Zimino: The Word That Changes Dish in every Port

In Liguria o zemin is a lean stew: chickpeas or beans with chard inland, cuttlefish or stockfish "in zimino" on the coast. The word, documented in Genoese since the sixteenth century, soon went to sea: in Tuscany it became a way of dressing fish, in Corsica azziminu is the fish soup, and in Sassari – surprise – lo ziminu is a roast of offal, the city’s gastronomic pride.

The etymology is disputed: against the old Arabic hypothesis (samīn, "fat" – odd, for a lean dish), Toso proposes Latin azymus, "unleavened", shifted to "lean, meatless". One word, many kitchens: for a Genoese and a Sassarese, discovering each other’s zimino is always a shock.