Italian food history IS the history of Italy.
It is oven baked , then cut in half horizontally and it Is then baked again in the oven. The looks of the frisella is with one smooth and one rough surface.
Friselle are a staple food that was produced and acclaimed for its long conservation period and was therefore a valid alternative to bread, especially in those periods when flour was scarce.
For the foreign visitor, a villa among the hills surrounded by the rural idyll of nature and the farmers' simple and genuine lifestyle is perhaps the exemplification of all that italian culinary tradition represents.
It is in such places, in facts, that a number of people and friends (both italian and non) go to discover the roots and history of italian food and afterwards give accounts of their experiences with typical italian food.
This is a demonstration that italian gastronomy has nothing to envy to the one of other Countries.
But, why do Italians eat so well?
As it might have become a familiar image to you, also in the Salento tradition, bread baking was done according to a common schedule at shared ovens. Bread could be baked bi-weekly or with an up to more than quarterly frequency, so that the quantity of the dough that a single family (or more families together, even) could amount to up to 200 Kilograms.
Only a small portion of the total quantity was baked in softer bread to be consumed in the very first days, more often than not with the addition of ingredients like pumpkin seeds, olives, onion, is sliceable forms.
So, back on track: today's clich of the villa surrounded by olive trees, with salami and prosciutti everywhere and the farmer diligently looking after these products (I love this image!) have been accurately tailored on the (magnificent) Tuscan countryside.
This image evocates the myth of a lifestyle been built on thousands of small rural traditions and identifies the italian food history as fundamentally linked to the agricultural and the farmers' traditions.
This image has deeply contributed to the prominence that Italy has gained in the panorama of the worldwide gastronomy.
But, is this the reality?
Friselle have a characteristic shape, derived from their production process: they are typically circular and with a hole at their center.
Oven baked twice and cut after the first baking, they always come in pairs as they are nothing else that the two halves of the same form.
A FARMERS' TRADITION?
In Italy, that feeling of nostalgia for the rural lifestyle is a rather recent phenomenon: this impulse towards countryside traditions and way of living has only started after people had well behind their shoulders the difficulties of the rural existence.
Italian history and italian food history has long been marked by the lifestyle of the rural masses: especially in the northern and central regions, the mezzadra (sharecropping) partially preserved farmers from hunger and the hard and grueling fatigues that represented the standard way of living of the rural masses throughout Italy, up to the 1960's.
For these very reasons, it is really difficult to see how this farmers' reality might have contributed to the creation of many of the so called poor dishes in the italian food history, that really nothing poor have in them!
Let's have a quick look at the ingredients: durum wheat and/or barley flour, salt, water, yeastThe dough is manually processed and shaped like a small loaf, spiraled on itself.
Usually put in the oven in trays of no more than 6 to 8 pieces, after the first baking each single fresella is horizontally cut with a thread (a strozzo, choked), giving the surface the typical rough aspect.
The poverty of farmers' diet is still today echoed in many of the proverbs that have been handed down.
One of my favorites is La salsa di San Bernardo fa sembrare i cibi buoni (San Bernard's sauce makes the food taste nice).
This sauce has been one of the main ingredients of the farmers' diet throughout the past millennium and its recipe, thankfully, is only traceable in the memory: that sauce means hunger.
This is the food that we have enjoyed for ages and continue to savor as we carry on the traditions of our past.
The typical way to taste this bread (alla barese) is covered in a layer of olive oil, water, tomato sauce and a drop of wine, then accompanied with small artichokes and lampascioni (tassel hyacinth). This culinary specialty is called in dialect from Bari cialldda (cialda in italian).
It is oven baked , then cut in half horizontally and it Is then baked again in the oven. The looks of the frisella is with one smooth and one rough surface.
Friselle are a staple food that was produced and acclaimed for its long conservation period and was therefore a valid alternative to bread, especially in those periods when flour was scarce.
For the foreign visitor, a villa among the hills surrounded by the rural idyll of nature and the farmers' simple and genuine lifestyle is perhaps the exemplification of all that italian culinary tradition represents.
It is in such places, in facts, that a number of people and friends (both italian and non) go to discover the roots and history of italian food and afterwards give accounts of their experiences with typical italian food.
This is a demonstration that italian gastronomy has nothing to envy to the one of other Countries.
But, why do Italians eat so well?
As it might have become a familiar image to you, also in the Salento tradition, bread baking was done according to a common schedule at shared ovens. Bread could be baked bi-weekly or with an up to more than quarterly frequency, so that the quantity of the dough that a single family (or more families together, even) could amount to up to 200 Kilograms.
Only a small portion of the total quantity was baked in softer bread to be consumed in the very first days, more often than not with the addition of ingredients like pumpkin seeds, olives, onion, is sliceable forms.
So, back on track: today's clich of the villa surrounded by olive trees, with salami and prosciutti everywhere and the farmer diligently looking after these products (I love this image!) have been accurately tailored on the (magnificent) Tuscan countryside.
This image evocates the myth of a lifestyle been built on thousands of small rural traditions and identifies the italian food history as fundamentally linked to the agricultural and the farmers' traditions.
This image has deeply contributed to the prominence that Italy has gained in the panorama of the worldwide gastronomy.
But, is this the reality?
Friselle have a characteristic shape, derived from their production process: they are typically circular and with a hole at their center.
Oven baked twice and cut after the first baking, they always come in pairs as they are nothing else that the two halves of the same form.
A FARMERS' TRADITION?
In Italy, that feeling of nostalgia for the rural lifestyle is a rather recent phenomenon: this impulse towards countryside traditions and way of living has only started after people had well behind their shoulders the difficulties of the rural existence.
Italian history and italian food history has long been marked by the lifestyle of the rural masses: especially in the northern and central regions, the mezzadra (sharecropping) partially preserved farmers from hunger and the hard and grueling fatigues that represented the standard way of living of the rural masses throughout Italy, up to the 1960's.
For these very reasons, it is really difficult to see how this farmers' reality might have contributed to the creation of many of the so called poor dishes in the italian food history, that really nothing poor have in them!
Let's have a quick look at the ingredients: durum wheat and/or barley flour, salt, water, yeastThe dough is manually processed and shaped like a small loaf, spiraled on itself.
Usually put in the oven in trays of no more than 6 to 8 pieces, after the first baking each single fresella is horizontally cut with a thread (a strozzo, choked), giving the surface the typical rough aspect.
The poverty of farmers' diet is still today echoed in many of the proverbs that have been handed down.
One of my favorites is La salsa di San Bernardo fa sembrare i cibi buoni (San Bernard's sauce makes the food taste nice).
This sauce has been one of the main ingredients of the farmers' diet throughout the past millennium and its recipe, thankfully, is only traceable in the memory: that sauce means hunger.
This is the food that we have enjoyed for ages and continue to savor as we carry on the traditions of our past.
The typical way to taste this bread (alla barese) is covered in a layer of olive oil, water, tomato sauce and a drop of wine, then accompanied with small artichokes and lampascioni (tassel hyacinth). This culinary specialty is called in dialect from Bari cialldda (cialda in italian).
About the Author:
Many food enthusiasts wanted to know about the history of Italian food. This is because most of them do not simply eat different kinds of foods. They also find some information about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment