How to fall down a research rabbit hole in one easy episode of Searching for Italy

 

Toto, I don't think we're in Florence anymore

Where it all started

So, here's the thing. My persona and this blog are generally focused on Florence, because reasons, but I'm feeling a little pilgrimage further North for my persona coming on. And you can blame actor Stanley Tucci for this, because he went and did an episode of his show in Emilia-Romagna that featured a regional specialty and I had to have it. 

Which meant I had to find a recipe for it. Which meant that the provenance of this recipe was mentioned and something something late 16th century. Which means that now I have to research food from the region (which includes Lombardy, as it happens. OH WOE. WOE IS ME.), which is glorious because - unlike most of the rest of the peninsula - its key ingredients are butter, rice, and polenta, rather than olive oil and wheat.

The recipe that has kicked this pilgrimage off, pictured above, is pizzoccheri, a dish made with buckwheat pasta, potato, cabbage and cheese. This is intriguing, to me, not just because I'm always on the lookout for non-wheat pasta solutions, but also because the mixture of pasta, cabbage and potato feels very Germanic to me. Which brings up a lot of questions about food in alpine regions (which this area broadly is). And led to me wondering what people in these parts did for polenta before the introduction of maize from the New World (which happened right about this time). And what other historic food traditions I might uncover that also involve butter, buckwheat and cheese.

In my cursory jog around the internet...

...I learned that pizzoccheri is mentioned in Category of Inventories of Things that May be Eaten in Italy by Ortensio Lando, a 16th c writer who was fairly prolific and - like so many of his contemporaries - had opinions. I also learned that this book is difficult to find, but it is now a personal mission to do so.

...I learned that buckwheat was introduced to Europe from (likely) Asia well before the 17th century, so that's awesome.

...I learned that buckwheat was used for polenta (along with rye and spelt) in the middle ages and early renaissance in this region, and probably also elsewhere in Europe for porridge. No word on other pastas in period, though.

...I learned that fontina isn't readily available at my local grocery, and this is very vexing.

As I dive more deeply

So, I have more digging to do. Maybe there's something like Scappi's Opera, but for Milan or Bologna. Or something other than a Tourismo website with spurious historic claims. Time will tell. I have asked an historic foodie friend if she knows of anything, and I will be pestering my Librarian friends about tracking down a copy of Lando's treatise. This may lead to a load of R&D on pasta + cabbage dishes of the middle ages and renaissance, which can honestly only work out well for everyone. 

And then maybe Marcella will need to go on an extended trip to visit a cousin in the Alps, or something, because I feel like this stuff is the renaissance soul food I didn't know that I needed. And, since you're asking: yes, I made pizzoccheri, and it kind of changed my life.

Any tips on resources for food in Alpine Italy and the greater Lombardy area? Drop them in the comments!