Gastronomic Italy: An Epicurean Travelogue
by FABIO TOMBARI
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A NATION’S cookery is more than a spontaneous natural product ; it will reflect tastes, culture, the whole civilization. And particularly in Italy, history has left its mark on the kitchen. Recipes from the triclinia, the dining rooms of ancient Rome, are still known and used today, while others have come down to us from medieval prescriptions, from the menus of royal or papal banquets recorded by court stewards, from the notebooks of alchemists, and even from the annals of austere monasteries.
To these have been added the inventions and whims of great chefs — and the long experience of simple country cooks. All have been absorbed and filtered into the tradition of Italian cooking. There is no solemn or festive occasion which has not, over the centuries, produced its special menu or dish, be it a private family funeral or the elaborate ceremonial of a city or province celebrating its feast day. Nothing has been lost. It lives today.
At Christmas, we always bake panettone, a semisweet, light, dry cake flavored with lemon and stuffed with raisins. At Easier, there is a kind of shortbread, and in Milan these traditional Easier cakes are shaped like pigeons or doves. Many of the medieval pageants and competitions that are still staged in Italian towns have their tasty specialties. Verona has its famed pandora, a fluffy, golden cake, and the Palio race days of Siena their panforte, a delectable pressed fruitcake. Cremona dotes on its torrone, an almond-filled nougat, while Ferrara, famous for its chivalric jousts, gorges on pampepato, a spiced, fruited, pepper bread.
For the gaiety of the carnival season there are crisp, golden fritters compounded of rice and honey. Then during Lent come the unglamorous but truly delicious gialletti, corn-meal cookies heavy with muscat raisins and candied lemon peel, and the Florentine chestnut-meal cake called castaynaccio.
There are, too, such year-round regional specialties as the Neapolitan pizza which is also so popular in America. Who can forget, once he has tasted them, the crusty, sweet sfogliatelle of Campania, those worthy Italian cousins to the French millefeuille; or the wonderful cannoli of Sicily and Molise, stuffed with candied fruit, pistachio and ricotta. Belluno prides itself on its ices, once served in cups of gold at the Austrian court ; Turin and Perugia are rivals in the production of chocolates; while Sicily ranks second to none for its marvelous cassate, available summer and winter in the form of ices or cakes.
It is the custom in Italy to serve two solid meals a day. Breakfast is as simple and elementary a matter as possible, but dinner at midday and supper in the evening are more serious affairs. The main meal is usually eaten at one o’clock or shortly thereafter, supper from eight onwards, depending on the region. The farther south one goes, the later supper is apt to be, and the lighter. By late evening the heat has fallen and the cool night air rekindles flagging appetites. Children are given a merenda at five to tide them over.
In many homes, as in all restaurants, dinner is likely to begin with antipasto. Here too, regional specialties are in evidence. From Emilia come sausages with every possible combination of pork flavors. Then there are the smoked hams of Friuli and prosciutto, pink Parma ham cut in paper thin slices and eaten with ripe figs or melon. Perhaps there will be mountain sausages or tangy ciavuscolo, spiked with garlic. Taranto oysters and sardines from Sicily are on the bill of fare all year round but marinated eel only during the Christmas season.
After the antipasto, comes the minestra. The term minestra embraces all the famous Italian noodle dishes in all their possible shapes and forms. The varieties of pasta are seemingly endless. Basically, pasta is just that — paste— flour, water, and salt, sometimes combined with eggs. Its shape gives it varying names, and the sauce — or lack thereof — endows it with its regional flavor and identity. Popular in Italy and relatively unknown in America and elsewhere is pasta al burro — eaten with unsalted butter and freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and nothing else.
Some kinds of pasta are served floating in broth, such as cappelletti, taglierini, passatelli (an Umbrian specialty made with cheese and eggs), and tortellini, circlets of dough with a bit of meat filling like that in ravioli. Pasta asciutta — literally, dry paste— is not that at all. It is called dry only to distinguish it from pasta in broth, and is served with all manner of sauces: ravioli, gnocchi (two kinds, made from potato in the North and semolino in the South), agnolotti, or oversized ravioli, spaghetti, tagliatelle, or flat ribbon-like noodles, macaroni, and the gala pasta of them all, lasagne.
The favorite sauce for pasta in Genoa is il pesto which derives its name from the pestle used to pound together the garlic, sweet basil, and sheep’s cheese which constitute its basic ingredients. Bologna prefers il ragù, a superb, rich meat sauce, while the Neapolitans remain loyal to la pomarola ‘n coppa which starts with garden-fresh tomatoes. Equally famous is Arezzo’s special sauce made from jugged hare and poured over pappardelle, a long, curlyedged ribbon pasta; Rome’s spaghetti all’ amatriciana based on Italian salt pork, black peppercorns, tomatoes in profusion, the whole liberally sprinkled with sharp Pecorino cheese; and Naples’ inimitable salsa alle vongole, made with tiny clams half the size of a dime. Whatever its sauce, the basic minestra is not a dish to be trifled with. On Sunday morning, before going to church, the Italian housewife dons her apron, draws up her sleeves, and bends over her pastry board to knead the egg-filled dough, rolling out with a lasagnuolo — a much elongated version of a rolling pin — the great golden strips which she will transform into a mouth-watering tagliatelle for Sunday dinner.
Custom now dictates a single meat dish to followthe minestra. It may be broiled, boiled, fried, roasted, or stewed, and it is always served with a number of vegetables; especially prized are artichokes and asparagus. But the meat does not always necessarily determine the vegetable. The contrary is often true. For instance, lentils require Modena zampone, and cabbage, Cremona cotechino, each a type of boiled salami wrapped in pigskin. Flavoring ingredients, too, vary from region to region. In Liguria there is basil, in the Abruzzi, peppers. Bologna, with its great tradition of learning and heavy cooking, favors mushrooms and white Italian truffles. But no matter where, or what, Italian cooking is rich and flavorful and, to be at its best, requires a wood or charcoal fire, iron broiling racks, and earthenware stewpots and ramekins. It is difficult to conceive of a salmi — a sauce reserved for the wildest of edible game, made with garlic, sage, red wine, olive oil, capers, and anchovies — simmering in an aluminum pan on the electric plate of a modern stove.
Wines vary with the cuisine—from the ruby Chianti of Tuscany to the dry white wines of the Adriatic coast and the dessert wines of Calabria and Sicily. The red wine from Val Policella is delicious with liver, Venetian style, while the delicate white Soave brings out the best in fish or fowl.
Italian breads range from the thin, crisp breadsticks of Piedmont, the grissini that Napoleon liked so much, to the huge, round, hard pagnotte of Lucania that will keep for a week. Bland or salted, crusty or crumbly, mixed with water or milk, glazed with butter or freshly pressed oil, in tiny rolls or communal loaves, bread is an absolute.
The number of different kinds of cheese is hard to guess. There is soft, creamy Stracchino, sharp Pecorino, smoky Provolone. There is gamey Gorgon- zola, and gentle Bel Paese; fragrant, granular Parmigiano, best known in grated form for soups and pasta; Mozzarella, made of buffalo milk, the pizza cheese, and hundreds of other varieties.
With such riches of taste and succulence to draw on, we Italians might easily all become gluttons, but actually, almost all of us are moderate in our daily eating habits. Ours is an active, busy life, in city or country, and we cannot afford to be torpid. And perhaps there is a spiritual factor behind this moderation: in Italy every hearth (arola) was first an altar (ara); and what is today called condire (to season or dress) was once consacrare (to anoint or bless). Mythology tells us that the peninsula was once called Enotria, the “land of wine.” But, though her wine is excellent, Italy is far more the homeland of the olive.
Indeed, the key to the excellence, wholesomeness and originality of Italian cooking is unquestionably the pure olive oil that is the base of almost everything that comes out of a kitchen. The hillsides of Tuscany and Umbria, of Calabria and Sicily are silvered with the ancient trees that produce the oil that once anointed the heads of kings, and that now anoints — to use the age-old expression—with a touch of lemon or vinegar and a pinch of salt, the lettuce for the evening salad that grows in almost every Italian garden.
Translated by E. L, and H. C.