On The Importance of Exercise

One of the advantages of self publishing is that you can print what you want. Pellegrino Artusi took full advantage of this liberty when he wrote La Scienza in Cucina e L’Arte di Mangiar Bene, and his tangents are one of the major reasons his book continues to sell briskly more than a century after its initial publication. They’re fun.

They’re also one of the major reasons Peter Smith, an editor at Random House, decided to publish my translation of Artusi a couple of years ago. Unfortunately he found himself faced with too much of a good thing. The original 790 recipe manuscript was close to a thousand pages long, and though we did try to save the tangents in paring The Art of Eating Well down to a more manageable size, some gems slipped through the cracks.

One of my favorites is on the value of good food and healthy living, from Artusi’s introduction:

The principal functions of life are two: feeding and the propagation of the species. Let us hope that this observation may meet with agreement, though it doesn't render honor to the efforts of those who study the needs of existence, suggesting ways to best satisfy them, make life itself less forbidding, and improve the lot of humanity.

The meaning of these few lines, which formed the preface to the third edition, was better stated in a letter sent to me by the most excellent poet Lorenzo Stecchetti, which I am pleased to quote.

"The human species," he says, "survives only because man has the instinct of self preservation and reproduction, and does his utmost to satisfy both. A pleasure must always accompany the fulfillment of a need; the sense of taste accompanies the need for self preservation, while the sense of touch accompanies that for reproduction. If men did not desire food or feel sexual desire, the species would come to an end forthwith.

"The senses of taste and touch are therefore the senses most necessary, nay, indispensable to the life of the individual and the species. The others are a help; one can survive blind or deaf, but not without the sense of taste.

"How is it therefore that, in the ranking of the senses, the two most important to life and its propagation are valued least? Why is it that that which satisfies the other senses, painting, music, etc., is considered art, while that which satisfies taste is disparaged? Why is the person who enjoys the sight of a good painting or the sound of a good symphony held to be better than one who finds pleasure in eating good food? Are there therefore such marked inequalities among the senses too, that those who work have one shirt, while those that do not have two?

"It must be because of the tyranny of the brain over all the other organs of the body. At the time of Menenius, Agrippa dominated the stomach; now he no longer serves, or, at best, serves poorly. Among the many who overwork their brains, is there one who digests well? It's all nerves, nervousness, and neuroses, while the height, chest measurements, strength, and reproductive capacity decline daily in this race of wise men and artists, who are full of genius and rickets, delicacy and glands, who do not feed themselves, but rather maintain their liveliness and vigor with coffee, alcohol, and morphine. Thus, the senses directed towards cerebration are held to be more noble than those directed towards preservation, and by now it is time to overturn this unjust sentence.

"Hail, holy bicycle, who makes us feel the joy of a robust appetite and spite the decadent and fallen, who dream of chlorosis (a form of anemia), tabes (consumption), and the gewgaws of ideal art! Out doors, in the fresh clean air, to make our blood red and build our muscles! Let us not be ashamed of eating the best there is, and returning gastronomy to its rightful place. Finally, even the tyrant brain will gain, and this nerve-sick society will at last understand that, in the field of art, a discussion on the preparation of eel is as important as a dissertation on Beatrice's smile.

"Man does not live by bread alone, this is true. One also needs its accompaniments, and I declare and repeat that the art of making them more economical, more wholesome, and better tasting is a true art. Let us rehabilitate the sense of taste, and not be ashamed of satisfying it honestly, as best we can, according to the suggestions she provides."

While there has been some progress in the past century, especially with regards to exercise, Julia Child recently commented (paraphrasing here), “Some people say that cooking requires a tremendous amount of effort for something transient. To which I reply, ‘So does the ballet.’”

Food appreciation still has a ways to go.

Linguine al Limone e Zenzero, Linguine with Lemon and Ginger

Moving onto other things, when I moved to Florence in 1982 fresh ginger root was extremely difficult to come by, and one time I found it in Florence’s central market (a beautiful wrought-iron building behind San Lorenzo that’s well worth a visit) the woman at the stall asked me what it was for. When I replied Chinese cooking, she asked me if I was Chinese – though I’ve been mistaken for German many times that was a first.

Since then there has been a flood of Oriental immigration (primarily Chinese and Philippino, though there are some other groups as well), and now it’s easy to find Oriental ingredients, including ginger root, in supermarkets. I’ve often wondered how it might be adapted to Italian cooking, especially since the top chefs don’t seem to mention it, at least not in their articles in cooking magazines. So I was quite pleased to find a recipe from Teresa De Masi (see Migliaccio alla Napoletana and Gnocchi alla Sorrentina) on the It.Hobby.Cucina Newsgroup a few weeks ago, which she posted in response to a person who had a surfeit of fresh lemons:

“Now then… Begin by washing the lemon, whose skin should be untreated, quite well. Next, use a thin-bladed paring knife to trim off just the yellow part of the zest, and cut it into thin strips (if you’re lazy, like me, you can purchase a lemon peeler, which gets the job done in a jiffy, and makes making lemoncino, a tasty liqueur, a snap).

“Set a glass [about 1/2 cup I’d think] of white wine to heat in a pot with a peeled piece of ginger, add the julienned lemon zest and a pinch of salt, cover, and simmer for a few minutes. In the meantime lightly beat 4 tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of the lemon in a bowl, with a couple of finely sliced cloves of garlic, lots of minced parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Drain the lemon zest and add it to the rest of the sauce. Cover the bowl and put it in a cool place, stirring it every now and then. Come mealtime, cook your linguine, pour the sauce over them, dust them with a little freshly grated ginger, and serve.”

Good Food & Drink,
Kyle Phillips

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Olindo Guerrini (1845 -- 1916) was, among other things, the librarian of the University of Bologna, and, under the pen name of Lorenzo Stecchetti, an eclectic and prolific writer. In 1877 he published a collection of poems entitled Postuma (Posthumous), attributing them to a cousin who'd died of consumption. The book comments scathingly upon the political issues of the times, such as sending farmers to struggle and die in Colonial Africa rather than practice agrarian reforms at home, and casts a penetrating glance at the social customs as well. It raised a scandal and was immediately attacked as erotic and blasphemous; more recently people have decided it's enjoyable.

Dante met Beatrice, whose real name was Bice di Folco Portinari, in 1274; though they didn't marry (he bowed to his family's wishes and became engaged with Gemma Donati in 1277, marrying her in 1295), she remained one of his principal sources of inspiration.

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Translations & photos © Kyle Phillips.