The Best American Food Writing 2023 by Mark Bittman

Author:Mark Bittman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

There Is No Such Thing as Italian Food

John Last

from Noema

Arquà Petrarca, Italy—In the mirror-flat valley of the Po River, the Euganean Hills stick out of the vast landscape, their shallow peaks topped by sloping vineyards and groves of olive trees. Nestled between them is the tiny medieval village of Arquà Petrarca, where a microclimate created by the shaded hills and their abundant water produces perfect conditions for one of Italy’s rarest crops.

The giuggiole, or jujube fruit, resembles an olive and tastes, at first, like a woody apple. After withering off the vine, it takes on a sweeter flavor, closer to a honeyed fig. Among the medieval elite, the fruit was so popular that it gave birth to an idiom: “andare in brodo di giuggiole”—“To go in jujube broth”—defined in one of the earliest Italian phrase books as living in a state of bliss. Every fall, the handful of families that still cultivate the fruit in the village gather in medieval garb to celebrate the jujube and feast on the fine liquors, jams, and blissful sweet broth they create from it.

Italy is full of places like Arquà Petrarca. Microclimates and artisanal techniques become the basis for obscure local specialties celebrated in elaborate festivals from Trapani to Trieste. In Mezzago, outside Milan, it’s rare pink asparagus, turned red by soil rich in iron and limited sunlight. Sicily has its Avola almonds and peculiar blood-red oranges, which gain their deep color on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. Calabria has ’nduja sausage and the Diamante citron, central to the Jewish feast of Sukkot.

All these specialties are encouraged by local cooperatives, protected by local designations, elevated by local chefs and celebrated in local festivals, all lucrative outcomes for their local, often small-scale producers. It’s not so much a reflection of capitalismo as campanilismo—a uniquely Italian concept derived from the word for belltower. “It means, if you were born in the shade of the belltower, you were from that community,” explains Fabio Parasecoli, a professor of food studies at New York University and the author of Gastronativism, a new book exploring the intersection of food and politics. “That has translated into food.”

In many ways, it’s this obsessive focus on the intersection of food and local identity that defines Italy’s culinary culture, one that is at once prized the world over and insular in the extreme. After all, campanilismo might be less charitably translated as “provincialism”—a kind of defensive small-mindedness hostile to outside influence and change.

Italy’s nativist politicians seek to exploit deep associations between food and identity to present a traditional vision of the country that’s at risk of slipping away. In 2011, a politician from the nativist Lega Nord party named Pietro Pezzutti distributed free bags of corn polenta, a northern delicacy, emblazoned with the phrase “yes to polenta, no to couscous”—a swipe at the region’s immigrants from Africa, where couscous originates. “We want to make people understand that polenta is part of our history, and must be safeguarded,” Pezzutti explained.

All across Italy, as Parasecoli tells me, food is used to identify who is Italian and who is not.

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