Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (41 page)
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Authors: Elena Kostioukovitch
The typical dishes of the coast are prepared with various saltwater fish. One of the most interesting places on the Lazio coast, both from historical point of view and a gastronomic one, is Gaeta, a very ancient border city between the Papal State and the kingdom of Sicily. According to tradition, it was founded by Aeneas. On a geographical map, the city is unmistakable: from its center, a long, straight strip of land extends out into the sea. This miracle of nature has made the position of the port unique. With its naval bases, Gaeta still today retains the strategic and military importance it had formerly. The ancient stronghold, fortified by the Byzantines, was able to withstand attacks from the Saracens, Goths, Visigoths, and Lombards in the Middle Ages, and only once, in the eleventh century, was it forced to surrender to the enemy under pressure from the Normans. In the fifteenth century the Aragonese dynasty rebuilt and fortified the citadel, which is still today called the Angevin-Aragonese castle, despite the fact that its history is decidedly more ancient than the duration of that dynasty in Italy.
The dukes of Gaeta considered themselves vassals of the popes. In times of political turmoil in Rome and the Vatican, therefore, the popes often took refuge by fleeing to nearby Gaeta. This is where Gregory XII, deposed by his own cardinals in 1409 during the Great Western Schism, sought asylum. And Pope Pius IX fled to Gaeta, in November 1848, following the anticlerical revolution and the proclamation of the Roman Republic.
The chief specialty of Gaeta is its olives: neither black nor green, as olives should be, but the color of red wine, small and aromatic. They are only picked manually, and are left to soften in running water for a few weeks. Only afterward are they placed in brine. At that point, sweetness, savoriness, and bitterness combine to form a unique bouquet of flavor. These olives are added to octopus salad and put on pizza. Also famous in Gaeta are the
tielle
, focaccias that can be dressed with endive and pine nuts; squid; chopped octopus with olives; zucchini with cheese; tomatoes; fish; garlic; raisins; or capers. In addition, sea urchins are renowned in Gaeta: to be eaten raw, they are yellow on the inside, and rich in iodine.
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TYPICAL DISHES OF LAZIO
Hot Antipasti
Rice croquettes (
arancini
), rice balls (
supplì
) filled with meat, entrails, and mozzarella. The name
supplì
comes from the French word
surprise
. At times they are also called
supplì al telefono
(telephone-style) because of the strands of mozzarella that stretch out from the
supplì
when it is bitten.
First Courses
Pasta with a sauce that is quick to prepare, such as
amatriciana
, the recipe of the five p's: pancetta (bacon),
pomodoro
(tomato),
peperoncino
(red pepper), pecorino cheese, and pasta. Though originally from the village of Amatrice, in the province of Rieti, this specialty is now regarded as a typical example of Roman cuisine.
Gnocchi alla romana
, eaten on Thursdays by all Romans since the dawn of time. For Romans, gnocchi are made exclusively with semolina, flattened and cut with special round molds. These gnocchi are served with butter and cheese. In other Italian regions far from Rome, on the other hand, gnocchi are made with boiled potatoes, egg, and flour, forming little balls to serve with
ragù
sauce.
Pasta
carbonara
-style, introduced into the Roman diet by Abruzzese cooks (see “
Abruzzo and Molise
”).
Sbroscia
, a soup of freshwater fish.
Pajata
, or
pagliata
: milk veal intestine with onion, parsley, celery, garlic, and tomato. Sea urchins as an antipasto, or as a base for pasta sauce.
Second Courses
Lamb, artichokes, oxtail stew, beans with tripe, fried brains
alla romana. Saltimbocca alla romana
: sliced beef or veal wrapped around pieces of prosciutto with sage leaves and fastened with toothpicks. Lamb chops
a scottadito
(hot from the grill). In Ciociaria, calf tendons (
nervetti
) with green parsley sauce.
Quail with herbs. Bass with porcini mushrooms (in the finest restaurants, near seaside resorts along the coast). Another typical dish of Ciociaria is
cicoria pazza
(crazy chicory), which is eaten in Alatri with garlic, hot red pepper, olive oil, and salt.
Rome probably offers the widest choice of salad greens. Batavia lettuce, Lollo Rosso lettuce, white, gold, green, and even red leaf lettuce,
with a slight walnut taste. Roman lettuce, exquisite when just picked, accompanies the most unforgettable kind of Roman salad green,
puntarelle
, the name for catalogna sprouts cut into thin slivers, then soaked in ice-cold water (in the Italian climate, ice and, in general, any cold dish were luxuries in ancient times) and seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, anchovies, salt, and garlic. The red radicchio is different from that found in Treviso and Verona, and has a different flavor. Then there are the dark green Roman salad and Belgian endive (a type of chicory grown in the dark in caves, in which chlorophyll is absent; hence the leaves have a completely pale color). A typical dish of Roman Jewish cuisine is endive with anchovies. Salad greens are bought in markets in the city's central piazzas: oak leaf, dandelion, escarole, and also
rughetta
(arugula), famous throughout the world, a variety of
rucola
(rocket). Incidentally, rocket in and of itself, which in recent times, thanks to the trend of nouvelle cuisine, has ended up on the menus of all the restaurants in the world, is appropriate and pleasant only in certain dishes and, moreover, only if it is fresh. A good chef knows how to combine this or that variety of rocket with his dishes, depending on how pungent the flavor is.
One of the chief typical dishes in Tuscany is called
pinzimonio
; in Lazio it bears the name
cazzimperio
. Despite how it may seem, there is nothing inappropriate or vulgar about the name of this dish: in fact it derives simply from
cacio
(cheese). In ancient times,
cazzimperio
meant melted cheese with pepper, and in a gastronomic archaeological context you can of course encounter it even today in this sense. But it is worth recalling that, in the south of Italy, this word is currently used to mean
pinzimonio
.
Desserts
Lazio's favorite dessert is
maritozzi
: leavened sweet buns with raisins, served with fresh cream. The gelato in Rome is exquisite. Gogol wrote enthusiastically about it to his friend A. S. Danilevskij on April 15, 1837: “In recompense the gelato is better than you could ever dream of. Not that loathsome stuff we had in Tortona, which you liked so much. Like butter!”
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TYPICAL PRODUCTS OF LAZIO
Cheeses
Pecorino romano cheese. Fior di Latte. Prized ricotta from Frosinone, made from the milk of cows who eat only clover: the clover gives the milk, and consequently the cheese, a particular density. Provola: a firm mozzarella. Provatura: cheese from buffalo milk, the largest mozzarella. Provatura is often confused with
provola
, because of the similarity of the names, and because both of these cheeses can be smoked and are often served breaded and fried.
Strawberries from Nemi. Artichokes, broccoli, sweet white onions from Marino, wild rocket, Onano lentils, Gaeta olives, Vallerano chestnuts, hazelnuts of Lazio. Homemade bread from Genzano and Lariano.
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TYPICAL BEVERAGES
The local wines are the successors of Falernian, an acclaimed wine of ancient Rome: Malvasia, Trebbiano, and, recently becoming very trendy, Cesanese del Piglio and Fontana di Papa, produced in the famous region of the Castelli Romani, where the popes have had their summer residence since the Middle Ages.
The
sagra
of the white grape has been celebrated in the village of Marino since 1571, on the second Sunday of October. This feast was proclaimed for the first time by order of the pope to celebrate the success of the last crusade: the victory of the Christians over the Ottoman Empire fleet at the Battle of Lepanto.
Frascati wine, and in particular Est! Est! Est!, a white wine made from Trebbiano grapes from the Montefiascone region (province of Viterbo). Folklore tells of a German bishop who, on a pilgrimage to Rome, each day sent ahead a majordomo to scout out the best inns and to look for a wine worthy of the prelate. The majordomo would write the word
EST
! with
chalk on the doors of certain inns to indicate the presence of good wine. Upon arriving in Montefiascone, he could not resist a triple exclamation, and wrote the agreed-upon word three times as testimony to the exceptional quality of the wine he had found. Since that time, the wine has been known as Est! Est! Est! The story, again, is legendary.
The Italian way of eating (popularly known as the Mediterranean diet) has the advantage of not being fattening. The uninitiated may be afraid of “getting fat from pasta,” but in reality durum wheat pasta helps you stay in shape. And if pasta is not abused, if food is otherwise limited to vegetables, fish, and rare meat, then a lean body is almost guaranteed: that figure to which Italian Fascism aspired, since it valued mobility, speed, and agility. With a view toward transforming these goals into a dietary program, it adopted the ideas of the Futurists, specifically, those of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876â1944). The aphorisms of Marinetti come to mind, with the admonition that heroic fighters should not eat soft foods; his program was laid out in a delightfully Futurist style: “We also feel that we must stop the Italian male from becoming a solid leaden block of blind and opaque density . . . Let us make our Italian bodies agile, ready for the featherweight aluminium trains which will replace the present heavy ones of wood iron steel.”
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For the Futurists, the foremost enemy was “intellectual refinement,” the heritage of Byzantium. The cooking of central and southern Italy, quick and light, could be considered the true, popular Mediterranean cuisine, according to Marinettiâand also according to Giuseppe Prezzolini. As the son of Sienese parents, Prezzolini, in a perfectly natural way, found in Tuscany the foremost pure Italian tradition:
