So, about that whole pizzoccheri situation
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| Un breve catalogo of good things to eat |
Right. A couple of ::checks watch:: years ago, I was watching my good friend* Stanley Tucci roam around Italy and eat things, which is where I learned about pizzoccheri for the first time. This kicked off a slow, rambling dig for more information about pizzoccheri the dish, pizzoccheri the pasta, buckwheat in northern Italy, and general 16th century food culture in the Piemonte and Lombard regions of Italy, which has led to a lot of vague, hand-wavy statements** and very few citations to follow up on, but I've been chipping away at it, here and there, when I remember and as time allows.
* Note: I have never met Stanley Tucci (yet), and we are not friends (yet) - in case his lawyers see this.
** You'll hear me say this a lot. Imagine it in your head with me sounding very annoyed, because I absolutely am.
Progress has been made
Finally, after much searching and gnashing of teeth at the absolute unwillingness of people to cite their goddamned sources, someone mentioned Ortensio Lando's Catalogo de gli inventori delle cose che si mangiano & si beveno (pictured above) as the first time pizzoccheri was mentioned. It's in print, easily available and inexpensive, so of course I got a copy. It's all in Italian, though - even the more recent editorial footnotes - so that meant scanning the entire second part (that's the food part, not the monsters part) for any instance of 'pizzoccheri,' so I knew which specific bit to translate, which was this bit here:
|| Meluzza Comasca was the inventor of eating lasagna, macheroni with garlic, spices and cacio (cheese); she also invented eating formentini, lasagnuole, pinzoccheri, vivaruolo. She died [Morì di ponta]* and was buried honourably for her inventions.
* The footnote for 'Morì di ponta' only refers to Berenice (daughter of Ptolemy II of Egypt and second wife of the Seleucid king Antiochus), who pissed off the first wife, Laodice, and was subsequently killed at Laodice's command, which apparently started the Third Syrian War in 246 bce, and what this has to do with the death of a woman who invented cheesy lasagne I have no idea but here we are.
Speaking of footnotes, the one for pinzoccheri, the dish in question, has this to say:
|| Pizzoccheri, grosse tagliatelle scure ottenute da un impasto di farina di frumento e di grano saraceno; sono tipiche della Valtellina e usano ancora oggi condite con abbondante burro e formaggio.
|| Pizzoccheri, large dark noodles made from a dough of wheat and buckwheat flour; they are typical of the Valtellina region and are still used today topped with plenty of butter and cheese.
What we know
The first round of vague, hand-wavy statements are about buckwheat. Obviously it was being used for pasta in the 16th century, which is lovely, but nobody seems to know exactly when it was introduced to the region - I've seen everything from the 12th to the 15th century, which is good enough for now, but I'll keep poking around for a more definitive date and extent of cultivation.
The next round of vague, hand-wavy statements are about the original dish. Apparently it's been noted somewhere (that obviously everyone knows about so why mention the source? ::shakes fist at sky::) that Signora Meluzza combined the noodles with butter, cheese, garlic and 'vegetables.' Now, a recipe for the current version of this 'traditional' dish can be reliably dated to the end of the 18th century, and uses chard or cabbage (or green beans, apparently, if it's Summer), but also potatoes.
And potatoes, as we know, are very problematic in the pre-16th century food space.
Potatoes were very definitely introduced to Europe in the mid- to late-16th century by Spaniards who brought them back from South America. In spite of not being considered a food for the first wee while, they were very definitely being eaten (mostly by animals and peasants) by the end of the 16th century in northern Europe. Potatoes were also very definitely a crop in Northern Italy by the end of the 16th century. But here's the thing...
Lando's book was published in 1548, and the first documented case of potatoes in Europe (according to Wikipedia, so it must be true) was in 1570 in Spain, and it took a while after that before people were eating them, so even if potatoes were included in pizzoccheri before the end of the century, they wouldn't have been included in Signora Meluzza's initial recipe.
So, I've solved one thing, but now have more questions (according to tradition). I think it's safe to assume that chard and cabbage (and green beans, apparently, if it's Summer) were included under the 'vegetable' umbrella, but what else? Is this one of those dishes where you just throw in what's available according to the season, or were only specific vegetables used? I'm currently in the 'whatever's in season' camp, but I'll keep looking. Maybe I'll run up against that description that everyone knows about. ::eyeroll::
Meanwhile, my big takeaway, at this point, is that it's a documentably 16th century dish, which was my first goal.
Progress is progress.
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