Authentic Italian Food?

Pizza in our own kitchen.

"Of course, it goes without saying that many Italians and Italian-Americans alike have vested, entrenched opinions about their foods. So when Alberto Grandi — an Italian academic and a professor of history at an Italian university in Parma — made some especially controversial comments about the provenance of certain Italian dishes in a recent interview with the Financial Times, it's no surprise some feathers were ruffled."

This is the beginning of an article in Salon.com, "Pasta, pannetone, Parmegiano and pizza are obviously Italian . . . right? Some commonly accepted 'truths' about the origins of Italian food may actually be myths" by Michael La Corte, which analyses a recently-published interview in the Financial Times. The FT article was by food writer Marianna Giusti, who talked with an Italian expert named Alberto Grandi. Grandi is a "Marxist academic, reluctant podcast celebrity and judge at this year’s Tiramisu World Cup in Trevino.... Grandi has dedicated his career to debunking the myths around Italian food; this is the first time he’s spoken to the foreign press. When his 2018 book, Denominazione di origine inventata (Invented Designation of Origin), started racking up sales in Italy, his friend Daniele Soffiati suggested they record a spin-off podcast."

The complex questions of Italian food history have fascinated me because they are so often misrepresented, so I was delighted by both of these articles. My favorite example of counter-factual food history, in fact, is tiramisu, which historical novels often mention in settings very much earlier than it really should be. The FT article cites several examples of much more recent inventions of "classic" dishes than popular culture believes, continuing:

"Tiramisu is another example. Its recent origins are disguised by various fanciful histories. It first appeared in cookbooks in the 1980s. Its star ingredient, mascarpone, was rarely found outside Milan before the 1960s, and the coffee-infused biscuits that divide the layers are Pavesini, a supermarket snack launched in 1948. 'In a normal country,' Grandi says with a smile, 'nobody would care where [and when] a cake was invented.'” (Financial Times)

Grandi is quite a character! According to the FT article:

"Grandi has made himself unpopular in some quarters by criticising Italy’s mighty food and drink sector, which, by some estimates, accounts for a quarter of GDP. On the podcast, he jokes he should only leave his house 'with personal security guards, like Salman Rushdie.' In 2019, the Italian ambassador to Turkey reprimanded Grandi at a conference in Ankara after Grandi ridiculed Italy’s 800 protected designations, products whose quality is recognised by the EU as inextricably linked to their area. At Les Mots literary festival in Aosta in 2018, he was attacked by a Roman presenter who, offended by Grandi’s claims about carbonara, 'called [him] every name in the book' in front of a dumbfounded live audience." (Financial Times)

Also, the FT article discusses in detail the role of the Italian diaspora, especially in the US. There are several specific examples, about pizza, carbonara, and other Italian-American fascinations and fabrications. In addition to reporting on Grandi's ideas, the author did interviews of some older Italians, asking about their food memories in response to Grandi. For example, she writes:

"Mozzarella comes from the south of Italy .... To find out more, I call a friend’s Sicilian great-aunt. Ninety-five and a little deaf, Serafina Cerami answers the phone immediately. 'We ate a lot of mozzarella in Sicily before the war!' she shouts down the line. Like pizza, mozzarella was fast-tracked to global fame through the funnel of mass migration to America from the Italian south. Comparing her recollections with those of my grandmother, it’s clear that Sicily’s elevated 'Sunday' dishes (aubergine parmigiana, cannoli, pasta con le sarde) were the ones that went mainstream, thanks to the south’s contribution to the Little Italys of the US. My grandmother, on the other hand, grew up eating tordelli alla massese (large fresh tortelli with a meat filling, cooked in a ragú sauce) and cappelletti in brodo (fresh tortelli in chicken broth), dishes that are almost entirely unknown outside the region." (Financial Times)

The Salon.com article is intended to put the FT article in perspective. The author interviews an American food writer, Ian MacAllen, author of a book titled "Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American." Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview:

Michael La Corte: "As far as you know, did carbonara, panettone or pizza actually originate in the US or by American chefs? Or were they authentically Italian creations?"

Ian MacAllen: "Carbonara has a lot of mythology behind it and much of it is just made up. The phrase is often credited to the black ration packs US Soldiers carried in World War II, but also attributed to a secret society known as the carbonari, who maybe served the dish at their secret meetings or maybe because of the charcoal workers who cooked it at their forest camps. Renato Gualandi, a chef who cooked a banquet for high ranking allied commanders in World War II is often credited with inventing the dish using ingredients in American soldiers' ration packs. For this reason Luca Cesari describes it as an 'American dish invented in Italy.' One of the earliest documented instances of a Spaghetti Carbonara recipe is in 'Vittles and Vice' by Patricia Bronte indicating the recipe originated in a Chicago restaurant. But it is also possible that Carbonara existed before the war under a different name."  (Salon)

Although it discusses both Italian and Italian-American foodways, the original story in the FT by Marianna Giusti was intended for a British audience. Therefore, expectations about Italian food are very different in the minds of her readers than they would be in an American audience. Her interview subject, Alberto Grandi, in fact, writes and podcasts for Italian readers/listeners, not for Americans OR Brits! To clarify this, the analysis in Salon points out:

"The United Kingdom has a very different relationship to Italian food than Americans have. The United States has literally millions of Italians come to the country between 1880 and 1940. It has become a huge part of American culture — but it's also tied to that time and place where and when these people came to the United States. Italians come to America today and if they end up working at an Italian American restaurant they are cooking dishes that have little connection to what they knew in Italy, but it is very American. In the United Kingdom, the relationship has been different. Italians had free movement to the island when it was a member of the EU. And this happened across all of Europe — Italians moved to those countries and brought with them contemporary Italian cuisine. That food is very different from Italian American cuisine or even contemporary American-Italian cuisine." (Salon)

Both articles are very clear on how extremely recent are many supposedly ancient Italian food traditions and the current insistence on correctness in recipes and ingredients. Giusti concludes:

"Indeed it’s hard to imagine that people who survived the second world war eating chestnuts, as my grandfather did, would be concerned about using pork jowl instead of pork belly in a pasta recipe. Or as Grandi puts it, 'Their "tradition" was trying not to starve.'  (Financial Times)

La Corte, Giusti, and their interview subjects offer lots of fun facts about Italian and Italian-American foods and about frequently repeated myths and fallacies on the subject of Italian cuisine. My summary only includes a very small number of the interesting details. The highly politicized atmosphere of Italy today also causes food to be a political issue, and the FT article has quite a bit on this subject, which I haven't touched. Whether you think you know about Italian food or not, if you are a fan of food history, you should  check out the two articles.

I love Italian food! Anywhere!

On a trip to Sicily in 2007, we were delighted by the food we ate, especially fresh fish.
Many Italian dishes can’t be duplicated because Mediterranean fish from day boats
are unavailable except at the docks and local markets.

— SOURCE

At a restaurant where we ate in Sicily: presumably authentic.

Authentic Italian-American food from St. Louis, my native town: “Toasted Ravioli.”
Along with pizza, one of my first-ever Italian foods that I tried when I was in high school.
On a trip to St.Louis a few years ago, I ate this memory-jogging dish and took this photo.

Ottolenghi, a London restaurateur and cookbook author, invented this version of cacio e pepe.
 I’ve made it. It’s good! Photo from Ottolenghi’s website.

Trader Joe’s Ravioli. Product of Italy.
Made for dinner this week. I love it!

Tiramisu at a restaurant in Fairfax, VA, 2015.

Costco Tiramisu: totally American? No, made in Italy.
I love it too.

 

Blog post © 2023 mae sander.