Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (19 page)

There is one dish in the whole world that is eaten only in Piedmont. It is the Piedmontese dish par excellence:
bagna cauda
or
bagna caòda
(hot dip), a hot, fragrant mixture of oil and garlic, in which anchovies are blended along with melted butter.
Rules of preparation are complex. I cite the 1989 edition of the
Grande bagna caòda annuale degli Acciugai e dei Buongustai del Piemonte
(Great bagna caòda annual of Anchovy Vendors and Epicures of Piedmont):

 

1. The anchovies must be fine red anchovies from Spain, cured at least a year, fresh and fragrant, that is, just salted, cleaned, washed in water and wine, well dried, and boned; at least 2 or 3 anchovies per person (5 or 6 equal 100 grams).
   
2. The garlic may be reduced but never eliminated, since it is the “soul” of the
   bagna caòda
   ! While “purists” prescribe a “head” of garlic, about 10–15 cloves, 2 or 3 cloves per person are sufficient, not boiled in water or milk, but simply removed from the bulb, sliced thinly, and left an hour or two, if desired, in a tureen of cold water, or better yet in running water.
   
3. The oil must be olive oil of good quality, preferably extra-virgin, though even normal oil is fine, excluding however all the seed oils; not less than half a (wine) glass per person is needed.
   
4. The vegetables, well cleaned and quartered, must be all those typical of Piedmont's gardens, with the exclusion of several that are unsuitable because they are too aromatic (for example: celery, fennel, radishes): “hunchback” cardoons from Nice, or, lacking those,
   spadoni
   (broadsword) cardoons from Chieri, raw peppers, roasted and peeled peppers, pickled peppers, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, green, white and red cabbage, white hearts of escarole and endive, fresh leeks, chives, etc.
   
5. The cooking time must be brief and kept always at low heat; this is the decisive point for a good, healthy, and digestible
   bagna caòda
   . . .
   

 

It is a complete one-dish meal, consumed with lots of bread. Therefore, the wise Piedmontese limit themselves to serving tasty raw
cacciatorini
(salami) of pure good pork before the
bagna caòda
, just to prepare the taste buds for the first glass of young Barbera.

To make a truly grandiose
bagna caòda
meal, smoked herring canapés, little cubes of hot fried cod, and warm wedges of leek and spinach frittatas can be added to the sliced salami (in short, appetizers to have while standing up with an aperitif).

And after the
bagna caòda
?

Not the Piedmontese
grande bollito misto
, which, even if scaled down, would still be overdoing it. Instead, a large cup of hot concentrated beef consommé always goes well (see “Le ricette di Giovanni Goria,” the recipes of Giovanni Goria, at
www.saporidelpiemonte.it
).

Bagna cauda
is a “poor man's” dish that stands in sharp contrast to the Piedmontese extravagance represented by the truffles, the beef fillet, the fine chocolate, and so on. In the overwhelming majority of cases, in fact, Piedmont's food is expensive. Pasta is unknown in this region: pasta was used in areas where it was necessary to alleviate hunger by being frugal with ingredients and money. Piedmont is a land of plenty.

One might wonder why anchovies appear in Piedmontese cuisine. Strange as it may seem, salted anchovies were a sign of prosperity in the Middle Ages. Salt meant wealth. Anchovies are a most convenient way of combining savoriness with proteins and vitamins. And they were therefore used to season food as far back as the time of ancient Rome.

So it is not by chance that salted anchovies occupy a place of honor in the emblematic dishes of Piedmontese cuisine. Anchovies (
acciughe
or
alici
) abound in the fish-poor Ligurian waters that bathe that part of the coast along which Europe's most ancient salt route passed, from Liguria through Piedmont toward northern Europe. The convoys that transported salt (openly or contraband) salted the anchovies on the spot and carried them to far-off northern Europe and along the way to Aosta and to Turin and the other main cities of Piedmont.

The Ligurian anchovy met with great success in Turin, competing with salted sardines from Spain. Although the Spanish sardines cost less than the Italian anchovies, the Ligurian
alici
, slightly salted and immersed in delicate Ligurian olive oil, far surpassed any competitor in tenderness and richness of taste. Ligurian olive oil is considered the best for preserving fish. Tuscan oil, distinguished by its aroma and taste, is categorically contraindicated for anchovies.

The classic
bagna cauda
, as is evident from its name (a variation of
calda
, hot), should be heated, but never allowed to come to a boil. It is then placed in the center of the table, in a pan set over an alcohol burner, the same type used to serve fondue. Naturally, the hot dish is not suited to summertime meals: it is a treat to enjoy in autumn and winter. All the vegetables that accompany it are winter produce: cabbages, carrots, and, above all, Jerusalem artichokes. In spite of the name, these “artichokes” are not from Jerusalem and are not really artichokes: the name is a distortion of the Italian
girasole
, or sunflower, the family to which they technically belong.

In Piedmont, as in other regions situated between 44 and 48 degrees latitude (Lombardy and the Veneto), rice-based dishes are at the forefront of the cuisine. It was Camillo Benso, the untiring benefactor of Italy, who in his day brought the abundant waters of the Alps to the arid Piedmontese plains. In 1866 the count made plans for a regional irrigation system. A wide canal more than eighty kilometers long, with
branches and tributaries, allowed the Alpine water to flow down into Vercelli, Novara, and Lomellina and irrigate the rice paddies. The canal still exists, functions as it should, and appropriately bears the name of Canal Cavour.

Thus
risotto alla piemontese
was born, with hard cheese and nutmeg, in meat broth. It is prepared with Barolo and mushrooms. Risotto is also a typical dish of the province of Vercelli. (Vercelli is the chief town of an agricultural zone where rice is practically a single-crop production. The Rice Exchange and the Rice Research Institute are found in Vercelli, and the most modern technology is invented and perfected there, to replace human labor in the rice paddies with that of well-designed machines.) But the classic risotto in Vercelli is made with frogs, which are as numerous in the rice paddies as mosquitoes. And so, the
sagra
of the frogs has been celebrated in Vercelli during the first week of September each year since the Middle Ages.

Typical dishes of Vercelli's
sagra
are risotto, broth, and frittata with frogs. Frogs were the fundamental ingredient of a caloric and supremely beneficial broth, which local physicians thought was equal in curative powers to the mythical chicken soup of the Jews of central Europe. And the physicians of Vercelli had great need of healthful remedies, since the Via Francigena passed right through Vercelli, and pilgrims on their way from the north to Rome (see “Pilgrims”) generally stopped in this city to recover their strength and treat the ailments they had contracted along the way. Vercelli was left with more than a few unique buildings and institutions from that period, such as the Ospedale degli Scoti (Hospital of the Scots). A vast assortment of travel food was developed in Vercelli, intended for wayfarers: for example, the
salam d'la duja
, a large salami, not smoked, placed in a terra-cotta jar (
duja
) under a layer of lard.

The lard was produced by rendering salt pork. Nevertheless, even salt pork in its pure form cured in Vercelli and in Tuscany (in cities found along the pilgrim routes) became so renowned over time that it began to be viewed not as a poor man's food, but as a super-prestigious and beneficial product. In the twentieth century some types of salt pork occupied a place in the Olympian circle of elite dishes. This is particularly true of the Tuscan
lardo
of Colonnata, cured in marble basins, which we will describe in more detail in the chapter on Tuscany.

Polenta, a peasant food par excellence, is widely found throughout the north of Italy—and consequently in Piedmont. Polenta is celebrated at a special
sagra
in Ponti (in the province of Alessandria) each year on the last Sunday in April. Legend has it that as early as the fifteenth century the aristocratic Del Carretto family, whose members lived in the village, was in the habit of offering the community an enormous polenta seasoned with dried cod. To show their gratitude, the citizens decided to cast
a tin cauldron of unimaginable dimensions for the count's oversized polenta in 1650. Since that time, polenta for the entire town is cooked in that cauldron during the annual
sagra
; a local denizen dressed as the count comes down on horseback from the hilltop castle, to give the signal that marks the start of the banquet.

The creation of both rustic, heavy dishes (e.g., the
finanziera
), as well as lighter, refined fare intended for the aristocracy, is part of the Piedmont experience.
Grissini torinesi
, Turinese breadsticks, were made for the first time for the delicate stomachs of the dukes. The word
grissino
derives from an old type of Piedmontese bread, the
gherse
, with a diminutive suffix: in short, a small bread. Legend also has it that in 1668 the Turinese baker Antonio Brunero produced the first
grissini
for the table of Vittorio Amedeo II, future Duke of Savoy, who suffered from digestive problems, and had been advised to eat bread crusts, discarding the soft, inner part. Later on, Turinese
grissini
were a favorite of Napoleon, who had them sent to the imperial table from Turin. This typical product of Turin is a cult object in Italy for all who want to lose weight.

The famous Piedmontese zabaglione, on the other hand, is accompanied by marrons glacés, sweets guaranteed to bestow appealing fullness of form (even if nowadays one very rarely encounters individuals with such desires). Chestnuts and marrons are a typical Piedmont product. The former, which are smaller, are the fruit of the wild chestnut tree, and every husk contains three of them. Marrons, on the other hand, come from prized cultivated varieties derived from graftings, and every husk contains a single fruit, generally larger and sweeter than that of the chestnut.

The protocols of Renaissance court cuisine still seem to be operative in Piedmont. Even chocolate (unknown, of course, in the Renaissance) is presented here in a very elaborate form: “cooked,” or culturally transformed, according to Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. It was actually here—not in Switzerland, as is mistakenly thought—that a certain master Suchard, founder of the well-known industry, created the first sweet chocolate bars in European history. Turin's famous
gianduia
, or hazel-nut chocolate, was also invented here. This product took its name from a typically Turinese figure, one of the principal stock characters of the commedia dell'arte, Gioan
d'la douja
, that is, “Giovanni of the Jug,” a character known for being a heavy drinker. A Piedmontese pastry chef invented this particular Turinese chocolate specialty with milk and hazelnuts at the time of the French occupation, in 1807, when it was not possible for Piedmont to order cocoa powder because of the embargo and they had to make do with existing provisions. They began to manufacture chocolate that was half cocoa and half hazelnuts.

At the opening ceremony of the 2006 winter Olympic Games in Turin, the individually
wrapped
gianduiotti
were a real leitmotif, sampled charmingly by fantastic giantesses of past times in crinolines and wigs. In the lavish Olympic show, these chocolates were presented as a symbol not only of Savoyard Piedmont, but of all of Italy, the host country, just like Botticelli's Venus.

Piedmontese pastry chefs also created another notable typical product made of cocoa:
bunet
, a rich chocolate mousse with rum and amaretti.

In the period of the “Italian miracle,” in 1964, concurrent to the Beatles' rising star, the world was enlightened by the splendor of a new product, which the Italians dared hold up to American peanut butter. Giovanni and Pietro Ferrero, owners of the chocolate factory of the same name, introduced a new variation of
gianduia
cream to the Italian and later the world market: a spread developed purposely for school lunches and snacks. For the name of the spread, the Piedmontese added the sweet Italian suffix-
ella
to the American root “nut.” Sweet sound, sweet taste. The delicious spread was light, heartening, and absolutely Italian, that is, versatile and unbeatable. Nutella kept American peanut butter off the plates of Italian teenagers and children. Nutella, loved by children (naturally) and adults, was also prized by nonconformists and leftists. As Italy's answer to America, it is winning, uplifting, and youthful, a sign of democracy and leftist ideals. “Nutella is left-wing, Swiss chocolate is right-wing,” sang the popular singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber. At the end of the twentieth century it won over the most avant-garde computer geniuses and cyber-anarchists, who invented the best decentralized system for file exchanges, impossible to control; they christened it “Gnutella” (
www.gnutella.com
) in honor of their favorite chocolate hazelnut spread.

Over the years, Nutella has been packaged in hundreds of different containers, among them jars, pots, jugs, and glasses. This has fueled a passion for collecting among food fetishists. In Italy, eight hundred grams per capita per year are consumed, and in Luxembourg, for some reason, a kilo per person. Ten thousand Web surfers united by a common passion—nutellomania—have gathered together on the site
www.mynutella.it
. Musical, film, theater, and literary works have been dedicated to Nutella, and a comic opera even exists:
Nutellam Cantata
(2001), by the composer Antonello Lerda.