Oh great goodness of ancient times, one might say, paraphrasing the famous consideration by Ludovico Ariosto in the first canto of Orlando Furioso when speaking of Canavese flatbread from Cortereggio. A name that brings to mind ancient scenes of peasant life, almost out of a scene from the Tree of Clogs, the great elegy of a vanished peasant world magically recreated by Ermanno Olmi. A life made of hard work in the fields, of sacrifices, of ancient rules, of archaic rites, and then of moments of cheerful sharing when we gathered around the village oven to bake bread for home. It was the moment in which the women, taking advantage of the wait, exchanged confidences, stories, commented on the life of the community, confessed their joys and sorrows. The connection with the bread oven that gathered the village around it is not accidental when we speak of the Piattella canavesana, a bean of ancient history, an important testimony of that immense heritage of biodiversity of which Italy is often distracted guardian, which was saved by a hair's breadth from its extinction.
Indeed, every Saturday it was customary since ancient times in the families of the country to cook the beans, the meat of the poor, in terracotta pots that came brought to the community oven, previously used for baking bread and here the beans were slow-cooked for 24 hours together with pork rinds, lard, trotter, onion and herbs to flavor lunches throughout the week. Each family had its own pot, made by the artisans of the nearby town of Castellamonte, known for its ceramic tradition
When families brought pots to bake in the bread oven
As happened in Italy for many other products, legumes in particular, the production of the Canavese bean had been abandoned over time due to cultivation difficulties.
Yet once a Cortereggio, a small village in the Canavese area founded by the Romans in the deep, water-rich soils near the Orco torrent these white, kidney-shaped and rather flat beans grow better than elsewhere with the characteristic that, thanks to the low concentration of calcium in the soil, they develop a very thin skin.
Since they were children, all the inhabitants of Cortereggio dedicated themselves to sowing and harvesting beans in the cornfields, a tradition so deeply rooted that flatbreads had become an important economic resource for this town. Each family had its regular customers who came from all over the Canavese, the money earned was used to buy grapes in Monferrato so much so that, at times, theand clay tiles were used directly as a bargaining chip with the grapes.
Traditionally, they were sown together with the corn, so the bean could screw around the sturdy stem of the corn, which therefore acted as a guardian. When harvesting, they patiently passed between the rows of corn, picking the pods by hand one by one.
Given the difficulty of growing corn and harvesting it, only a few inhabitants have continued to sow it for nostalgic self-consumption, continuing to reproduce the seed in the family and keeping it to this day, in minimal quantities, thus saving it from extinction.
The Slow Food Presidium focuses on the Piattella to redevelop tourism and food and wine in the area
But the holy savior of Piattella is a farmer from Cortereggio, Mario Boggio, who in 1981 had the idea of delivering to the germplasm bank of the University of Turin a few kilograms of beans to preserve the seed.
Then the Slow Food Presidium arrived and turned the spotlight on the humble Canavese bean attracting interest and proposing concrete possibilities for savings. The Presidium set out to recover and promote the Piattella tradition, also involving other local farmers in the future and working with other local bodies to redevelop this lovely corner of Canavese also from a tourist and food and wine point of view.
And a Committee has also been set up for the protection of the Piattella canavesana of Cortereggio, made up of those who have undertaken to sow the bean again, the inhabitants of the small village and friends and sympathizers who want to help bring this bean back to the market.
Even today, the Piattella Canavesana di Cortereggio is harvested by hand, beaten by hand, sorted by hand, put into jars by hand thanks to the hard work of the Cooperative.
The discovery of the formidable nutraceutical properties, included in the menu of the space station led by Samantha Cristoforetti
And then, ironically, the poor bean kept alive only by some nostalgic cultivator, on the way to extinction, has revealed many nutraceutical qualities extraordinary, among which its very low intake of complex sugars is fundamental, to have been inserted in the power supply of the astronauts of the European space mission ISS Expedition 42/43 led by Samantha Cristoforetti, first Italian woman in the crews of the European Space Agency and first European woman commander of the International Space Station who in 2014 achieved the European record and the female record for staying in space in a single flight for six months.
