Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (15 page)

And what are their current crusades? Numerous rescue operations. To save Lodi's Granone cheese, which Casanova and Dumas Père went into raptures over; San Benedetto salami, cooked under ashes; the cardoon of Nizza Monferrato known as
cardo gobbo
(hunchback cardoon), without which it is impossible to make the famous Piedmontese
bagna cauda
; Sauris prosciutto, smoked for a month with beech wood; mullet
bottarga
(roe) from Cabras, dried in the briny wind of Sardinia; the violin goat prosciutto of the Valchiavenna. The black celery of Umbria needs saving, along with the violet asparagus of Albenga, the
zolfino
bean from the Val d'Arno, the copper-colored onion of
Montoro, the red garlic of Nubia, salted ricotta from Norcia,
mortadelline
(little salamis) of Campotosto known as “mule's testicles,” the
biricoccolo
(a cross between a plum and an apricot) of Romagna, and the lentils of Ustica.

The movement is also concerned with rescuing Fatulì, a Lombard cheese made only from the milk of the “Blonde Goat” of Adamello. No more than five hundred kilograms per year are produced. The man once famous for this cheese, Bernardo Bonomelli, died in 2005, leaving two of his apprentices to safeguard his gastronomic patrimony from extinction.

Slow Food's work is widely publicized by the mass media. Its widespread appeal is largely due to its efforts to reawaken moral consciousness in people and foster social reconciliation. In a world that has seen the collapse of the ideologies of right and left, such culinary democracy is a continuation of politics by other means. It involves standing up to the industrial lobbies and multinational corporations. A visionary of its politics was Luigi Veronelli, one of the creators of the Italian “gastronomic code,” an eccentric and dogged supporter of the ideals of good food. Veronelli died in November 2004, but a few weeks before his death, on his seventy-eighth birthday, he led one of his usual protest actions: a sit-in in the Pugliese port of Monopoli to protest against the importing of poor-quality olive oil (see “Olive Oil”). A philosopher by education, and publisher of newspapers and journals dedicated to material culture in Italy, Veronelli described himself as an “anarchoenologue.”

He was prepared to resort to any means necessary to defend the Italian culinary tradition (and not only that). In the fifties Veronelli spent six months in prison for inciting a revolt: he had urged the winemakers of Piedmont to protest against the excessive power of the monopolies and the lowering of standards in the wine industry. Later on he was imprisoned for another three months for publishing the books of the Marquis de Sade.

Veronelli was also the author of a few bizarre and scandalous works, such as
Vietato vietare
(It is forbidden to forbid), 2007;
Tredici ricette per vari disgusti
(Thirteen recipes for various aversions), 1991;
Le parole della terra. Manuale per enodissidenti e gastroribelli
(Words of the earth: A handbook for eno-dissidents and gastro-rebels), 2003, written with Pablo Echaurren; and
Alla ricerca dei cibi perduti: guida di gusto e di lettere all'arte del saper mangiare
(In search of lost foods: a guide to taste and literature on the art of knowing how to eat well), 2004. In addition he edited books that are very important for our topic, such as
La grande cucina
(Great Italian cooking), 1960, and
Mangiare e bere all' italiana
(Eating and drinking Italian-style), 1967, by Luigi Carnacina, and authored a series of guides to restaurants, wines, hotels, and olive oils. Within the Slow Food movement
Veronelli worked on legislative initiatives that would have given mayors the power to certify the typical products of their territory, attesting to their authenticity. His appeals to a tempest in a glass of wine—to a sumptuous revolution that promoted the spirit of general peacemaking via food (see “
The
Sagra
”)—recalled somewhat the revolutionary plans of the Florentine Corrado Tedeschi. In 1953, Tedeschi founded the Partito Nazionale della Bistecca Fiorentina (National Florentine Steak Party), whose only principle was “the struggle for a social plan by which every citizen would be guaranteed a 450-gram steak per day.” (We'll talk about this in greater detail in the section dedicated to Tuscan cuisine.)

Referring to this region, one of the representatives of the reigning Savoy dynasty at the time (the sixteenth century), Emanuele Filiberto, known as Testa di Ferro (Iron Head), said: “The Valle d'Aosta does not depend on us, like the others. It has separate laws and customs.”
¹
And yet Aosta was the only feudal territory of the Savoys and had been their personal possession since the dawn of time. The other regions of Italy had submitted to the Savoys of their own accord, though without oaths of vassalage.

The degree to which Italy is still far from uniform can be seen in its peripheral regions. In Valle d'Aosta the language and cuisine are not at all Italian. Aosta is spoken of mainly in books about French history: it is as Frenchified as the Trentino and the Alto Adige (South Tyrol) are Germanized.

This small (population: one million) but indomitable mountain region was inhabited in ancient times by a bellicose people, the Salassi, who opposed the Romans with fierce resistance. In the second half of the second century
B.C
., they defeated the army of the consul Appius Claudius Pulcher, and only in 25
B.C
. did Aulus Terentius Varro Murena manage to defeat them by means of a ruse, taking 36,000 prisoners—including women, children, and the elderly—and later selling them as slaves.

The vindictive Romans called the devastated region Augusta Praetoria, from
which the present-day name Aosta derives. In 25
B.C
. the region's capital, Augusta (Aosta), was constructed, with arches and aqueducts. Somewhat Spartan customs have prevailed in the city since antiquity. The chief annual fair, for example, that of Sant'-Orso, takes place during the
giorni della merla
(blackbird days), January 30 and 31, the coldest days of the year. At a time when the inhabitants of all the other Italian regions would rather not set foot outdoors, Aosta's streets are transformed into an open-air market for those who have enough backbone to tolerate the atrocious cold.

By Margherita Bourtsev

In this area, strong-willed, taciturn temperaments were formed. The famous missionary St. Bernard of Mentone (early 1000s–1081) is originally from here, not to be
confused with St. Bernard of Clairveaux (1091–1153), ideologist of the Crusades. Also originally from here is St. Anselm of Canterbury (b. Aosta, 1033; d. Canterbury, 1109), missionary and founder of the famous abbey in far-off England. Besides Anselm, many other Valdostani ventured to England, far from their native land. In fact, the Via Francigena, which crossed the Alps at the St. Bernard pass and then continued on through Europe to England, passed through Aosta. This is the pilgrim route that serves as background to Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
(see “
Pilgrims
”), and which Erasmus of Rotterdam also traveled in 1509, pondering his missive to Thomas More:

 

As I was coming a while since out of Italy for England, that I might not waste all that time I was to sit on Horsback in foolish and illiterate Fables, I chose rather one while to revolve with my self something of our common Studies, and other while to enjoy the remembrance of my Friends, of whom I left here some no lesse learned than pleasant. Amongst these you, my More, came first in my mind, whose memory, though absent your self, gives me such delight in my absence, as when present with you I ever found in your company; than which, let me perish if in all my life I ever met with any thing more delectable. And therefore, being satisfy'd that something was to be done, and that that time was no wise proper for any serious matter, I resolv'd to make some sport with The Praise of Folly.
²

 

The folklore of Aosta is full of dark tales about demons, which the local heroes, in truth, always get the better of. The most popular of these hero-interceders is St. Martin, who was able to hoodwink the devil by palming off on him a mill made of ice: though it functioned in winter, it melted in summer.

This small corner of paradise, with its few remaining inhabitants, was conquered in the early Middle Ages by the Burgundians and in the eleventh century by the Counts of Savoy, who managed to maintain good relations with the population thanks to a statute, the Charte des Franchises, which granted numerous privileges to the local communities. The charter was issued in the twelfth century by the
amico dei comuni
(friend of the communes) Count Tommaso I of Savoy, and subsequently expanded by Tommaso II and Amedeo V. For this reason, no one disturbed the Waldensian communities that since the thirteenth century have been established in the mountain gorges, where they survive today. Nevertheless, the Valle d'Aosta rebelled repeatedly: it convened the States-General several times, and in the end, during
the drafting of the actual Italian constitution in 1948, it demanded for itself the legal status of autonomous region.

The cuisine here is not as varied as in other parts of Italy. The reason for the monotony lies in the lack of level terrain. Mountains, and still more mountains. This verticality is commercially exploited by the inhabitants, who have transformed it into a paradise for tourists. From castle to castle, ski lift to ski lift, the Valle d'Aosta is ever active: those who come in winter go downhill on skis; those who come in summer go climbing with their backpacks.

The valleys of the region are traversed by important commercial routes leading to France and northern Europe. Local customs differ according to distance from the border (at each kilometer the road changes its colors and aromas). But it is different altitudes that determine the greatest variety of customs and landscapes.

At an altitude of 1,700 meters above sea level, the most famous Alpine botanical garden in the world, Paradisia, can be visited in the heart of Gran Paradiso National Park, with headquarters in Valnontey, a small district of Cogne. And it is in the area of the Valle d'Aosta with the greatest altitude, the so-called roof of Europe, that the highest peaks of the Alps are found: Gran Paradiso, Monte Rosa, Cervino, and Monte Bianco (Mont Blanc). These summits can be reached after leaving behind valleys entirely cultivated with fruit trees (the meltwaters of the glaciers are sufficient even in the hottest summers). Higher up, along slopes exposed to the sun, grapevines take root. Then, according to the typical stratification zones of Alpine vegetation, there are chestnut woods scattered with beehives. Here the best chestnut honey in Europe is produced. Above the chestnuts, conifers grow, and above the level of the conifers stretch alpine meadows where milch cows graze.