Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (51 page)

The oysters of Taranto were praised as far back as Pliny's time. Under the emperor Trajan their collection was practiced according to industrial standards, but with the end of the Roman Empire and for a good 1,500 years after, breeding of the mollusks was discontinued and was resumed only in 1784 under Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, king of the Two Sicilies. Hatcheries were reestablished, based on the same technologies used in ancient Rome. The Taranto oyster is recognized by its green shell, squamous and very gibbous, and by the fragile edges of its valves, with a mother-of-pearl glossiness inside. These oysters, according to experts, stand up to those of Marenne and Arcachon. Even today, along the coasts of Puglia, colossal mollusk colonies are developed in enormous nylon tubes, the mollusks feeding on the precious mineral salts and algae carried to shore by the waves. After twelve to fourteen months, the mollusks are extracted from the nets and then chosen for sale.

In addition to traditional fishing with nets and lines, fishing by means of a
trabucco
is also practiced in Puglia. This method, once used by the Saracens, makes it possible to fish without moving away from the shore. The
trabucchi
are vertical nets, lowered from old ships no longer in use and anchored to rocks. The fishermen's work recalls an acrobatic act. Lying on a not very steady raft, the leader of the team, called the
rais
,
¹
searches with a special tube to see what's happening down below. At that time the
trabucchi
are lowered to the seabed. Once a school of fish is spotted, the
rais
gives the order to raise the nets, which are quickly rolled up using a winch. These picturesque scenes—with all of their characteristic attributes, rafts, and hoists—have often inspired painters and attracted documentary makers. The fish caught this way are cooked whole in salt: this forms a dense shell around each fish, which keeps the juices, aromas, and flavors intact.

From this detail it should not be difficult to surmise that the region has its own salt. In fact, salt harvesting has been carried out in Puglia since the fourth century
B.C.
At Margherita di Savoia, a strip as wide as five kilometers, allocated to the production of salt, extends for more than twenty kilometers along the coastal plain. This is one of the largest salt marshes in Europe. Collected in enormous basins, the seawater is made to evaporate using natural and nonpolluting technologies developed over the centuries, separating out carbonates on the one hand and iron, calcium sulfate, and virtually pure sodium chloride on the other.

In addition to mussels and oysters, murexes, or trumpet shells (
Murex brandaris
), are also farmed in the region. The ancient Romans dyed their togas, initially those of the emperors and later on those of patricians and state officials, with a substance secreted by the hypobranchial gland of these mollusks. The purple was so expensive that rather than the entire toga, only a strip was dyed, and the result was a
toga praetexta
. Horace mocked those who wore the magistrates' toga for pure vanity:

 

. . .
mocking that clerk's
mad reward,
Bordered robe, a broad-striped tunic,
burning charcoal.
²

 

In 314 the Christian church discovered purple for itself and its prelates. Starting with Pope Sylvester I, it began to use this precious dye. The high cost of purple was determined by the hours of labor required to collect it: from ten thousand mollusks,1.2 grams of dye were obtained. Taranto and the Phoenician city of Tyre competed at length for supremacy in the production of purple. Finally, it was the Italian purple that won for its intensity, with beautiful, subtle shades ranging from violet to scarlet.

 

Bari is an ancient commercial port, once the center of trade with Byzantium, and still the destination of pilgrimages due to the relics of St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra, which are particularly revered in the Christian East and housed in its cathedrals.

As in all regions where the presence of pilgrims was strong, here, too, the production of bread was one of the principal activities. It was already so in Horace's time:

 

From that point on Apulia begins to reveal
Her familiar hills to me, . . .
Though here's a clue: they sell what's commonly free
There, water: but the bread's,
the best by far,
so wise Travellers
carry a load on their shoulders for later, . . .
Next day the weather was better, the road was worse,
Right up to fishy Bari.
³

 

The large-loaved bread of Altamura, which keeps for a long time, is sold not only in Puglia but throughout Italy, both in supermarkets and in bakeries. Other types of street food are
puccia
(very soft bread stuffed with black olives) and
puddica
(a focaccia with chopped tomato and garlic).
Taralli
were created especially for traveling: crunchy, savory little ring-shaped biscuits, they are excellent with red wine. The popularity of this product is evidenced in the popular saying that sooner or later all conflicts in Italy are settled and resolved “with
tarallucci
and wine”—that is, ironed out in an amicable way.
Tarallucci
are smooth and shiny because they are dipped, unbaked, in boiling water for a moment, before being put in the oven.

Bakers in Puglia have always been masters, but they could not count on the support of the authorities, as was once the case in Tuscany or in Rome itself. In Puglia, those in power tried to make life difficult for the bakers in every way possible. Administrators in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stubbornly decided to impose stiff taxes on individually owned ovens! As good Italians, with some Greek genes to boot, the Pugliese naturally managed to get by, even in the nightmarish conditions created by the Bourbon government. Recall that Puglia responded to the tax on windows by building houses without windows. It responded to the tax on fires by building houses without stoves. Tourists in Puglia are invariably shown strange piles of stones along the edges of the roads. They are illegal public hearths. If the tax inspector discovered such a hearth, it was very difficult to identify its owner. The Bourbon government actually issued an ordinance that obliged the University of Bari to send officials specifically to inspect the territory and take a “census” of these illegal fireplaces.

People here manage to cook any food in primitive stone kilns. Bread is baked in ovens, molds are made in pans (
tielle
, a legacy of the time when Puglia was under Spanish rule), and sausages and meat cuts are roasted.

The region's typical pasta shapes are the famous orecchiette (little ears), which are locally called
chiancarelle
(the smaller ones) and
pociacche
. Orecchiette of durum wheat flour are made by hand, squeezing little disks of pasta between the thumb and fore-finger.

In Foggia
troccoli
, a type of pasta that is produced with a special machine and that looks a little like the guitar-style macaroni of Abruzzo, is made. The specialties of Lecce are called
turcinelli
, while in Brindisi
staggiotta
(a local variant of lasagna),
fenescecchie
, and
mignuicchie
(little semolina gnocchi) are eaten.
Turcinelli
are served with cauliflower and anchovies, the
trucioletti
of Brindisi with squid, mussels, and basil.
Spaghetti is served with sea urchins. In 1647, a small revolution even flared up in Bari over pasta: the city's residents rebelled against the Spanish rulers, who had planned to impose a tax on pasta based on popular consumption and had sent inspectors house to house to verify it. The city rose up in revolt—an actual riot with looting and killings—until the Spanish governor was forced to repeal the hated tax after less than a week.

 

Often in describing food, gourmets use the language of seduction, alluding to the associations between eating and sex. Though never spoken of directly, when a discussion takes a gastronomic turn the air is charged with joyful electricity, subtly exciting those taking part in the conversation. Throw in the overindulgence associated with eroticism and you have an explosive mix, exploited in literature since distant times: Petronius, Rabelais, Boccaccio. The Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, joining the themes of cooking and the boudoir, gave us a magical image of Brazil, and in particular of the city of Bahia (in
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
and in
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
). Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), a gastronome and great expert on sensual pleasure, wrote in the
Physiology of Taste
(1825):