Characters

In the world of the interest groups, sub-cultures and Madison Ave., it is hard to believe that true characters ever walked the earth.

One of the finest is Pellegrino Artusi, an Italian who wrote the first pan-Italian cookbook barely twenty years after the unification of Italy.

It is important to remember that Italy was comprised of a whole bunch of nation states (no different than Greece or India) and that there was no such thing as "Italian" cuisine (and there still isn't.)

Anyway, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well) is a masterpiece. It is a delight to read, and a delight to follow.

Modern ideas like weights and measures are simply non-existent. You need to be familiar with the context to start with. (Even in a modern setting, this is not too hard if you know what you're doing.)

But best of all, our guide is a raconteur par excellence. We get a lovely recipe of a minestrone which starts by describing the author's near-death experience by his ingesting a minestrone at Livorno. He thought it was cholera when he spent the night expelling fluids from two parts of his body and having to walk to the communal toilet, but it later turned out not to be cholera after all. So delighted is the author by the fact of not being dead that he follows it up in an adjacent sentence by not only telling you that he fled to Florence but also by giving you good advice of how best to chop up the onions that are needed for the recipe. And then the recipe continues for a whole page.

Madison Avenue, eat your heart out! Those interest groups never spent a night in a communal shitter nor ever started a recipe with one.

Shocking? Disgusting? Deliciously delightful?

You pick.

From start to finish, it's not just a compendium of recipes from all over Italy but it's filled with total and utter bullshit, fairly dubious scientific insight, and a style that would drive modern editors crazy. Nevertheless, it's also imparts a true understanding of how people actually cook (bullshit and all), and hence implicitly, what they are trying to achieve as a precise product.

Your knowledge of Italiana is incomplete without it, and the CC strongly urges anyone with an interest in Italian cooking that they get a copy pronto.

Pellegrino Artusi's Minestrone

Start by making the usual meat broth, and cooking in it a handful of shelled fresh beans. If the beans are dry, then simmer them in water until they soften. Then cut some Savoy cabbage, spinach, and a little chard into thin slices, and soak them in cold water. Then, to get the water of the vegetables, place them on the fire in a dry saucepan. Drain the contents well, pressing them firmly with a wooden spoon to get rid of the excess water. For a minestrone that serves four to five people, finely chop 40 grams of fatty prosciutto, a clove of garlic, and a sprig of parsley, and sauté them together. Add this to the saucepan, along with some celery and carrots, one potato, one zucchini, and very little onion, all cut into short, thin slices. Add the beans, and if you wish, some pork rind (as some people like to do), and a bit of tomato sauce or tomato paste. Season with salt and pepper and cook in the broth. As a last ingredient add enough rice to absorb most of the liquid, and before removing the minestrone from the fire throw in a good pinch of Parmesan cheese.

I should warn you that this is not a soup for weak stomachs.