Cosa Bolle in Pentola?
The Italian diet, pasta with salmon & pasta e fagioli.

On The Italian Diet, Then

I’ve been thinking a lot about eating lately, perhaps because I’ve decided it’s time to go on a diet, and this leads to some thoughts on diet in general. If you look at photographs of well-to-do Italians from the turn of the century, they look quite fit -- trim, vigorous, and very much like modern Italians, albeit in old clothes.

The poor were thin too, but for a very different reason, as I discovered when I researched “Through the Kitchen Window,” an article I wrote for the Journal of Gastronomy on the picture of 1900s Italy that emerges from Pellegrino Artusi’s Scienza in Cucina (which I subsequently translated as The Art of Eating Well, Random House). Put simply, they didn’t have much of anything to eat.

Armida Ferri, a friend who grew up in the country south of Siena during the teens, really didn’t want to answer when I asked her what she ate as a child. When prodded she finally replied, “Not much.” Further questioning revealed that her family subsisted mostly on greens. Mr. Cherubini, a retired country-born baker whose eyes would light up at the memory gathering with friends to eat plain boiled potatoes, told me his family (7 people) ate two pounds of soup meat per week, on Sunday. Other than that they ate beans, potatoes, and greens; they had chickens, but sold both the eggs and the birds. And he says they were well off. Compared to city poor they probably were, since they had access to a vegetable garden. Elisabetta’s grandfather was born in 1903 on our street in San Frediano, one of the working class neighborhoods of Florence. At that time the storefronts across the street from us hosted a tripe boiler, and every day people came to fill their flasks with tripe broth, which they used to flavor bread or rice. Those who couldn't afford to buy the finished product could at least enjoy its flavor.

Tuscany was, according to Pasquale Villari (a senator from Naples who championed agrarian reform in the late 1800s), relatively well off, because the farmers leased their farms and could afford to grow vegetable plots that then went to feed the general population as well. To the north and south, however, the system was based on sharecropping, with the farmers producing what best suited the landowner, and buying whatever was cheapest with their meager wages (corn for polenta in the north, and breads and legumes in the south). What this all means is that before World War Two a large segment of the Italian population rarely if ever saw meat, while many more ate it once a week if that.

Artusi himself touches upon this problem a couple of times, once mentioning a dish can only be made in a “great house, that is to say one where meat is served every day…”, and again in discussing bean soup, which he begins with, “People say, and it's true, that beans are the meat of the poor man. Indeed, if, in feeling around in his pocket, a worker unhappily realizes he doesn't have enough to buy a piece of meat sufficient to make a soup for his family, he will find in beans a healthy, nutritious, and inexpensive alternative. And there's more: beans stay with you for a long time, stifling the pangs of hunger...”

Given all this, one suddenly understands why the upper class ideal of physical beauty in 1900 pretty much matches the modern Italian ideal, whereas the poor valued weight, finding joy in Rubensesque proportions, until well into the 1950s -- simply being overweight was a statement of wealth, because one could afford to buy enough food to get that way. Fortunately (or perhaps in my case alas) the economic boom of the 1960s improved the general diet to the point that nobody sees the need to cultivate weight. Quite the contrary; Italians are tremendously figure conscious, and gyms fill up in the spring as people of both sexes work to shed the winter poundage so they’ll look their best when they hit the beaches in summer. I should have been born a century ago…

To eat Pasta e Fagioli, which Carolyn wrote asking for a few days ago:

• 1 1/2 cups dried cannellini beans, or about 2 1/2 cups fresh (if you’re using dried beans, soak them for several hours)
• 1 clove of garlic, whole
• The leaves from a sprig of rosemary, minced
• 1/4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 ounces pancetta or prosciutto
• 1/4 pound good quality dried pasta (small elbows, or half-inch long, quarter-inch diameter rings)
• Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup croutons (you can make these yourself by dicing a slice of Tuscan bread and frying the pieces in the oil; see below).

Cook the beans in 7 cups water, with the pancetta, garlic, and salt to taste until done -- they should be quite soft.

Remove the beans from the pot with a slotted spoon, reserving the liquid. Pass the beans through a foodmill and back into the pot. Simmer the mixture until it is a creamy velvety texture; while this is happening you can prepare your croutons by dicing a slice of bread and sautéing the pieces in the oil for 3-4 minutes. Remove the croutons to an absorbent sheet, and lightly sauté the rosemary in the oil, then stir the oil-and-rosemary mix into the pot.

Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper, and cook the pasta in it until it is al dente. Correct seasoning, let the soup rest covered for a few minutes, and in the meantime divvy up the croutons into the bowls. Ladle the soup into the bowls and serve.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

This is a mixture of my recipe for plain bean soup (on the hearty soups page) and Bugialli’s Passato di fagioli (in The Fine Art of Italian Cooking).

Shannon, instead, wrote asking for a recipe for pasta with smoked salmon. Since this is one of the standard Valentine’s Day recipes (the versions printed are often aimed at men) I expected to find one on the Internet. Alas, though I did find several, they were quite elaborate, and almost all involved shrimp, which I find superfluous if the salmon is good. So here is a recipe, off the top of my head, based on a dish of pasta I had many years ago at Il Pantheon, in Rome.

To serve 2:

• 1/2 pound pasta, either penne or a strip variety such as linguine.
• 1/4 to 1/3 pound thinly sliced smoked salmon, shredded
• 1/2 a shallot, thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• A sprinkling of good vodka, brandy, or whisky (whichever you prefer, about a tablespoon)
• 1/2 cup whipping cream (unwhipped)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon minced parsley
• Optional: several leaves finely shredded radicchio (arugola); stir them in with the salmon

Bring the pasta water to a boil and salt it; in the meantime prepare the other ingredients. Cooking the sauce will take 5-7 minutes, so check the cooking time of the pasta and begin the sauce about 8 minutes before the pasta will be ready.

Start by sautéing the shallot in the butter until it wilts, then add the salmon and cook a minute or so more, stirring, until it lightens in color. Sprinkle in the liquor (vodka will add a crisper note, and brandy a slightly sweeter one), stir until it is evaporated, and stir in the cream. Heat through, check seasoning, and it’s ready; sprinkle the parsley over it at the very end, just before you use it to sauce the pasta.

This is, as I said, off the top of my head; feel free to vary the proportions to suit your taste.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Thanks for visiting, and have a wonderful day!
Kyle Phillips

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