From Sicily to Friuli Venezia Giulia is a long journey on foot that runs along the entire length of the peninsula mentally away from the neurotic, breathless paths, always struggling with the agony of the ticking of the clock imposed by the rhythms of modern life, what IRene Pellegrini e Barbara Gizzi they propose ne “The taste of walking” – Food and wine itineraries along the Italia Cai path” arriving in bookstores for Slow Food Publisher.
Pellegrini and Gizzi, the former a sociologist of migration and human mobility and environmental hiking guide, the latter an expert in territorial development projects and engaged in mountain destination and project management, to write this book they crossed Italy in search of those who can be defined as "foods of silence”, or the products and gastronomic traditions that have developed far from the hubbub of the society of extreme well-being and – they add with an effective definition – of greed, in search of a world created in millennia of culture, a nomadic world in eternal movement made of exchanges, migrations, conflicts, transhumance, a precious universe full of symbols, myths and rituals. A world in which the most extraordinary gastronomy can also arise from hunger, like the Sicilian couscous, today elevated to a gourmet dish, for centuries rejected by the Sicilian nobility because it was considered too humble to appear on the tables alongside the dishes of the powerful, such as Piedmontese anchovies, born from the ingenuity of shrewd smugglers from the upper Val Maira who, in order not to pay the heavy state gabelles on salt, placed a layer of anchovies on the surface, a very humble food which later became a fundamental ingredient of many Piedmontese haute cuisine dishes; the greek saffron, or Tuscan tortellini with a German accent which has its roots in the last decades of the tenth century when the citizens of the municipality of Corezo, an outpost of the Byzantine defensive line from the Lombard advance, learned from the invaders and made their own the custom of cooking different types of mixtures based on water and flour, a sort of street food that is easily transportable on the go.
The provolone del monaco that was born not in the convent but from the sacks that protected the cheesemakers traveling by sea to Naples at night
And you can continue passing through the Lattari mountains, the granary of the Romans, with the captivating story of Monk's Provolone of ancient, very ancient workmanship, but which owes its name to the demographic and urban explosion that affected Naples, the destination of the Grand tour in the 700th century and which induced the farmers of the countryside to move towards the Lattari Mountains. The distance from the city and the impervious nature of the communication routes forced the cheesemakers to reach Naples by sea at night, when cold and damp, in order not to expose the cheeses to the effects of the sun's rays, the cheesemakers dressed themselves from head to toe with a sack often made of jute, very similar to the monks' habit, so it was that people at the market began to announce the arrival of the monks' provolone. That provolone which today is the basis of one of the most renowned dishes of the Sorrento-Amalfi coast: spaghetti with courgettes from Nerano. And we arrive in the Veneto of the infinite varieties of Tiramisu and then in Trentino Alto Adige for the Gubana one and three, that of the Natisone Valleys, that of Cividale del Friuli, that of Gorizia. Gastronomic stories of the border through which a large part of Italian history has also passed.
Eau de cologne born in France but with Aspromonte Bergamot brought by a Sicilian merchant
But passing through these paths, real niches of a hidden Italy nestled on the borders of abandoned lands or on the margins of spaces clogged by mass tourism, you also discover many other things that go beyond our borders. Like, for example, that theCologne who conquered Europe started from the trees of the bergamot at the foot of the Aspromonte thanks to a Sicilian emigrant, Procopio Dei Coltelli who arrived in Paris at the court of the Sun King had the idea of promoting the intense fragrances of bergamot water, which he had stocked up on during the trip, to combat the fetid miasma caused by epidemics of cholera and plague that beset the Ville Lumiere. The King appreciated it and the perfume industry did the rest. Not only. Procopio also indulged the sovereign's propensity for gluttony by making an ice cream with Bergamot essence, which the King liked so much that he allowed him to open a café in the capital to supply the court with his succulent ice creams. That coffee, the Procope coffee it is still today an unmissable destination for travelers in Paris.
The book by Irene Pellegrini and Barbara Gizzi is an inexhaustible mine of information on the places of choice for identifying food and wine products such as Marsala for its wine, Rome for carbonara, Amatrice for amatriciana, Violet for stock fish, Navelli for the saffron, thanks to a painstaking research work for which in their wanderings they went in search of cooks, hoteliers, farmers, shepherds, hikers, and other witnesses to tell the relationship between travel, hiking and gastronomy. The travel report is a story that tells of migrations, nautical charts, transhumance, mountain passes, merchants, eighteenth-century explorers who then eventually converge on the table.
Eating and walking - the two authors explain - are instinctive needs to which human beings have attributed cultural meanings throughout their history. First he moved to find food, then he started cooking. But this book also invites you to walk to learn about the stories and vicissitudes of an Italy hidden from most but extremely vital.
