Taste: My Life through Food(30)

When someone really tastes something, whatever process happens in their mouth triggers a reaction in their eyes as well as the rest of their body. First, the body almost freezes, as though it were on high alert, and then people will often tilt their head to one side, usually to the left, and look like they are listening very carefully to something as they are chewing. Often their head will nod slowly, their eyes darting back and forth. At times their eyes will lock, staring straight ahead for a moment, and then they’ll glance down to the left and then to the right. After all of this, which can happen in an instant or take quite some time, they will utter a sound of approval or disappointment, such as “Mmmm,” if they like it, or “Mnnnn,” if they don’t. They will then say something like, “Good. I like it,” or “I should have ordered the steak.”

Watch Julia Child taste something and you’ll see what I mean.



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Inspired by these two multitalented pioneers, I recently embarked on a project in which I tried to put their teachings to good use, Searching for Italy. If you haven’t seen it, I of course take umbrage but will rise above your insult, ignore your ignorance, and give you a quick synopsis. The show is a documentary series filmed on and off during 2019 and 2020. Each episode focuses on the food of one Italian region and the forces that helped shape it, in order to show the extraordinary diversity of the country’s cuisine. Because of where Italy sits geographically, it has been invaded and controlled by countless cultures over the past two thousand years. Those cultures have influenced the cuisine as significantly as the widely varied topography of the peninsula, which stretches from the Alps to the southern Mediterranean. (For instance, Punta Pesce Spada, which means “Swordfish Point,” on the island of Lampedusa is only ninety-six miles from the coast of North Africa. In Val d’Aosta, one of Italy’s regions on the Swiss border, is its most northern point, Westliches Zwillingsk?pfl, which in German means “Jesus Christ, is it cold here, or is it just me?!” It doesn’t actually mean that, but you take my point.)

During the shoot I encountered some extraordinarily talented people, from chefs, to home cooks, to farmers and purveyors, not to mention an endless supply of delicious dishes. I would like to include them all here, but this book would end up as a six-volume set. Besides, I don’t have the time to write it because I have to go out and make a living, so you’ll just have to tune in to the show. (Please check your local listings for viewing times.) However, I have chosen three different dishes, one from the north, one from the middle of the country, and one from the far south. I have done so because I believe they represent the wonderful diversity of the Italian table. Their only commonality is that they are all made with some type of pasta.





Pizzoccheri


Le Alpi

One of the most beautiful regions of Italy, in my opinion, is Lombardy, situated in the very north of the country and home to Milan, Lake Como, and the Orobic Alps. Like other northern regions, its food varies primarily from that of the south due to topography and climate. In these mountains where the land sees quite a bit of rain and snow, tomatoes and eggplant are not as prevalent as root vegetables and cabbage. Grain grown for pasta throughout the southern parts of Italy gives way to corn (both yellow and white, used to make polenta), rice (for risotto), and buckwheat. It is with the latter that one of my favorite dishes ever is made, the traditional Lombard recipe known as pizzoccheri.

Pizzoccheri is a noodle composed of approximately 50 percent buckwheat flour and 50 percent wheat flour, about the length and width of pappardelle but a bit thicker and more dense. It is served during the autumn and winter months in a kind of casserole called pappardelle alla Valtellina. Valtellina. The name sounds like that of an imagined zaftig wood sprite from a Fellini film. Good God, what a gorgeous chunk of Alpine cheese is Valtellina. Its soft and gentle creaminess when melted just wraps itself around—

Off to take a cold shower.

I’m back.

Anyway, pizzoccheri, like most Italian food, comes from humble beginnings and has a rightful place in the canon of Cucina Povera. Using very few ingredients, it creates an extremely rich and hearty dish. After a winter’s day outdoors in the Alps, like raclette or venison stew, it is exactly what a body wants and needs. But there is one more key ingredient that elevates this dish, another cheese, called Bitto.

In the tiniest of tiny Italian mountain towns, Gerola Alta, Paolo Ciapparelli is carrying on the age-old tradition of making this historic cheese. Bitto is made from the milk of cows that graze on the Alpine mountain flora. Since the pastures are at different altitudes and receive differing amounts of sun and moisture, the flora vary, and they each impart their particular flavors to the cow’s milk. Bitto has been made this way for centuries, yet new EU regulations, which are often at odds with traditional methods, have allowed the cheese-making process to omit crucial steps and add new ones, therefore altering its true character and taste. For this reason, with the support of the Slow Food movement, Paolo has chosen to continue making Bitto the old way, calling it Bitto Storico (Historic Bitto) or Bitto Ribelle (Rebel Bitto).

Historic Bitto is made with the addition of about 10 percent indigenous Orobic goat’s milk. The addition of goat’s milk allows the cheese to be aged for an extraordinary amount of time, usually for about five to twelve years but sometimes up to eighteen years. This is unheard of in the world of cheese making. The depth of flavor this amount of aging imparts is the reason it is the most expensive cheese in the world, selling for over six thousand dollars for a twenty-kilo wheel.