Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (14 page)

Founded in 1989, the Slow Food Association, as is evident from its name, is committed to counteracting the rise of fast food in daily life. As the rhythm of life accelerates in every way, many people no longer pay attention to the little things in life—the nuances of taste, color, and shape. Flavor constitutes a rich national heritage, and unique flavor should be preserved and protected, duly classified on the scroll of history. The message of Slow Food is simple and straightforward: we possess an invaluable food heritage that is worthy of preservation from a cultural standpoint. Let museums preserve these rarities, and people will propagate them and begin to use them. Otherwise human haste produces absurd results: we work uninterruptedly, and we become poorer. Let us therefore save those precious things that, once lost, can never be re-created.

The keyword of the Slow Food movement is “biodiversity.” It is clear even to a child that if a genetic combination disappears from the globe, it will be impossible to restore.

The association has built structures where people gladly gather to get to know one another and spend their free time (or work time) rescuing genes on their way to extinction. And it is not just a matter of saving genes, but also books, words, and technologies. It is a noble, prestigious, and joyous occupation, and it all takes place against a backdrop of exquisite food, amid wonderful aromas given off by casseroles.

One of the first alarm signals was sounded by Slow Food in the nineties, when people became aware that the Burlina breed of cow was close to extinction. The cheese Morlacco
del Grappa, a typical product of the Veneto, is produced from the Burlina's milk. Breeders, oriented toward larger-scale production, had practically ceased breeding these cows, so that only a few specimens still existed in the provinces of Treviso, Vicenza, and Verona. Since the early nineties, the Slow Food Association has been committed to the effort of saving the Burlina. Half the movement's members took to wearing very noticeable T-shirts adorned with a picture of the cow. Now the Burlinas are protected like pandas, and their number is beginning to grow.

By Andrei Bourtsev

Slow Food achieved remarkable results in safeguarding some breeds of pig as well. In 2000, only several hundred specimens of the famous Tuscan pigs, black as Satan, remained in the world. This breed is known as Cinta Senese (Belted Sienese) because the body of the pig is encircled by a rosy-white band. Like the Mora Romagnola and the
Nero Siciliano, black pigs from Romagna and Sicily, respectively, the Cinta Senese had been practically supplanted by the Yorkshire, prized for its quick growth, and by the rosy, prolific Large White. Yet the Belted Sienese, muscular and independent, as it is described in an encyclopedia, “with a strong maternal attitude,” had been grazing in the oak groves of Tuscany as early as the thirteenth century. A black pig with a white belt makes a fine showing in an early Renaissance fresco, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's
Il buon governo
(Good government) in the Palazzo Pubblica of Siena (1338). It is totally unique. The breed is immune from many contemporary diseases. And yet it is nearly extinct! Why? Simply put, it seemed to some people that breeding this strain was not so expedient. Ten years ago there were twenty thousand head, and today only four hundred remain. Will humanity allow this creature to disappear from the planet? Slow Food initiatives protect the Belted Sienese as well as the Black Romagna and the Black Sicilian.

The breeding of the Black Romagna, practiced in the provinces of Ravenna and Forli, was already considered unprofitable in 1949, when approximately 22,000 head remained. By the beginning of the nineties, only eighteen of these pigs had survived. Slow Food activists set to work, but their actions were not sufficient, and the Italian section of the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Turin intervened. Directing the effort was the devotee and agronomist M. A. Lazzari, who was able to save the last eighteen pigs of Romagna. Today these swine are bred on forty-six farms, not only in Romagna, but also in Piedmont and the Marches, and it actually seems that in this particular case man will be able to lend nature a hand.

Slow Food also protects an agreeable crustacean, the Crapolla shrimp, found along the Sorrento coast. This shrimp is marked by its long, narrow head and by the pale yellow stripes that encircle its body. Moreover, some farmers from Leonforte in Sicily are saving the black lentils of Enna, starting with eight hundred grams of seed that they were able to recover throughout Sicily.

In the student activist years of the youth protest movements at the end of the eighties, Carlo Petrini, a sociologist at the University of Trento, established the first Slow Food group in the most practical, rationalist region of Italy, Piedmont. The movement's idealism, rebellion, and humor, combined with Piedmontese pragmatism, produced an excellent result. Today the organization numbers 83,000 members and has spread well beyond Italian borders. Following Italy's lead, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, France, and Japan joined the movement. In Italy each section is called a
condotta
(district) or
presidio
(garrison), in the rest of the world a
convivium
. Slow Food is represented in 107 different countries of the world.

The organization's efforts are directed at opposing the standardization of tastes, informing consumers, maintaining traditions, and safeguarding biodiversity. In addition, it aims to preserve traditional structures and places where food has been successfully prepared in the past, for many decades or perhaps centuries. Slow Food encourages the restoration of historic restaurants and organizes courses, tastings, and trips. Locally there are over eight hundred chapters in sixty-five foreign countries and four hundred subchapters in Italy. The publisher Slow Food Editore has put out more than sixty original volumes in ten years. The movement also issues the periodicals
Slow
and
Slowfood
.

At a subconscious level, the word “slow” evokes the image of leisurely epicurean banquets, where diners voluptuously savor every microgram of precious food. Having been present at Slow Food luncheons and dinners, I can assure you that the tasting of the food in and of itself is not accompanied by any theatrics or exaggerated self-gratification whatsoever. Slow does not refer to the tasting, but to the sweeping of the crumbs from the tablecloth, say, or the wait for the dishes to finally be served. The essential thing in these encounters is not the goal of satisfying one's stomach, what in ancient times was called “the sin of gluttony,” but something completely different: the act of getting together, the conversations had around the table. In Slow Food trattorias and restaurants, as in literary cafés, the most diverse aspects of the culture are discussed, and there are book presentations. The food is combined with public talks and interventions, and the result is a slowing down of the experience of time. But everyone eats at a normal pace. And when it comes to work, the Slow organization is very fast indeed.

Sometimes in other countries people have a rather vague idea about the specifics of this organization, as in this description from a Russian website:

 

Slow Food is a very influential organization and is anything but poor. Its means and reputation derive from the wealth and social position of its voluntary members: modern-day sybarites, impassioned by the idea of the slow, contemplative consumption of the gifts of nature and agriculture. These individuals detest the hamburger chains just as the militant “anti-globalists” do. But unlike the latter, they don't go around breaking windows, preferring to expend money, rather than adrenalin . . . The idea of taking part in Slow Food may seem boring to many. Indeed, how enjoyable can it be to attend an hour-long lesson on the subtleties of the taste and technology of goat cheese produced by farmers in northeast Italy?

 

In fact, Slow Food is not at all supported by rich sybarites, but depends instead on energetic enthusiasts. Its significance lies in a lofty moral conviction that responds to man's deepest needs: a sense of shame over the impoverishment of the planet. And, not
least of all, it lies in the joy that that famous goat cheese of the northeast brings to the palate. As for the fact that “farmers” produce it, we'll say it again: the Italian gastronomic code is democratic. Academics, as well as pig breeders, are masters at it.

The organization's quarterly publications in the major languages of the world are expressly intended to inform this rather broad and diverse public. These bulletins are distributed in the United States, Holland, Austria, Great Britain, Ireland, Poland, France, and Canada, while Switzerland and Germany publish a newsletter independently. Slow Food has conducted educational work in the schools since 1993. Several “slowfoodian” innovations have even been successfully introduced by the Ministry of Education, and now in school cafeterias throughout Italy (including the one in the school attended by the author's children) menus are composed according to a territorial theme (“Abruzzi Week,” “Sicilian Week”) or a regional-landscape theme (“Seafood Cuisine,” “Cooking of the Apennines”).

The organization has managed to initiate several degree programs in culinary arts and enology, at twenty well-established scientific institutions. The Salone del Gusto, an exhibition and conference, has been held biennially in Turin since 1996. In the years in which the Salone is not held, there is the so-called Cheese Fair, dedicated to quality cheeses. It fills the streets and piazzas in the Piedmontese town of Bra, where the Slow Food Association has its headquarters. The cheese festival in Bra is a grand event, similar to a mega-
sagra
(see “
The
Sagra
”).

Slow Food's organizational efforts produced a truly splendid and visible result in 2004. For the first time, the University of Gastronomic Sciences was opened in Italy under the aegis of the association, offering master's degrees in gastronomic sciences and quality products and in “Food Culture: Communicating Quality Products” (conducted in English). The university has two locations—one in Pollenzo, Piedmont, and one in Colorno, Emilia—and consequently obtained funding from both the Piedmont and the Emilia Romagna regions.

In October 2004, in Turin, at the same time as the Salone del Gusto, an unprecedented conference took place, unique for both its conception and the type of participant. The significance of the event, entitled Terra Madre (Mother Earth), consisted in actually bringing together a worldwide community of individuals engaged in food production, the solution of hunger problems, and safeguarding the environment and the planet's ecological equilibrium—individuals concerned with quality and culture, who take either an active, practical stance toward the primary sphere of human existence or a theoretical, contemplative one, striving to study historical and anthropological aspects.

Five thousand delegates from 1,200 “food communities” of 131 countries of the
globe participated in the Terra Madre conference. They included farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen who nourish the world in a sustainable way on a daily basis by protecting the environment and shaping the landscape. Participants were accommodated in private homes in Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, and Valle d'Aosta. Organizational support was offered by 1,250 Italian groups and myriad voluntary organizations throughout the world. There were seminars on local trademarks, environmental and gastronomic education, alcoholic beverage traditions, and certification for organic products.

The certification of products in zones and countries where commerce is not developed, and where cunning intermediaries are quick to sell uncertified goods, is a socially relevant issue. It is not surprising that the president of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini, was named European Man of the Year by
Time
magazine in 2004, specifically for the new prospects his activity offers farmers for the social advancement of their products.

Slow Food fights for the restoration of the past, but it conducts its battle under modern banners. The Latin, and therefore archaic, name for the chapters of the organization (
convivium
, a word that recalls Dante's treatise and Plato's dialogue) goes hand in hand with the innovative English name of the movement as a whole. Starting with the name itself, Slow Food is governed by irony and by a spirit of wholesome enjoyment. The association's modern website toys with symbols and images. The editors of the publishing house are clearly intoxicated by pearls from a Rabelaisian lexicon, offering curious slogans: “We are all fighting for the protection of the Piedmontese Blond Hen,” “for the Mondovì melic biscuits” from Monregale, “in the name of Carmagnola's ‘ox horn' capsicum.”

What have the activists of the movement been able to accomplish so far? Quite a lot. They have managed to protect production of the exceptional wine Sciacchetrà in the nature preserve of the Cinque Terre, in Liguria. They have been able to restore life to Morozzo capons in Piedmont, to Valtellina buckwheat in Lombardy, to the Caprauna turnip in Piedmont, to the green winter melon
purceddu
in Sicily, and to the small plum-shaped Corbara tomato in Campania.