Let the Meatballs Rest: And Other Stories About Food and Culture

163 Pages·2012·1.72 MB·English

by  Massimo Montanari

LET the MEATBALLS REST
and
Other Stories About Food and
Culture
Arts and Traditions of the Table
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE
PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY
ALBERT SONNENFELD, SERIES EDITOR
Salt: Grain of Life, Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader Culture of the Fork, Giovanni
Rebora, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a
Passion,
Jean-Robert Pitte, translated by Jody Gladding Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food,
Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban, translated by Antony Shugar Slow Food: The Case for
Taste, Carlo Petrini, translated by William McCuaig Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History,
Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, translated by Áine O’Healy British Food: An
Extraordinary Thousand Years of History, Colin Spencer A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest
for Food Shaped America,
James E. McWilliams
Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, Madeleine Ferrières, translated by Jody
Gladding Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor,
Hervé This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise Food Is Culture, Massimo Montanari, translated by
Albert Sonnenfeld Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking,
Hervé This, translated by Jody Gladding Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America,
Frederick Douglass Opie Gastropolis: Food and New York City,
edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch Building a Meal: From Molecular
Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, Hervé This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise Eating
History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, Andrew F. Smith The Science of
the Oven, Hervé This, translated by Jody Gladding Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy,
David Gentilcore Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb, Massimo Montanari, translated by
Beth Archer Brombert Food and Faith in Christian Culture, edited by Ken Albals and Trudy Eden
The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking, edited by César
Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden
TRANSLATED BY BETH ARCHER BROMBERT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2009 Gius. Laterza & Figli.
Published by agreement with Marco Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria.
Translation copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-
52788-0
The translation of the work has been funded by SEPS
Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche
Via Val d'Aposa 7
40123 Bologna, Italy
[email protected]—www.seps.it
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Montanari, Massimo, 1949– [Riposo della
polpetta e altre storie intorno al cibo. English]
Let the meatballs rest, and other stories about food and culture /
Massimo Montanari; translated by Beth Archer Brombert pages cm Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15732-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-52788-0 (ebook) 1. Cooking—
History. 2. Cooking—Philosophy. 3. Food habits—History.
4. Food habits—Philosophy. I. Title.
TX645.M6613 2012
641.5—dc23 2012021330
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author
nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since
the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Things and Ideas
Being and eating / The invention of bread / Our daily bread / Festive bread / Bread unites or
divides? / Divide meat, share soup / Form and substance (discussion around a plate of pasta)
2. The Status of Foods
Esau’s lentils, or how farmers defeated hunters / Flour from spelt / “Inferior” grains? / Liquid bread:
from ale to beer / The stench of garlic / The king’s peas (and the peasant’s too) / The potato, from
emergency food to culinary specialty / The eggplant, food of plebeians or Jews / The bread tree /
The peaches of Messer Lippo / Five hundred pears / To die for a melon / Strawberries in
November / Watermelons and cucumbers / Sweet as a fig
3. Adventures in Cooking
From raw to cooked (and back) / The prefect recipe / Cappelletti and tortellini: the retro-taste of
history / Macaroni, or is it gnocchi? / The patient took some broth / The invention of fried potatoes
/ Among the thousand ways to prepare eggs / Fritters / Don’t flip the frittata / Sausages / Pink
pigs, black pigs / Liberating vegetarian cooking / Dressing a salad / The blender and the mortar /
Mediterranean “fusion” / Home cooking: when variation is the rule / Cooking is home
4. The Gastronomy of Hunger
Nameless plants / Field herbs / Forgotten fruits, or rediscovered? / The struggle against time /
Diversity as a resource / Bread of earth / The right to pleasure / Rivers of milk and giant tomatoes
5. Flavors
Flavor and knowledge / How many flavors are there? / A longing for sweet / Sweet and/or salty /
Bitter to the taste / When sour was fashionable / The taste for spices (and hot pepper) / The taste
of smoke / How chocolate became sweet / The taste of canned foods
6. Pleasure and Health
“What tastes good is good for you” / The law of opposites, between kitchen and pharmacy /
Watermelon, salt and pepper / Monthly diets / The language of the navel / Fat, meaning meat /
“Indigestion does not bother peasants” / The lightness of the monk / When pleasure frightens /
Monastic gastronomy / Philosophizing gluttony
7. The Beautiful and the Good
The making of colors / White or red? / Carrot red / Culinary artifices / Compositions and compotes
/ Confetti (sugarcoated almonds, spices, etc.) / Beauty is not a superfluous benefit
8. Convivial Rituals
The call of the wild (around the barbecue) / A masculine ritual / Rucola in the White House /
Christmas dinner / A hundred cappelletti / Carnival and Lent / Lenten diet, gastronomic
discoveries / Easter eggs / Breakfast / When snacking kills the snack / Silence, we’re eating /
Eating on the highway / Fast food and conviviality
9. Table Practices and Manners
The fork and the hands / The missing cutlery / The pot on the table / First or second? / The wheel
of food / To pour, to mix: when wine was made by the imbider / The ancient art of pairing wine with
food / How to taste wine (without making an ass of oneself) / Cold drinks
10. “Identity” Declined in the Plural
Spaghetti with tomato sauce, or the other in us / Pasta and the Italians: a single and multiple
identity / Macaroni-eaters / Four pies / One product, one city: Bologna and mortadella / Pellegrino
Artusi: Italian identity in the world / Polenta and couscous (with an unexpected variant) / Is
McDonald’s compatible with local identities?
Index
INTRODUCTION
We were making meatballs in the kitchen one evening: boiled beef,
cooked cardoons, parmesan, bread crumbs, two eggs, salt, pepper. Once
the mixture was done, we shaped the meatballs and arranged them
neatly on a plate. At that point, Marina advised: “Now, before cooking
them, let us leave them to rest for a few hours. That way they firm up and
get thoroughly blended.”
It occurred to me that letting meatballs rest is much like what happens
in our minds when we work out an idea. Ideas are the result of
experiences, encounters, reflections, suggestions: many “ingredients”
that come together and then turn into a new thought. Before that can
happen, it is useful to let those ingredients rest, to give them time to
settle, to become blended, to firm up. The resting of meatballs is like the
resting of thoughts: After a while, they turn out better.
The kitchen is not just the place where survival and pleasure are
planned. It is also an ideal place for training the mind. To observe the
processes of cooking, the transformation of raw materials subjected to
the heat of the stove, the incontrovertible rules of suitability (some things
go well together, others do not), the order and sequence of actions (done
in a particular order and a particular rhythm can produce excellent
results, done differently can cause disasters, as when a mayonnaise
curdles), can allow us to contemplate the rules that govern daily life, the
things that happen around us each day, our relationship with the world,
with others, with ourselves.
Cooking is not an inferior activity; it stimulates the intelligence. This
view is also held by a famous lady of the seventeenth century, Sister
Juana Inès de la Cruz, the major poet of the Mexican Baroque. In her
proud affirmation of the role of women (which caused her no small
amount of derision in the macho society of the time), she defended the
intellectual dimension of preparing food, comparing it to philosophical
reflection and even declaring its superiority. “What can I tell you,” wrote
Sister Juana, “about the secrets of nature that I discovered while I was
cooking? I see an egg that solidifies as it fries in butter or oil, and on the
contrary separates in syrup; I see that for sugar to remain free-flowing it
is enough to add a tiny amount of water in which a quince or some other
acidy fruit has been placed; I see that the yolk and the white of the same
egg are such contrary entities that with sugar they can be whipped but
never together.” These observations are far more profound than they
would seem at first glance, so that, Sister Juana concludes provocatively,
“One can easily philosophize while preparing dinner. I maintain that
Aristotle would have written much more had he cooked.”
In the following pages I have collected a hundred short pieces that
appeared during the past few years in Consumatori, the monthly
magazine of the Coop Adriatica, and in the Sunday pages of the
newspaper La Repubblica. I thank the directors of both publications for
allowing me to reprint these articles, to which I have added a few small
pieces that were published elsewhere. Small, but I hope not without
interest, because I have always held the conviction that important topics
can also be treated lightly, starting from “simple” reflections on facts,
things, words, that cross our path and that, despite their seeming
banality, contain meaningful fragments about our history and express
important aspects of our culture.
An idea of which I am particularly fond, which inspires my scholarly
work and which I try to communicate even in the most nonacademic
circles, is that the practices of cooking (in its broadest sense, everything
that has to do with food: modes of preparation, techniques of
transformation, modalities of consumption, rituals of conviviality) not only
constitute a sizable segment of the cultural patrimony of a society, but in
many cases reveal fundamental mechanisms of our material and
intellectual behavior. Cooking can thus be regarded as a metaphor for life
—unless we recognize that life itself is a metaphor for cooking.