Bertoni is my mother’s maiden name. Gioielli is the maiden name of her mother, my grandmother Carmen, who died many years ago.
The Bertonis came from the province of Verona in Veneto, northeastern Italy; the Gioiellis from a southern village near Naples.
I reveal the surnames I do not carry just to rub my place of speech in your noble faces to affirm: Italians are unbearable when it comes to food.
They tear their hair out when someone cuts their spaghetti. They curse and rail against heretics who put pineapple on their pizza.
Then a guy comes along—an Italian, by the way—and writes a book saying that this tradition doesn’t exist. That Italian cuisine has existed for half a century, the result of marketing campaigns and the massive emigration of the paesani.
Alberto Grandi, professor of food history at the University of Parma, had his most famous book recently released in Brazil under the title “As Mentiras da Nonna – Como o Marketing Inventou a Cozinha Italiana” (Todavia).
Italy was born as a country in the 19th century, a time of poverty and famine that forced mass emigration. There was the administrative unification of a culturally fragmented territory. The Gioielli and the Bertoni did not speak the same language and did not recognize each other as compatriots.
It was in the Americas that immigrants, grouped together because of their common passport, forged an Italian identity. This involved cooking, since the new land offered food that they did not have access to at home. Many returned and took their new habits with them.
And it was in the post-war period, more acutely from the 1970s onwards, that Italy invested heavily in the soft power of gastronomy. It rescued obscure traditions and created seals of authenticity for products that, often, had just been introduced to the country.
Grandi mentions Pachino tomatoes, a variety developed by Israeli scientists and planted since the end of the 1980s in Sicily — where it is certified with the PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) of the European Union.
The most controversial case involves spaghetti carbonara, which Grandi claims was created from bacon and eggs brought by American servicemen from the rubble of war-torn Rome.
The author’s examples may be sometimes notorious, sometimes open to question. But, overall, Grandi weaves a solid argument to defend the hypothesis of a recent Italian gastronomy, somewhat manufactured and, despite all this, delicious.
To celebrate the fantastic food of these insufferable liars, here is the recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana, a specialty of Lazio.
BUCATINI AMATRICIANA
Yield: two servings
Ingredients
70 g of bacon or pancetta
Calabrian chili flakes
½ chopped onion (optional)
1 can of peeled tomatoes
200 g bucatini, spaghetti or rigatoni
Salt and black pepper to taste
Grated pecorino cheese
How to do it
Cut the guanciale into cubes or strips. Fry it in its own fat, with cayenne pepper to taste, until golden brown. Drain and set aside.
In the guanciale fat, sauté the onion until soft. Add the tomato and cook for about 15 minutes.
Cook the pasta according to package directions.
Return the guanciale to the sauce just before draining the pasta. Season with salt and pepper. Toss the pasta with the sauce and serve with pecorino.
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