Ed, my first reaction was that this piece might be a bit too esoteric for some of your readers, having waded into Grandi myself, but, silly me, apparently that is not the case. By way of background, I am an expat dual citizen (Italian and American), now a permanent resident of Italia. I have had homes here in the Piemonte and in Puglia for 24 years. I waded through too many pages of Grandi before pushing his writing aside. He is an exemplar of the narcissistic, self-promotional Italian male perhaps best realized in Silvio Berlusconi and found even in Slow Food's Carlo Petrini on a bad day! Give Grandi credit for getting one hell of a ride out of a single fundamental truth: there is indeed no such thing as "Italian food". Never has been, never will be. There is Italian LOCAL and REGIONAL food, along with a handful of ingredients that have become national and universal in scope, such as Parmigiano-Reggiano (and good on you for pointing out that even it comes in widely variant types and qualities, based upon breed of cow and even the season of the milking and the age of the cheese) and prosciutti di Parma and San Daniele. That's it. The Italian people are shockingly xenophobic when it comes to food. Many would be tempted to starve to death if put on an exclusive diet of French or German food, and a cultured 76-year-old Pugliese friend had no idea what I was talking about when I suggested chicken piccata for dinner. And the bigotry can be just as powerful when applied to other regional Italian cuisines as it is when applied to the cuisines of other nations. The xenophobia is rooted in the ancient concept of "campanilismo", which, reduced to its essence, holds that anyone who lives beyond the hearing of the bell in one's own bell tower is a stranger. That concept of locality is most often applied with vigor to foods and dishes. I can still recall having purchased some particularly fine honey at the Saturday market in Alba years ago, and I shared my joy with my Italian friends. The reaction? "Yes, we know her. She is not from around here." It was true. She was from the countryside 12km away!!! And I agree with Nancy that Il Signor Grandi might need to visit Puglia, where the economy has been based upon olive oil forever, and butter and lard are virtually unknown. (Indeed, I have to bootleg my butter in from Brittany and Normandy! :) )
Thank you for providing further perspective on the regional-local nature of Italian food. I might have stressed it more, but I wanted to particularly address Grandi's most repeated extreme claims, which were also the ones I could respond to most easily with facts.
Grandi’s recipe to boost his own stock is working. We recently had pasta carbonara at a restaurant called La Carbonara on Campo de Fiori in Rome, and the waiter was very upset about “some stupid FT interview” suggesting that pasta carbonara was an American dish.
Ed, thank you so much for this. I have restocked your post (I'm not sure what that means but I did it anyway) and also mentioned Paul Bertolli's discussion, a little more generous to Grandi I think. As I commented on Paul's page, my own sense is that Grandi is pretty much a blowhard who is creating a name for himself as the Bad Boy of La Cucina Italiana. I can assure you (and Grandi) that no one, NO ONE, in Italy was lighting lamps with olive oil 50 years ago which was around the time that I bought an abandoned farm in a poor mountainous region of eastern Tuscany. Possibly during the time of Imperial Rome, yes, and olio lampante, really bad rancid poorly madeolive oil, was used as an all-purpose machine oil but oil for the table was a treasured ingredient, even though in "my" mountains lard (not lardo but strutto) was used for frying. As for pasta, again, I think Grandi simply doesn't know what he's talking about and is trying to be provocative, nothing more. As you've pointed out, there is plenty of evidence for the use of pasta and its importance. But I am ranting and I probably should, like you, go back to the sources and cite some examples. Which I shall do in the next couple of weeks for sure. As for pizza, I don't agree that it's an American "invention"--there's too much evidence otherwise, but that it was a major Thing in Napoli, there is no doubt. It's possible that, somewhat like tiramisù and sun-dried tomatoes and limoncello, a Thing from an obscure or unheralded place in Italy got picked up by Americans, popularized, and brought back to Italy. More on that later. Sorry to run on at the mouth.
Thank you! It's hard to understand how Grandi could be so unmoored from truth and making a career out of it. I looked a little at his published academic work, and I have the impression that it's more cautious than his books for the public and interviews.
Ed, my first reaction was that this piece might be a bit too esoteric for some of your readers, having waded into Grandi myself, but, silly me, apparently that is not the case. By way of background, I am an expat dual citizen (Italian and American), now a permanent resident of Italia. I have had homes here in the Piemonte and in Puglia for 24 years. I waded through too many pages of Grandi before pushing his writing aside. He is an exemplar of the narcissistic, self-promotional Italian male perhaps best realized in Silvio Berlusconi and found even in Slow Food's Carlo Petrini on a bad day! Give Grandi credit for getting one hell of a ride out of a single fundamental truth: there is indeed no such thing as "Italian food". Never has been, never will be. There is Italian LOCAL and REGIONAL food, along with a handful of ingredients that have become national and universal in scope, such as Parmigiano-Reggiano (and good on you for pointing out that even it comes in widely variant types and qualities, based upon breed of cow and even the season of the milking and the age of the cheese) and prosciutti di Parma and San Daniele. That's it. The Italian people are shockingly xenophobic when it comes to food. Many would be tempted to starve to death if put on an exclusive diet of French or German food, and a cultured 76-year-old Pugliese friend had no idea what I was talking about when I suggested chicken piccata for dinner. And the bigotry can be just as powerful when applied to other regional Italian cuisines as it is when applied to the cuisines of other nations. The xenophobia is rooted in the ancient concept of "campanilismo", which, reduced to its essence, holds that anyone who lives beyond the hearing of the bell in one's own bell tower is a stranger. That concept of locality is most often applied with vigor to foods and dishes. I can still recall having purchased some particularly fine honey at the Saturday market in Alba years ago, and I shared my joy with my Italian friends. The reaction? "Yes, we know her. She is not from around here." It was true. She was from the countryside 12km away!!! And I agree with Nancy that Il Signor Grandi might need to visit Puglia, where the economy has been based upon olive oil forever, and butter and lard are virtually unknown. (Indeed, I have to bootleg my butter in from Brittany and Normandy! :) )
Thank you for providing further perspective on the regional-local nature of Italian food. I might have stressed it more, but I wanted to particularly address Grandi's most repeated extreme claims, which were also the ones I could respond to most easily with facts.
Grandi’s recipe to boost his own stock is working. We recently had pasta carbonara at a restaurant called La Carbonara on Campo de Fiori in Rome, and the waiter was very upset about “some stupid FT interview” suggesting that pasta carbonara was an American dish.
Ed, thank you so much for this. I have restocked your post (I'm not sure what that means but I did it anyway) and also mentioned Paul Bertolli's discussion, a little more generous to Grandi I think. As I commented on Paul's page, my own sense is that Grandi is pretty much a blowhard who is creating a name for himself as the Bad Boy of La Cucina Italiana. I can assure you (and Grandi) that no one, NO ONE, in Italy was lighting lamps with olive oil 50 years ago which was around the time that I bought an abandoned farm in a poor mountainous region of eastern Tuscany. Possibly during the time of Imperial Rome, yes, and olio lampante, really bad rancid poorly madeolive oil, was used as an all-purpose machine oil but oil for the table was a treasured ingredient, even though in "my" mountains lard (not lardo but strutto) was used for frying. As for pasta, again, I think Grandi simply doesn't know what he's talking about and is trying to be provocative, nothing more. As you've pointed out, there is plenty of evidence for the use of pasta and its importance. But I am ranting and I probably should, like you, go back to the sources and cite some examples. Which I shall do in the next couple of weeks for sure. As for pizza, I don't agree that it's an American "invention"--there's too much evidence otherwise, but that it was a major Thing in Napoli, there is no doubt. It's possible that, somewhat like tiramisù and sun-dried tomatoes and limoncello, a Thing from an obscure or unheralded place in Italy got picked up by Americans, popularized, and brought back to Italy. More on that later. Sorry to run on at the mouth.
Thank you! It's hard to understand how Grandi could be so unmoored from truth and making a career out of it. I looked a little at his published academic work, and I have the impression that it's more cautious than his books for the public and interviews.
Meant to say I have re-stacked your post, not restocked it!
Great fun read.