Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (34 page)

The Genoese were considered almost equal in reputation among purveyors of dry pasta, though they did not use local wheat, as in Sicily and in Campania, but imported wheat. They bought Sicilian or Russian grain, transported it to Genoa, and produced the pasta there, allowing it to dry in the Ligurian climate (similar to that of Naples, with a light breeze blowing morning and evening through the leaves of the chestnut trees on the hills).

At the National Pasta Museum, opened in Rome by the Agnesi Foundation in a splendid fifteenth-century building (Palazzo Scanderberg, number 117 in the piazza of the same name), objects and documents illustrating the history of pasta in Italy, from the time of the Etruscans till today, are displayed in fifteen galleries. In the museum one learns that the best pasta is produced with wheat of the Taganrog variety: it was distinguished for its unsurpassed color and wonderful consistency. Russian wheat, brought from Taganrog over many centuries, was an essential element of the economic equilibrium of southern Italy. Even under the Bourbons, despite the embargo due to local political factors, this wheat continued to be imported in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The importation of wheat ended after the revolution of 1917, when all the seeds were eaten during the famine in the region of the Sea of Azov. Since that time, Italian pasta producers insist, macaroni no longer has the flavor it had in the past.

The mirage of Taganrog wheat continues to stir the imagination of Italian pasta makers even to this day.
⁷
The variety called Taganrog (though we were unable to determine whether its genetic code truly matches that of the Russian wheat esteemed in past centuries) is today grown only in Argentina.

It is important to realize that the production of pasta in the past did not involve the phase of reducing the grain into flour. Only today, when all the work is done by machines, is the wheat ground dry and mixed at a later time. Traditionally, instead, the process always started with the whole grain, which was mixed with water and ground during the mixing process.

From the time of Vitruvius to the end of the nineteenth century, that is until the appearance of hydraulic mechanisms, the best pasta in Italy was produced in Genoa and Naples. In Genoa they began by mixing the dough of semiground wheat by hand; the dough was then transferred to a special wooden tub containing a grinding-mill with stone querns, and covered with lukewarm water. Workers ran around the tub, turning the mill. The grain was crushed, lost almost all of its brittleness, and formed an elastic, sticky dough.

In Naples, by contrast, the tub into which the mixture was poured was made of stone and the grinders of wood, the water added was boiling, and the mill did not move in a circle, but up and down. Workers operated these plungers with their feet, like cyclists. In this way they were able to mix dough made of wheat that was not completely ground and the mixture retained its brittleness, from which the glittering character and superior quality of Neapolitan dry pasta derives.

Then it was time for the extrusion, usually through bronze disks. Modern materials, such as Teflon, do not produce a perfect result. The edges of the holes are too uniform, and make the surface of the pasta so smooth that in the end the particles of sauce have nothing to cling to. Whereas culinary perfection requires that the surface of all pasta shapes contain some irregularities, no matter how microscopic.

In 1917 Fereol Sandragné, taking a brick manufacturing machine as a model for his innovation, replaced the plungers with Archimedean screws. Later, in 1930, a real revolution occurred in the pasta industry: a continuous action press was introduced, which enabled the blending, kneading, and extrusion of dry pasta without interrupting the production cycle.

Earlier pasta was dried only on wooden posts and only in certain locations. As a result, a lot of pasta of excellent quality was produced in some parts of Italy, while elsewhere pasta was scarce and mediocre in quality. Even the vast choice of shapes only
recently became available to all Italians, with the development of transport and commerce oriented toward a global market. This was facilitated after World War II by the introduction of artificial pasta-drying units: now its production no longer depends on the climate of individual localities. In the era of automated production, Italy began to put enough pasta on the market to nourish the whole country.

It was the very possibility of a global approach and the differentiation of shapes that made it possible for dry pasta to establish itself as the prince of foods and become a national symbol. In the eighteenth century, when Goethe was traveling through Italy and wrote his famous travel notes about Naples, no one spoke of pasta as a category. Each region built its culinary philosophy around several subspecies of pasta. What Goethe saw and tasted in Naples was a specific local subspecies, macaroni: long, fat hollow cylinders of pasta, a variety invented and eaten exclusively in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For Gogol, too, macaroni was associated mainly with Naples: “And so, you are indeed in Naples . . . Before you picturesque
lazzaroni
can be seen [people of southern Italy were derogatively referred to as
lazzaroni
: idlers and scoundrels]; these
lazzaroni
eat macaroni; macaroni as long as the distance from Rome to Naples, that you covered so quickly.”
⁸

 

Only after the birth of a unified Italian state, and even more so with the emergence of the “Mediterranean diet” trend, did a new idea of pasta become rooted in the fantasy of Italians and foreign enthusiasts alike: the idea of pasta as a whole, of a pasta catalog, of pasta as an array of shapes, offering the possibility of almost infinite variety, like multicolored LEGO bricks.

In naming the shapes, metaphors and flights of fantasy are most welcome: spaghetti (little strings) existing side by side with
spaghettini
, even thinner
spaghi
, penne (feathers),
pennoni
(pennants),
bucatoni
(hollow straws),
fidelini
(similar to spaghetti),
trenette
(laces), and
tortiglioni
(spirals). Some names are borrowed from zoology: farfalle (butterflies),
conchiglie
(shells),
lumache
(snails),
creste di gallo
(cock's comb),
code di rondine
(swallowtail),
occhi di bove
(ox eyes),
occhi di elefante
(elephant eyes),
occhi di lupo rigati
(ribbed wolf eyes),
occhi di passero
(sparrow eyes),
girini
(tadpoles), vermicelli (worms), linguine (little tongues),
bavette
(bibs), and orecchiette (little ears). Or from the realm of botany:
fiori di sambuco
(elderberry flowers),
gramigna
(weeds), and
sedani
(celery stalks). From religious practice we have
capelli d'angelo
(angel hair),
maniche di monaca
(nun's sleeves),
avemarie
(Ave Marias),
cappelli del prete
(priest hats).

Any Italian cooking expert must know how to match the shapes to the various sauces. Generally speaking, you realize how charged with symbolic meaning the sacramental phases are: the selection of the condiment, the cooking, and the decision of when to drain the pasta. Don DeLillo revealed the significance of this symbology in his novel
Underworld
, where he talks about the Italian-American community:

 

She heard the women talk about making gravy, speaking to a husband or child, and Rosemary understood the significance of this. It meant, Don't you dare come home late. It meant, This is serious so pay attention. It was a special summons, a call to family duty. The pleasure, yes, of familiar food, the whole history of food, the history of eating, the garlicky smack and tang. But there was also a duty, a requirement. The family requires the presence of every member tonight. Because the family was an art to these people and the dinner table was the place it found expression.

They said, I'm making gravy . . .

This food, this family meal, this meat sauce simmering in a big pot with sausage and spareribs and onions and garlic, this was their loyalty and bond and well-being.
⁹

 

The most famous sauces are Genoese pesto and Neapolitan pesto; Bologna's
ragù
;
amatriciana
, the so-called dish of the five p's: pasta, pancetta (bacon),
pomodoro
(tomato),
peperoncino
(red pepper), and pecorino (sheep's milk cheese);
carbonara
, with bacon or pork cheek, pecorino cheese, egg, and sometimes lard;
arrabbiata
, with bacon, garlic, hot red pepper, black pepper, black olives, white wine, and grated pecorino;
puttanesca
, with tomatoes, anchovies, capers, olives, pepper, onion, garlic, and red pepper; and
aglio e olio
, with garlic, oil, and red pepper.

A catalog of condiments does not exist. For an approximate idea of their potential abundance, it is indicative that for spaghetti alone, that is, for that one single shape (the long, thin pasta of a certain diameter), 112 condiments can be counted at La Spaghetteria on Via Solferino in Milan. The menu of this restaurant lists 112 dishes: spaghetti with lemon, with orange, with strawberries, with watermelon, with pineapple, with lilies, with gardenias, with tulips, with violets, with fresh roses, with dried roses, with plums, with pumpkin, with bilberries, with red currants, with figs, with lobster, with frogs, with walnuts, with melon, with ricotta, with truffles, and with forget-me-nots (apparently, this last name has an ironic significance since the dish is actually mercilessly dosed with garlic and hot pepper).

In contrast to the immediacy of Tuscany, with its robust, active practicality, Umbria appears to travelers as bathed in an aura of romance:

 

Umbria! The name seems to describe a countryside of faint shadows that populate valleys, and gather in the ancient hilltop cities, filling the air on deeply silent nights . . . Here the sun shines gently through a transparent veil, so tranquil and limpid are the waters that flow . . . The world will find a treasure of innocence and contentment here that will redeem its many sorrows and losses. And until that moment Blessed Umbria will appear as a hallowed refuge for all restless, troubled souls, an island of salvation for anyone who has raised the distress signal on his ship of life.
¹

 

Here the landscape presents no chasms or peaks, but gentle rolling hills. Authentic forests still grow on Umbria's hillsides, and its lakes are fairy-tale settings. Hermitages and monasteries, such as that of Assisi, founded by St. Francis, are still found today in Umbria, metaphysically correlated to the harmony of nature. In Jacopus de Varagine's
Legenda aurea
(Golden legend), it is said of Francis that he picked worms up from the ground so that passersby would not trample them. Francis brought honey and wine to the bees, to help them get through the winter; he rescued the lamb led to slaughter, freed the rabbit from the leghold trap, and called all animals brother. The poetic world of his
Cantico delle creature
(Canticle of the creatures) is embodied by the hermitage of Assisi, a sanctuary to St. Francis's nature mysticism.