Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (48 page)

Naples was the capital of a kingdom, with all the drawbacks this entailed. One of these problems, the turbulent Neapolitan crime, is known throughout the world. In Naples and its environs, unemployment was and still is high; how could it be otherwise? The city has never had and does not now have any industries. As a commercial port, it represents an outlet for impoverished regions and, consequently, does not offer serious employment opportunities for a population qualified to work. What is Naples
famous for, and in what does it excel? As may be expected with a royal city, Naples has seen court-related trades flourish for centuries. Even today, the best tailors in Italy (and therefore in the world) can be found here; prestigious clientele from all over the world seek out Neapolitan manufacturers of men's clothing, including hat, button, shoe, and tie makers.

Moreover, intellectual life, which developed in part (though only in part) in salons and at court, has always been lively in Naples. Under Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (mid-thirteenth century), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the first universities in the world was founded there (1224), and named nowadays after him. The court was cosmopolitan, and moved continuously from Naples to Palermo and from Palermo to Naples; among its notables were Normans, Italians, Greeks, and Arabs. This group of distinguished intellectuals included jurists, functionaries, and clerks who were part of Frederick's bureaucratic apparatus. Poets were also plentiful. They formed one of the most unusual creative groups in the history of world literature: the Sicilian school of poetry, centered in Palermo. Legend has it that Frederick's chancellor, Pier delle Vigne (who unfortunately later clashed with his master and was blinded and exposed to public mockery in a cage by imperial order), was the first to develop the sonnet, the fourteen-line poetic form that, in many ways, influenced the development of world literature. According to another version, the inventor of the sonnet was Jacopo da Lentini, a notary at Frederick's court. The Neapolitan intelligentsia enjoyed high esteem in Italy in the Baroque period and under the Bourbons, as well as during the years of Italy's unification and during Fascism. Even today, Naples often gives birth to literary trends, crowns philosophers with laurels, dictates fashions, and imposes taste.

The constant presence of baleful Vesuvius on one side of the landscape and Herculaneum and Pompeii on the other seems like an eternal memento mori, leading to a unique philosophical depth. Here the soil is saturated with volcanic lava, a remnant of catastrophic disasters, but it also contains a rich natural fertilizer: seaweed. On this fertile ground, flavorful vegetables and fruit are grown, redolent of the sea and of the volcano: artichokes, apricots, apples, white figs, and incredible lemons. A particular variety of local tomato in Campania is the San Marzano, which is grown on vast farms and supplies a thriving cannery industry. It was in Campania that tomatoes began to be cultivated sooner than anywhere else in Europe, and Naples has created many signature dishes with them: everything here is drizzled with tomato sauce. The fruit of Campania constitutes a third of all Italian fruit production. In addition, durum wheat, essential for the production of pasta, is grown here.

Campania also specializes in water buffalo breeding. Up until relatively recently, a marshy strip extended along the coast, from Rome to Naples. Those swampy areas were drained during Mussolini's dictatorship, but up until then, since it was impossible for cows to graze there, the inhabitants of Campania raised buffalo, which happily browsed on the sedge in those wetlands flooded by rivers. Buffalo in fact love to live in wet environments (they are often pictured in the paintings of Asian artists, in the midst of tropical landscapes). For this reason, there was no cow's milk in Rome or in Campania, only buffalo milk. Though this milk is not good raw, a wonderful masterpiece, a miracle of nature, is obtained from it:
mozzarella di bufala
, with all of its variants and sub-species (
ciliegine
,
bocconcini
,
aversane
,
trecce
,
treccine
,
cardinali
,
scamorze
,
provole
).

Everything involving the production of mozzarella is, of course, regulated: the process, the recipe, the weight. The
ciliegine
(“cherries”) are little balls of twenty-five grams. The
bocconcini
(“morsels”), balls of fifty grams. The
aversana
, on the other hand, must be very large: five hundred grams.

According to a widespread conviction, mozzarella cannot be exported or stored, but should be eaten immediately on the spot, on the day it is made.

The writer Lidia Ravera recounts, in her piece dedicated to buffalo mozzarella:

 

The “shop” opens on the most exposed square; there young girls, their hair pinned up under white bonnets, sell mozzarella,
bocconcini
,
aversana
,
trecce
,
treccine
,
cardinali
, yogurt,
scamorza
, smoked
provola
, ricotta, butter, ice cream, pudding. All made with buffalo milk . . . It is Sunday morning. The square is packed with cars. There is ferment. Buyers display anxiety: when the buffalo mozzarellas run out, there is no way to get more. Once those are depleted, everyone might as well go home.
⁴

 

However, since enthusiasts of true mozzarella live everywhere, not just in Naples, a way of satisfying their demands had to be found, without departing too much from the canon. At five in the morning, no matter what the weather, at the terminal of the regional wholesale market (Via Mecenate), Milanese fanatics of real mozzarella wait for the refrigerated trucks that come from Campania after a night's journey. Even high-quality industrial mozzarella is good, of course: the kind sold in supermarkets in plastic bags, in its own preservation liquid, whose salinity is similar to that of tears. Truthfully, though, it is not exactly the same thing. Everyone knows that mozzarella should be eaten in the shortest time possible. To prolong its life at least a little, mozzarella (that is, Provola, its most solid variety) is smoked. It then assumes a dark brown coating, while the center remains bright and white.

It is better to eat mozzarella in its natural state, but sometimes it is prepared
in carrozza
(“in a carriage”), between two slices of bread whose crust has been removed: the whole thing is fried in butter after being floured and dipped in egg.

Mozzarella dominates Caprese cuisine. Since life on Capri is the height of earthly luxury and indolence, no one should spend hours at the stove, cooking. Thus the cuisine on Capri is light and spirited. The mozzarella balls are cut into round slices; large tomatoes are similarly sliced into rounds; basil leaves, sea salt, a pinch of oregano, and black olives are added; and extra-virgin olive oil is poured crosswise onto the colorful dish. It is dinner, it is lunch, it is divine grace—call it whatever your romantic fantasy suggests, but if nothing comes to you, the technical name of the recipe is
insalata caprese
(Caprese salad).

After the reclamation of the marshes, Campania acquired many new arable lands, fit to be planted with wheat and vegetables. The channels that run where once there were only swamps clearly show how freshwater abounds in the region, an invaluable asset for agriculture and for the lives of the inhabitants. Precisely because of this availability of good freshwater, the intrepid Maritime Republic of Amalfi lived sated and prosperous during the Middle Ages. It is thought that the best pasta in Italy, and probably in the world, is made in Amalfi (see “
Pasta
”). No wonder: an extraordinary pasta has always been produced as a result of good, abundant freshwater. Wheat was ground and the mechanisms for extrusion were activated using energy provided by rapidly flowing streams. Pasta, and white paper, is still produced today using local water here. In Gragnano, tourists are shown both traditional pasta factories and paper mills: the area is like Holland, a flat plain with windmills and water.

It is easy to see why a culture of great bread, radiant and unusual pastas, and, of course, pizzas (see “
Pizza
”) was naturally created in Campania.

As far as the bread is concerned, it is made with durum wheat flour, a particular variety that grows only here in Campania, in South America, and in Russia. The flour is mixed with yeasts that mature on the surface of old wine and are called
crescita
(growth). Unlike Tuscan bread, the bread of Campania is acidic, and its thick crust conceals a rich soft mass that remains fresh for a long time.

The pastas in Campania (long shapes, for the most part) are served with shellfish, fish, or simply tomato sauce (the famous
pummarola
). In addition to traditional preparation, pasta in Naples is also baked in the oven.

______

Desserts also have an enormous importance in the cuisine of Campania. Desserts are rarely the main attraction of regional cuisine in Italy: only here in Naples and in Sicily. The passion for desserts in Neapolitan cuisine is a clear legacy of the Bourbon and Austrian domination, but a prosperous tourism has also influenced the rise of the local madness for pastry. Visitors go to Capri for the intense social life, and to Ischia to minister to the body in the warm mineral waters of spas. Tourists love desserts, and happily order them in the pastry shops. These pastries are difficult to prepare and require an elegant presentation. The light baba that oozes a sweet liqueur, the
susamelli
(S-shaped cookies),
struffoli
(fried honey balls),
raffioli
(cream-filled sponge cake), and
mostaccioli
(honey cookies), typical of Christmas. The springtime
pastiera
, made with cooked wheat—a symbolic ingredient, but at the same time also rich in vitamins.

 

The sea supplies Campania abundantly with fish, mollusks, shrimp, and crabs. It would be logical to suppose that fish and crab also provide food for Capri, Ischia, and the other islands in the Gulf of Naples, but that is not the case. The island cuisine is far less marine-based than coastal cooking. In general, those who come to Ischia get the feeling that the sea isn't there at all, as if the local cuisine were turning its back on the sea to face the mountains. The basis of the diet is the only animal that can be raised in a courtyard: the rabbit. The rabbit is the mainstay of Ischia's cuisine.

The island of Ischia, teeming with German tourists today, is where the giant Typhon was imprisoned underground for not having submitted to Zeus; he now continues troubling the sea from the nether regions, expelling sulfurous fumes from volcanoes. The sulfurous vapors have infused the curative springs, and tourists love to immerse themselves in these spas, where Roman patricians also took the cure. Thus invitations to sample Wiener schnitzel and
Kuchen
are displayed in German in all the restaurants today. But not to worry. Authentic Ischia cuisine still exists.
Bucatini
in rabbit sauce is a typical dish of Ischia. The secret of the dish lies in the fact that the
bucatini
are precisely that:
bucati
(pierced), so that the rabbit sauce (garlic, basil, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, red wine, tomatoes, olive oil, red pepper) will drench the pasta from within. The result is a tube of pasta with rabbit sauce in the center. Which, as anyone will agree, is very high-class.
Bucatini
are eaten with deafening sucking sounds, or slurping, as the British would say.