Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (40 page)

Thus it was that a dense network of trattorias was created in Rome. Cordial, though not very courteous, customs reigned (and reign) in these trattorias. The Roman
popolino
—as travelers and satirists in the past have described the populace, with a great deal of exaggeration—is wholly bent on squeezing money out of foreigners. A simple hospitality, rather brusque and basic in its style and cooking, can be found in every bar or café, on the ground floors of Roman buildings; this simplicity stands in contrast to the splendor and ceremony of the Vatican.

Rome is one of those rare cities where the number of foreigners has exceeded the local population for centuries, and where the number of single men (including the clergy) significantly exceeds that of women. For these reasons, there has always been a great demand in Rome for launderers and caterers.

The Romans, at least those described in literary works and travel diaries, seem to have an aversion to domestic frying and cooking and tend to take their meals in the trattoria
sotto casa
(downstairs). This habit was formed over time, and not just because trattorias in Rome are plentiful and excellent. The city has always been overpopulated and the buildings are many floors high; consequently, there has always been a real risk of fire. Rather than cook on the stove at home, it was more pleasurable and safer to go down to the tavern on the ground floor of one's own building.

The menus of ancient Rome were divided into two main categories. When prestigious events were organized—theatrical banquets such as those described in Petronius's
Satyricon
—the most elegant foods were brought from Greece, Syria, Carthage,
and Egypt and sometimes even from India: “A platter followed, with a gigantic boar on it—a freedman's cap on its head, no less. From its teeth hung little baskets woven of palm leaves, the one full of Syrian dates, the other of Egyptian ones.”
⁵
At times these foreign rarities were provisioned in advance, and kept in the cellar, farmyard, or stable, awaiting the opportunity to savor them:

 

The peacock, clad in Babylonian tapestry
Of plumage, fattens in captivity
To sate your appetite. Numidian hens
And eunuch capons serve you. Even the stork,
Sweet, welcome foreign guest.
⁶

 

The wealthier individuals cultivated and bred exclusive foreign plants and animals on their country estates, always with a view toward banquets:

 

Don't you think he buys stuff. Everything's homegrown: wool, cedar resin, pepper. Looking for chicken's milk? You'll find it. Anyway, he wasn't happy with the wool from his estates, so he brought rams from Tarentum and had them ball his herd. He wanted his own Attic honey, so he had bees imported from Athens. Some are gonna breed into his stock and make his own little boys a little better. Just a couple days ago he ordered mushroom spoor from India.
⁷

 

All these are examples of extraordinary provisions, intended to be striking, to be a display of magnificence. But for the usual, everyday food of the masses, from the time of ancient Rome and through the Middle Ages and the years that followed, fresh products, supplied by farmers, were used. What does the character from Juvenal's satire offer his friend?

 

Now learn my bill of fare not furnished from the market.
There will be a plump little kid from my farm at Tibur, of all the flock
none tenderer than he, of grass he reeks not,
and has never ventured yet to nibble
the low-lying willow twigs,
more milk than blood is in his body;
there will be also mountain asparagus,
the farmer's wife has left her spinning-wheel to cut it.
Big eggs, too,
I have nestling warmly on wisps of hay,
beside the hens that laid them;
and grapes that have been kept for half the year
as fresh as when they hung upon the vines.
⁸

 

In 1817 Francesco Cancellieri, in his
Lettera . . . sopra il tarantismo, l'aria di Roma e della sua Campagna
(Letter concerning tarantism, the air of Rome and its countryside), invaluable for scholars of material culture, wrote: “Rome also abounds with all kinds of foods, and lacks nothing of that which lavishly serves to maintain life, being abundantly supplied by its most fertile surroundings.” It was only thanks to the fertile lands surrounding it and the rare mildness of its climate that Rome was able to survive without difficulty, despite the exceptional number of foreigners living alongside the native population. Another example of a densely populated—indeed overpopulated—city of the south that nonetheless never suffered from hunger in peacetime is Naples, as we will see.

 

In Rome itself and around Rome, there are many bovines: bulls, large cows, all with white or straw-colored hide. There are also many large rams and ewes, which have long hair and inordinately long tails, and they are all white, there are no black ones. There are also numerous pigs, big and fat, and they are all black, there is no other color hide. There are also a number of large goats. And even a quantity of turkeys, which are brought to Rome in large flocks, five hundred and even a thousand heads . . . And at inns for foreigners they roast a number of pigeons, and more pigeons than hens are served in soups. In Rome, at the homes of Roman residents, in the houses of respectable people of every kind and at inns for foreigners, numerous foods are had: roasts, soups and pies, and all sorts of very exquisite foods.
⁹

 

The ancient Romans, then, preferred preserved, imported foods for feasts and fresh products of the countryside for everyday life. The same can be said of the contemporary Roman table. For Christmas it's customary to place a plate of marinated Norwegian salmon at the center of the table and, if finances permit, a bowl of Iranian beluga caviar. But on weekdays, for lunch, Romans eat tripe, fresh lettuce, focaccia with oregano and marjoram, vegetable frittata, and zucchini flowers fried in batter.
According to tradition, most of the fresh produce is subject to only minimal processing, since the host is in a hurry to feed his many guests.

The food preferred by Romans throughout the ages is the egg: economical, simple, ever-present, readily available, and quickly and easily consumed.

 

The slaughterhouses in Rome have been in the same identical location for two and a half millennia: in the Testaccio district. Not surprisingly its inhabitants—undoubtedly beneficiaries of all possible imaginable by-products obtained for free (the so-called fifth quarter of the ox, discarded by butchers, though tasty)—have developed an unparalleled imagination. It is in Testaccio that rigatoni pasta
alla pajata
was invented. The
pajata
, or
pagliata
, is the tender intestine of the calf. It is prepared without emptying or washing it inside, since it contains nothing more than chyme. The reason it is so clean is that, sadly, the animal is made to suffer from hunger for a long time before being butchered.

In Testaccio and in Trastevere
padellotto
(from
padella
, frying pan) is also typical: a mixture of milk veal entrails, liver, and spleen, usually served with artichokes. Characteristic of Rome is
coda alla vaccinara
, oxtail stew, in hot sauce, while the pinnacle of perfection of Roman cuisine is
abbacchio
: roasted milk lamb three to four weeks old, a delicate and expensive product.

 

The gastronomic emblem of Rome, the vegetable that is most
romano
, is the artichoke. This vegetable requires scrupulous care, both when it is growing in the garden, and when it is being cooked. Artichokes are planted from August to October; then, according to the calendar, a complex weeding takes place, prior to the
dicioccatura
(stubbing) and
scarducciatura
(pruning) operations (the pinnacle of horticultural virtuosity). As a result, one single shoot, the best one, remains in each plant. The flower forms only in February or March, and the consumption season for artichokes is spring.

There is a strict hierarchy of artichoke varieties in Rome. The king of the artichoke garden is the purple
cimarolo
(from
cima
, top or best). Following it is the
romanesco
with its large, rounded petals, which grows in the Castelli Romani area, south of the city (here the soil contains a high percentage of volcanic lava, which gives the vegetables a special flavor). This variety of artichoke was also called
mammola.
There is also a special Roman variety known as
catanese
, with an elongated shape and no thorns, which grows in the areas of Cerveteri, Sezze, and Albano.

The preparation of Roman-style artichokes requires only water and a very small amount of oil—ideal, therefore, for straightforward, large-scale cooking. In the more caloric variant of this dish, it is recommended that garlic, parsley, and wild mint be inserted between the petals, before drizzling with oil, meat broth, and wine. The recipe
all'agro
(with vinegar) is also much loved by the Romans: it consists in boiling the artichokes in water and vinegar, then adding parsley, oil, vinegar, wild mint, and salt.

Nevertheless, there is also a more exclusive, and much more laborious, preparation method. It is artichokes
alla giudia
(Jewish-style), with an incomparable flavor, like the majority of dishes created in the old Jewish ghetto nestled alongside the Vatican. These artichokes, after being flattened, are plunged into a deep pan filled with boiling olive oil (at a temperature of 120 degrees C, neither higher nor lower), where the heat causes them to expand and fan out; then they are dried skillfully and thoroughly, and spread out carefully for a beautiful presentation. Removing the boiling flowers from the oil, three drops of cold water must be sprinkled on them, so that the edges of the petals burst with crisp bubbles, which then tingle deliciously on the tongue.

Roman cuisine also includes an absolutely extraordinary dish, which falls into the category of archaeological treasures inherited from the Etruscans:
matticella
, from
matticelle
, the shoots left over after pruning the grapevines. Otherwise unusable, these dried shoots are burned in the fireplace, and the artichokes are cooked in the abundant residual ashes, after being carefully cleaned. A hollow grapevine is then inserted in the center of each artichoke, through which olive oil with mint, garlic, and salt is trickled very slowly into the flower.

The artichoke
sagra
is held in Ladispoli, not far from Rome, on the second weekend of April.
¹⁰

 

Rome is a city of pilgrim and tourist processions, of demonstrations, political protests, and union rallies, of military parades, sports marathons, bike races, and scout meetings. It is therefore a city where one can sate both thirst and hunger on the go, without sitting down. There are ten times more bars here than in any other Italian city or village, all of them offering excellent coffee and cappuccino. Cappuccino is
drunk in the morning, and only in the morning, after which Roman baristas happily refuse to make it. But the idea of asking for a cappuccino occurs to tourists at any time of day. Accustomed to everything by now, a Roman barista, hearing the absurd demands of these barbarians, will hurriedly serve them a cappuccino without so much as a smile.
¹¹

A traditional Lazio cuisine—one that differs from Rome's—is practically nonexistent. By the mid-nineteenth century the region around the capital was still a land of desolation, ruins, languid indolence, and
dolce far niente
. Aleksandr Herzen, a Russian exile, writes of the countryside around Rome:

 

At first what strikes you is its deserted aspect, the lack of cultivated fields, the absence of wooded areas; everything is poor, bleak, as if we were not in central Italy at all . . . but little by little you come to know this eternal desert, this wilderness that frames Rome. Its silence, its opalescent distances, the bluish mountains on the horizon become more familiar . . . There a donkey slowly plods along, its harness bells jingling; a swarthy shepherd, with ram-skin overalls, sits dejectedly and watches—a woman carrying vegetables, wearing a brightly colored dress and white kerchief on her head, stops to rest, her hand gracefully supporting the bundle she balances on her head, and gazes off into the distance.
¹²

 

To Goethe the outskirts of Rome appear so exotic that they remind him of Africa: “Very early next morning, we drove by rough and often muddy roads towards some beautifully shaped mountains. We crossed brooks and flooded places where we looked into the blood-red savage eyes of buffaloes. They looked like hippopotamuses.”
¹³

Between the Lepini Mountains and the Apennines stretches the area known as Ciociaria (the name is derived from
cioce
, shoes of ancient Greek design that the local inhabitants have worn for millennia). Until not long ago, the
ciociari
were considered a semiprimitive people like the gypsies (La Ciociara, the female protagonist in the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia, is fascinating, proud though illiterate, and romantically impetuous).

 

Sheepfolds . . . are watched over by tall young shepherds in traditional sheepskins worn wrapped around their hips and reversed, with the fur on the outside—the eternal costume of fauns. They watch indifferently as the carriages pass, bringing people from another world, but nothing stirs their enchanted somnolence . . . Looking out at us
from their round black eyes, deep as bottomless wells, is the cunning truth of beasts and demigods.
¹⁴

 

Though it has little to offer in the way of riches, Ciociaria gladdens the eye and one's artistic sense. On its hills, near the villages of Alatri, Porciano, and Ferentino, there are beautiful lakes, as in the northern part of the region, where the largest ones were formed in volcanic craters: lakes Bolsena and Bracciano, Vico, Monterosi, and Martignano. In Ciociaria and in the nature preserves around Rome, in the small towns and rustic villages, the cuisine is still pastoral, almost Greek: greens, and focaccias with cheese. In the agricultural valleys, on the other hand, there are fertile orchards and abundant vegetable gardens. Among the gifts of the garden, perhaps the most famous are the green pea of Frosinone and a wide variety of beans: those from Lake Bracciano; the
scatoloni
(large white beans) of Accumoli, the cannellini of Atina; the
quarantini
(“forties”) of Bolsena (so called because they take about forty days to ripen).