marble from the Apuan Alps to the Ligurian mortars
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT basil pesto and never dared ASK
second episode
But what lies in the success of the pesto sauces than the "sisters"? Certainly in being held as a sauce for pasta - and Genoa will be a chance that (along with Sicily) since the Middle Ages is positioned as the most important reality for the Mediterranean trade of the food in question, originally "created" by the Arabs? Liguria, "port" where the sun and the wind never fails to help the drying process, to trade it in fact became one of the leading manufacturers, the '500 fidelari of being an economic power (the pasta anywhere in aggregate corporations, vermicelli, lasagnari ... to share the huge costs and outpace the bakers).
In the first half of the shift takes place. Decreases (to disappear) the vinegar, the cheese seems (and here someone might consider the Moretum **, flavored cheese that Roman Apicius, the Culinary Institute of the Imperial era, embellished with fresh herbs, but the " link threatens the conceptual boldness).
All witnessed by the many recipes that - since the mid-nineteenth century - send us the recipes first "wired" for the use of pesto as a sauce for pasta. It provides confirmation of the reputation "daily" pesto also popular literature of the time: a poem of thirty-three-priest Michael Pedevilla polygraph Louis (1815-1877), a Balilla fumantino says that will not go in Puerto Rico in search of pies and flour, or "... pe Vedda ago or pesto to death," probably widespread use. About pasta shapes, you say the cult of yesterday and today: lasagna, picagge (are large fettuccine) trenette (are bibs, linguini), gnocchi (troff), queens ... but taking in mind that the egg would not like pesto.
reading recipe books in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, cook the Rat (1863), the "excessive" cook Rossi (1865) until the close of Lean Cuisine Dellepiane (1880) - and blessed is he who came into possession of the synthesis (1910) by Imre Calvetti! - Provides significant information on the pesto of yesteryear. First, the obligation to seasonality: the pesto was an exclusive pleasure of summer, at least until publication of the basil in the greenhouse (1870 - 1880). The methods used to conserve the precious time herb - dried, salted and oil - in fact, do not lend themselves to the preparation of the sauce, less favorable in the months that was often prepared with the addition of other herbs. Those who are now appalled at the mention of the butter in the recipe of Rape should be noted that in many areas of the region (mainly internal) olive oil brought a rarity and cost, unfortunately, well known, is acted with parsimony, drug dispensing. Same goes for the cheese: pair of fat used to bind the mixture, was also chosen on the basis of affordability and availability. Here, then, the use of prescinseua (curd) in the Levant, and still affordable pecorino cheese, Dutch Gouda, the cheeses "anonymous" produced by many farmers in Liguria ... The pine nuts were a "dear" utopia, sometimes even absent, often supplemented (if not replaced) by the domestic nuts (remember, indebted to Fred Plotkin, in the Arab world that the presence of oily nuts in sauces used very commonly, and centuries Genoa has had trade and trade with the Mediterranean ...). Even the Genoese
nutritionist Piroddi Lorenzo (1911-1999), author in 1993 of Mediterranean cuisine, offers a surprisingly little pesto on the whole true, because of the presence - as the real intruders - leaf parsley and pepper. From
always, necessity is the mother of invention - in the kitchen. To the housekeepers the hinterland to the pesto for example, two major actors, symbols of simple cooking and "reinforced" in mountain areas: the potatoes (when Father Michael Dondero in the '700 'Sdogati "...), which increased the yield of pulp, and chestnut flour which effectively replace large percentage of flour most noble. "What is it, when there" was the pragmatic dogma of an era that now seems very remote, based on principles of seasonality, energy, creativity and - undoubtedly - the search for aromatic pleasure.
Louise Puppo, Director of the Italian Association IEA Etnogastronomi
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