Liguria’s spectacular cuisine is often boiled down into just two internationally renowned players: focaccia and pesto. While they rightfully deserve their place in the spotlight, the fluffy and the basil-y often overshadow the rest of the region’s vegetable-forward, innovative dishes.

Long before the country of Italy was unified, the port city of Genova was a leading maritime power, facilitating trade of spices, sugars, and even fish to the region, the rest of Italy, and Switzerland. And while the tables of the city’s wealthy were filled with elaborate and showy dishes (scroll down for a certain seafood tower), farmers across the rest of the C-shaped region struggled to eat, forced to work a land not conducive for growing any valuable crops or livestock.