Italian Recipes · Aug 30, 10:49 AM by James Martin
Clifford A. Wright, one of my favorite food writers, has penned one of those oh-so-true articles about our fascination with context-free recipes: A Recipe, Not a Formula in which he argues that the new cookbooks give us recipes without context.
A modern recipe is written like a schematic. Anyone can replicate the author’s dish if you do all the fussy measuring and timing. If you are the typical American, you will say, “oh, this simple recipe would be soooo much better if I added some sugar and some of those peppers growing in the back yard. Since the recipe is simply a formula, it’s easy to do that while loosing the whole history behind the dish. Unless you have context, which the classic cookbooks usually gave you. Once upon a slower time that is.
You see, folks have tried many things before they’ve settled upon a recipe. In places like Italy, people are brutally honest in their assessment of a dish you place before them. You will learn only to make small adjustments in these traditional dishes—or none at all. Unless you’re a glutton—for psychological punishment.
This insistence upon tradition makes perfect sense. You see, over many years, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, folks have diddled with the dish. They’ve come upon some universal conclusions and incorporated them into the basic structure of the dish. They’ve done the work so you don’t have to screw up the dish.
What I“m saying is that without this history, this context, you are likely to get off course fast.
Writers like Wright and Carlo Middione understand context. If you read Middione’s The Food of Southern Italy, you will understand the cultural context of the food. It’s a favorite of mine, although I think it’s out of print. Middione had a restaurant in San Francisco in which the walls were covered in interesting old photos of Italy. Context was everywhere. Middione also played the system like a pro. He said that the health department wouldn’t allow dishes to be served at room temperature, which is certain death to many Italian vegetable and antipasti dishes, but that if your restaurant was implacably clean, they might look the other way…
Wright is a particularly fine food anthropologist. I really enjoy his Real Stew: 300 Recipes for Authentic Home-Cooked Cassoulet, Gumbo, Chili, Curry, Minestrone, Bouillabaise, Stroganoff, Goulash, Chowder, and Much More
And consider the “bad” review of Real Stew:
All cultures have delicious culinary traditions — well, at least most of them do — but to insist that American cooks precisely duplicate the ingredients and cooking conditions necessary for ethnic verisimilitude smacks of snobbery at best and condescension at worst. A little more emphasis on user-friendly and, dare it be said, familiar recipes would have made this book considerably more useful.
I’m a little tired of books that simply give the 5 minute simplified microwave version of a Tunisian stew. Besides, nowhere does the book state that Clifford is gonna come at you with a sharply-honed chef’s knife if you deviate from a traditional, well-researched recipe. But you should know from where your recipe came and how the people who make it every day do it, doncha think? Does honesty count these days? I was stunned at the earthy tastiness of real traditional cooking of Sardinia when I finally visited the island, but only after reading a Gourmet article that was crammed with culinary lies gleaned from chefs who cooked for clueless yacht owners and written while the author lounged on a deck chair on a Costa Smerelda beach. Yuck.
If you want something simplified to oblivion, simply sit on your butt and watch the Food Channel, where everything worth cooking can be done in ten minutes or less and won’t make your kitchen smell of long and lovingly-cooked food. Who’d want that?
Italy Travel Toolbox
- All About Italy Rail Passes
- How to Ride Italian Trains (video)
- Italy Maps
- Italy Cities Climate and Weather
- Italy Autostrada Map
- Cinque Terre Hiking Map
Traditional Cooking, Traditional Work · Aug 15, 03:56 PM by James Martin
Ferragosto, the stop-work day in the middle of August when Italians get in their cars and go somewhere—if they’re lucky enough to get a decent slice of autostrada to fit a tiny Italian car in—seems a fine time to talk about some interesting things that have hit my radar lately.
First, the divine Divina Cucina is heading to one of my favorite food places on the planet, Sicily, to explain to you all about the old-world charm in the markets and cooking pots of the local population. The tour comes at a reasonable cost, and explores places lots of people wouldn’t get to on their own. See: Divina Cucina: Secrets of My Sicilian Kitchen.
If you’d like to see Judy, AKA Divina Cucina at her cook book signing at the Antica Macelleria Cecchini, see the video.
Then Gloria of “At Home in Tuscany” writes of an interesting development in Tuscany: the creation of a guild sorta thing for folks who practice the old trades. Pretty much all of the people of my village would have to be included, I’m thinkin’. (I looked into replacing my front door recently, and came up with a price of 3000 Euros. It’s not a door to a palace, it’s just a standard front door. Sheesh.) Artisans aren’t cheap, so they deserve a guild, or at least a “registry” as they call it. See: Antichi Mestieri: Old Trades in Tuscany
The reason I say that many folks in my village would probably qualify for the registry are the plethora monuments to antiquity still in use within the city limits, like the one in the picture on the right (click to see it larger). It’s the water power controls for an old mill, used to this day to grind corn for polenta. Let the water flow and wham! the wheels start turning and you turn your dried corn into polenta for putting wild bore sauce on.
Even by itself, the rustic engineering here is a pretty thing, isn’t it?
An Italian Odyssey: Culture and Cuisine along the Via Francigena · Aug 12, 04:39 PM by James Martin
As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I spend nearly half a year in a small village just off the Via Francigena in the Lunigiana region of Tuscany. The Via Francigena (map of the Via Francigena in Italy) is a pilgrimage trail like the way-better-known Camino de Santiago de Compostela. But there’s a difference, the Camino de Santiago is the wide and distinct superhighway of pilgrimage trails. Thousands walk it, sleeping (and partying) in the hostels along the road. By contrast, the Via Francigena is the squiggly line on the map, indistinct in some places, a road you don’t expect to have signs. Or hostels.
As for me—the contrarian—give me a squiggly line on a map any day.
In any case, the reason for all this preamble is that I am anxiously awaiting my review copy of the book An Italian Odyssey: One Couple’s Culinary and Cultural Pilgrimage. My mouth waters, my brain tells me I should have gotten off my duff and walked the darn thing and wrote a book on the food along the way first, before Julie Burk and Neville Tencer had a chance to write their version.
But that’s water under the bridge. There are fascinating cities along the way, all gaining in importance, especially in the 12th and thirteenth centuries, because of the commerce and the safety of crowds that pilgrimage afforded. I can’t wait to hear the stories and read of the amazing regional cuisine I’m sure Julie and Neville found along the way.
You can follow them, by the way, on the blog called Little Green Tracs.
And just in case you can’t wait for my review, the book is published by little Verdera Media, and is available from Amazon: An Italian Odyssey: One Couple’s Culinary and Cultural Pilgrimage
And remember: there is no better way to discover a place than by walking it.
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Cinta Senese Pigs in Chianti · Jul 19, 08:33 AM by James Martin
Chianti isn’t just for wine, you know. Every great wine region spawns a fine cuisine based on local ingredients. Wine and food just go together. That’s why you can find good food in Tuscany and Umbria, while decent food is rare where I “caught sense”—in central Illinois.
So, if you end up in Chianti and want to do more than just taste wine made from Sangiovese grapes, then you must go to the Azienda Agricola Casamonti outside of Castellini in Chianti, where Raymond Lamothe lets pigs called the “Cinta Senese” forage in the forest area around the family farm. Cinta Senese, named for the white “belt” around their midsections, were once almost extinct until visionaries like Ray gave them a place to call home.
Cinta Senese are heritage pigs given DOP status (Suino Cinto Toscano DOP), which means everything they eat is controlled. So, despite US insistence that GMO foods be unlabeled so that you can be force fed the stuff, the Cinta Senese on Ray’s farm are free of Frankenfood. In fact, Ray can’t use soy products in his feed mix because the genetically modified version of soy can’t be identified. So, if you want real pork that finishes by foraging in the forest like they always have, you can visit Ray’s farm, taste the products (and the excellent wines and olive oil Ray produces) and purchase what your tongue can’t get enough of.
How can you distinguish “regular” prosciutto from that made from Cinta Senese? The answer is up there on the left. Cinta Senese hams are distinguished by their black feet, left on the ham as you see it in the photo. The picture of the curing hams was taken at the high-tech facilities at Casamonti.
Heritage pigs deserve the best butchering, of course. You don’t want a bad prosciutto. It’s expensive stuff. There aren’t a lot of butchers who’ve worked with these animals recently; they’ve spent a long time on the decline. Ray’s head butcher, Alvaro, shown on the right, is a mere 75 years young. He’s doing something that you don’t see every day in your butcher shop (if you’re lucky enough to have one), he’s hacking carefully into a difficult-to-remove joint which can develop mold during the curing process and ruin the flavor. You can click the pic to see Alvaro larger.
Alvaro’s apprentice is Silvano. He’s 63.
Ray has a blog where you can find out all about his Cinta Senese pigs: Cinta Senese – The Tuscan Pig
A visit is highly recommended. You can send Ray an email to set one up. You might sit down in a shaded courtyard and taste wine, Cinta Senese salume, and maybe a bit of Ray’s fine olive oil. Amazing what a small farm in Tuscany can output.
Ray has a shop on the main drag in Castellina in Chianti if the shaded courtyard tasting experience doesn’t appeal to you.
Pistoia's Castle · Jul 10, 02:01 PM by James Martin
I like Pistoia quite a lot. It’s easy to access by car or train, it has a great daily market and the Piazza del Duomo is one of the most compelling in Italy. But there’s more.
You will, if you go, ignore Pistoia’s castle. They will not tell you much about it because it’s unlikely you will be able to go in. It’s a mess, really, with some oddly modern construction floating atop its bleak ramparts. But I like the outsides of it so you’re going to have to look at it. Here:
The fortress was constructed for Cosimo I de Medici, the grand-duke of Tuscany, who was a great believer in the joys of public works, mostly military. Nanni Unghero built the thing in 1539. It was decommissioned in 1774 and later used as a barracks, prison and as a “recruitment center.” For what, I will allow you to wonder.
The Allure of Flying · Jun 29, 03:49 PM by James Martin
I’ve just flown from Frankfurt to San Francisco. (Yes, my arms are very, very tired.)
Something got me to wondering though. Hear me out on this. The seats in steerage suck, airplane food sucks and can be deadly, the kid in front of you doesn’t suck, he screams and drools, usually over the back of his seat and, by golly, that drool stream is guaranteed to head toward you and your expensive seersucker a good 99% of the time. And you’re going to be on that plane an interminable 11 hours.
So why in heaven’s name do people at airports pop up like weasels when boarding is announced and immediately rush to join the crush to be one of the first 200 to get wedged into that uncomfortable, reserved seat? Is there a prize for this I missed hearing about? Sure, there are a few people dragging carry-on bags they can’t lift an inch off the ground no matter how hard they try who just have to get on the plane first so that everyone can stand behind them while they try fruitlessly to clean and jerk 200 pounds of crap into the overhead bin. I understand that. People are idiots. I learned that in kindergarten.
So I figure if you want to have people rush to do something completely idiotic, charge them a grand or so (that’s $1000 for you foreigners) then stand back and watch the fun.
Say you wanted to do a video of 500 people jumping into a cesspool full of hungry alligators. You put out signs on the highway saying, “have lots of fun jumping into our rancid and malodorous lake full of deadly lizards!”
How much you bet you won’t get any takers?
Ok, now, you tell people to bring some luggage too big for them to carry, you put overhead bins above your cesspool, you charge people a grand or two while telling them they’re getting a HUGE discount over other cesspools with lesser lizards and WHAM!
Sit back, pop a Heinie, sip, and watch ‘em all jump in the muck with their duffels held fruitlessly aloft. That’d be fun, eh?
Oh, and bring a lawn chair. The process takes a while.
Lunigiana Panorama · Jun 25, 01:40 AM by James Martin
Francesca and Armando wanted to take us on a little walk to a chapel yesterday. At four o’clock. Italy, you may recall, was booting balls fruitlessly at that hour.
Odd, when the world cup started, Armando watched it voraciously. When we got in the car, Francesca climbed in with us so we wouldn’t get lost. I asked her why they weren’t watching the game. She doesn’t like calcio. But Armando?
“He doesn’t like it when the team is playing like bozos, so he won’t watch,” she said in Italian, but actually used the word “bozo.” I had to look it up to see if it was an Italian word. Maybe it’s universal. The concept is.
(Italy, of course, played like bozos that evening and are out of the World cup, unlike the powerhouse US team.)
Anyway, we drove a long way on roads that weren’t much wider than the average bathtub. Then we stopped. There was a “road” off to our right, which looked like an avalanche of white rock and river cobbles. Of course, we had to drive up it. Just to see, mind you, if it were “doable.”
And of course we’d use our car.
We lurched and bottomed and spun the tires for 100 yards up the pile of stones before the car started smelling like a burning oil slick full of sea turtles. Then we parked.
It was a bit of a walk, a bit of a climb. Along the way were wild flowers I’d never seen before—not to mention wild thyme in profusion. We foraged. This is Italy after all, and the wild is always better, unless, I suppose, you’re a soccer player.
Anyway, we reached the little chapel. It was locked, because otherwise the sheep get in and trash the place—which they had done anyway, it seemed.
But—off to the right there were these stunning views, unobstructed by the usual trees which they plant to keep you focused on driving between the ruts. I whipped out my video camera. Who wouldn’t?
So below is the video. I hope it will give you an idea of what we saw and how we got there to see it.
The main city you see in the video is Fivizzano, with the craggy Alpi Apuane behind—the mountains of Massa and Carrara where the marble comes from.
On the way back home, we had to inch past a tiny tractor with a hay wagon behind which held the requisite hay plus a sturdy mountain woman. Armando got his car by, then we started inching forward, left wheels in the weeds.
The woman glanced at us and suddenly leaned forward, screaming “Stranieri!” to her hubby at the wheel. Our French license plates had given us away as foreigners. The tractor lurched to the right to remove itself from our path.
We foreigners inspire respect here in the Lunigiana. Or maybe it’s fear. We evidently don’t drive right at all.
Villa di Livia in Rome · Jun 24, 06:14 AM by James Martin
We had a great tour of Villa di Livia in the north of Rome the other day. A good guide who is passionate about the subject sure makes a difference, as does speaking enough Italian to understand one.
The villa was built along the Via Flamina, traces of which are visible today north of Rome in the Prima Porta area. Livia Drusilla, wife of the emperor Augustus, owned it with her family. It was a country residence from the Imperial age set on a promontory with a view down the tiber valley toward historic Rome. Downtown, we’d say.
A villa in ruins is a treacherous landscape for the brain. You can look at the nice mosaics, wonder at the size and location, and see all the wonderful holes in the ground, made perfect, at times, with the edge of a mason’s pointing trowel wielded by an archaeologist. But then nothing.
Over to the right we’re looking into the construction of a simple, yet revolutionary, wall, designed with triangular tiles and filled with rubble—a wall design that proved to be far sturdier than wall designs that preceded it.
Livia’s villa, of course, had baths with all the trimmings. The “help” worked tirelessly to keep the fires burning under the floor you see to the left.
But did you ever think about the ecological disaster that came with the popularity of Roman baths? Enormous amounts of wood were consumed. Then there was the arthritis folks suffered from their plunges into hot, then cold, then hot again. Yeah, it might wake you up, but…
Archaeology is slowly waking up to the fact that people really want to see how their social class lived. Enough with the treasure hunts.
The rich and powerful at Villa di Livia were served from below the mosaic floors. Folks scurried through tunnels to take care of everything while remaining pretty much unseen. The stoked the bath fires, cooked, and kept the place going from underground, like many other Roman villas. We can get a good glimpse of these tight spaces because of Valiant Americans fighting WWII.
Yes, one of their bombs did a pretty darn good job of opening up the excavations.
And what are those grooves in that nice mosaic floor over there? It’s the plow line. The villa was covered for a long while, and farmers had little idea of what lay below.
More later.