Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy’s Food Culture

401 Pages·2018·21.42 MB·English

by  Matt Goulding

Dedication
For the nonne, who have taught the world so much about eating
Contents
Laura Pérez
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword: In Correspondence with Bourdain
Chapter 1: Rome
Know Before You Go
Eat Like an Italian
Chapter 2: Puglia
The Bread Brothers
Mamma Lea
Risotto Milanese
Lecce
Chapter 3: Bologna
The Pasta Matrix
The Pig Protector
Casteluccio
Chapter 4: Sicily
The Medicine Man
Amazing Shit in the Middle of Nowhere
Ragusa
Chapter 5: Naples
Mamma Maria Luisa
Salumi Selector
Brodetto
Matera
Chapter 6: Sardinia
Cacio Custodians
Mamma Daniela
Bistecca
Ode to the Agriturismo
Chapter 7: Piedmont
Mamma Vicenza
Drink Like an Italian
Caffè
Chapter 8: Lake Como
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Also Presented by Roads & Kingdoms
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword
In Correspondence with Bourdain:
How This Book Was Born
Dear Tony,
I’m in a tough spot. Of all the people I know, I’m guessing you’re the one who
will best appreciate my predicament. I write to you from Savigno, just outside
Bologna, a town surrounded by sweet pignoletto vines and truffle-studded
forests. Today is Easter, a day of liberation for the Italians, and splayed before
me are the bones of half a dozen courses: ragù streaks, gnawed lamb ribs,
pistachio dust. My blood runs with a mix of rendered pork fat and bitter spirits,
six months in the underbelly of Italy’s food world hitting me down to the
marrow. But it’s not my lipid profile I worry about; it’s the table full of
grandmas and couples and new friends around me. Let me explain.
When I first left New York in 2010 in search of a new start, I set my coordinates
for Emilia-Romagna. There I would find a hilltop town, not unlike Savigno,
powered by egg-rich pastas and slow-simmered sauces and single women with a
penchant for lost Americans. Only a stopover in Barcelona and a fateful cerveza
with a young Catalan I now call my wife kept me from my al dente destiny.
Granted, my vision was far from original. Most of the world dreams of Italy—of
the pinup landscape porn, the cumulus clouds of cappuccino foam, the meals that
stretch on like radioactive sunsets. It was those same dreams that drove me back
here, that have me itching to capture this magic on the page. But lately I’ve been
having nightmares about Italy. Nightmares about what the Italians will think
about another foreigner’s take on their traditions. Nightmares about getting it
wrong—about mistaking Parmesan for pecorino, pancetta for guanciale,
spaghettini for spaghettoni. I don’t mean nightmares in the figurative sense; I
mean nightmares in the cold-sweat-and-sleepless-nights sense.
Nobody takes food more seriously than the Italians. I’ve seen family feuds break
out over pasta shapes and grape varietals. No doubt you’ve been caught in the
crossfire before. But these aren’t the petty beefs of food snobs—these cut to the
core of what it means to be Italian. More than anywhere else in the world, food
carries the full weight of Italy’s heritage: the pains and joys of its history, the
depth of its ingenuity. Politicians are corrupt, democracy is fragile, borders are
porous, but la cucina italiana is eternal.
At the end of the day, these are the people I want to surround myself with—the