went to Livorno and he opened his “taverna da Ahmet”, his typical dish was “balık çorbası”. Ahmet bought little fishes, “küçük balik” (the pronunciation is KUCIUK) and so the fishermen of Livorno gave him a nickname: Cacciucco, this name was given also to his soup. Ahmet married Corinna and they had an tavern in the district of Venezia, where a lot of Livorno’s citizien went to eat the famous “Cacciucco”. In 1891 Pellegrino Artusi described for the first time the recipe of “Cacciucco”: different kinds of fish, onion, garlic, capers, vinegar, sage and chilipepper.