As the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World continues, we would like to share with you the stories and experiences of our fellow Italians who migrated in the last century in search of good fortune. Food has always been a way for Italians to maintain their connection to their roots and at the same time, an opportunity to create new culinary combinations. Professor Massimo Montanari perfectly explains this concept in the project, “I Racconti delle Radici” (Tales from the Roots), created by La Cucina Italiana in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI).
Massimo Montanari is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bologna and Professor of Medieval History and Food History. At the University of Bologna, he founded the master's degree in History and Culture of Food. He chairs the scientific committee that drew up the nomination dossier of Italian cuisine for UNESCO.
Here is Professor Montanari's article and, below, a recipe from I Racconti delle Radici, with a historical introduction by Professor Simone Cinotto.
COMPARING, COMBINING, AND INVENTING BY MASSIMO MONTANARI
Neapolitan milanese, or the quintessence of Italian-ness. Far away from their country, Italians meet up, compare, and advise each other. In Buenos Aires, they combine their things together. The north comes together with the south, the Milanese cutlet with tomato sauce, and with oregano and mozzarella that reminds us of pizza. Is this because of the distance? Because of a solidarity between migrants who are on the other side of the ocean together, combining experiences and coming up with new solutions to make them feel Italian, almost like a patchwork that unites the traditions of their country? It is certainly because of this. But those sharing mechanisms, those ‘inventions’ that bring together different foods and flavours, distant cities and lands, merely reproduce experiences that Italians have known and practised for centuries. The ‘Neapolitan Milanese’ cutlet is not very different from the ‘Bolognese’ cutlet that adds cheese and tomato sauce to the Milanese style, and then bakes it in the oven after frying. There are many variations and many inventions in Italian cuisine, which has always been accustomed to comparing and sharing experiences since it first existed, at least since the Middle Ages, and well before the country was politically united. It was initially an elitist phenomenon, limited to the cuisine and tables of the gentry, but then spread to a wider population. But the process and the method is consistent: combining products, recipes and tastes, not simply adding them together but multiplying them, to create an extraordinary collective wealth. Hasn’t the ‘classic’ Neapolitan ragù been accompanied by an (apparently) incomprehensible ‘Genoese’ twist, which is now the pride of the Neapolitan city? And hasn’t spaghetti from Naples been paired with an equally (apparently) incomprehensible ‘Bolognese’ ragù? This ‘spaghetti from Naples with Bolognese ragù’ was a brilliant Piedmontese invention at the end of the nineteenth century, to create a dish that symbolised a united Italy: pasta from the south with sauce from the north. From Turin, the home of national unity, that dish travelled around Italy and then spread all over world. In other words, hybridisations do not belong solely to the migrant cuisine: they are an essential part of the Italian cuisine that magically knows how to transform the local into the national. This is why the Neapolitan milanese should not be seen as an extravagant invention by the Italians of Argentina, but as the true quintessence of Italian-ness.
POPE FRANCIS BAÑA CAUDA
Piedmontese anchovy sauce is at the centre of Sunday lunch in Argentina, and is even served on ravioli
Many people emigrated from Piedmont to Argentina, especially in the rural areas of the regions of Santa Fe, Cordobaand Rafaela, and there are a lot of Piedmontese dishes widespread in the South American country among third and fourth generation immigrants and in Argentinian cuisine in general. One of these is vitel toné, made with local ingredients starting from the original recipe. In the book-interview by Carlo Petrini, Future Earth: A Conversation with Pope Francis on Integral Ecology in 2020, Pope Bergoglio recalls the lunches of his youth in a community of Piedmontese immigrants. While on working days polenta was pretty much all that was eaten, “cut with string, then mashed and heated on the stove, or fried, which was even better”, on holiday days it was all about the bagna cauda. In Piedmont, this was a food for special occasions (the end of threshing or harvest) consumed by large groups of diners with copious amounts of red wine. In Argentina it has become the ‘Italian’ Sunday lunch dish, known as baña cauda. In a further Argentine development, the baña cauda is also poured over agnolotti (Piedmont ravioli) or steak milanese. (ph Davide Maestri)
THE RECIPE
Cook Emanuele Frigerio
Effort Easy
Time 50 minutes
INGREDIENTS FOR 6-8 PEOPLE
600g bread
500g fresh cream
500g potatoes
500g ravioli
450g cauliflower florets
200g broccoli florets
40g anchovies in oil
12 Brussels sprouts
6 garlic cloves
3 celery hearts
2 Milanese breaded veal cutlets
1 carrot
salt
extra virgin olive oil
Cut up the bread: half into slices and half into cubes. Drizzle with oil and toast in the oven for 7-8 minutes at 200°C.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into pieces. Spread them out on a baking tray covered with parchment paper and bake at 200°C for about 30 minutes.
Boil the cauliflower in boiling salted water for 5-6 minutes, transfer it with a slotted spoon to cold water, and drain. Boil the broccoli in the same way for 4 minutes and the Brussels sprouts for 7-8 minutes. Cut the sprouts in half.
Peel a carrot and cut it into diagonal slices. Peel the celery and cut it into sticks.
Fry the cutlets and boil the ravioli.
Peel the garlic cloves and remove any green shoots inside. Blend them with a hand blender along with the anchovies and 6 tablespoons of oil, to make a cream. Transfer it to a pan and cook it for 2-3 minutes, until it changes color, then add the cream. Cook over a very low heat for about 10 minutes, until it turns into a cream. Serve it with all the vegetables, potatoes, cutlets and ravioli.