Monday,
August 13, 2007
Italians Try to Raise Calibre
of Cuisine in Britain, But it'a
a Chore!!!!
The
ANNOTICO Report
In
Even
after a new wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the
Why?
Apparently it was the very high level of ignorance and bad taste in
It
wasn't that the Italians didn't try. They did, but the Britons weren't
interested in the authentic savory, and the Italian restaurateurs had to modify
their recipes to suit the British palate, and now the Italian cuisine mostly is
a ghastly parody.
The
following article is rather amusing in that John Dickie,
culinary historian brings his former Landlord in
Remember what
Italian food in
To survive,
they had to adapt their cooking to obtuse British palates, and the result was
hopelessly mongrelised. The spaghetti was mushy,
and the sauce, whether made with meat, fish or vegetable, invariably contained
enough cooked tomato and/or UHT cream to drown a dog. Then there was spag bol, which is about as
Bolognese as beans on toast. To make our evenings at Da Luigi feel exotic, the
waiters showered everything with black pepper from stupidly large grinders. That
was what the British wanted Italian food to be. There was no clearer symptom of
the shocking state of our cookery.
Now, of course,
we know better. Balsamic vinegar is as familiar as ketchup. They sell
buffalo-milk mozzarella at Sainsbos. Most of us
understand what al dente means, and some of us can
even tackle an artichoke with confidence.
The biggest
single factor in
But how much have
we really learned from
That's my working
hypothesis, and it goes without saying that the only people qualified to
test it are the Italians. But in
Anna Maria was
my landlady when, nearly 20 years ago, I lived in Genzano,
a little town in the hills just south of
So Anna
Maria's judgement on Italian food can be relied upon
to be benevolent as well as authoritative. The experiment I want her to perform is
simple: she will come over to
Day one,
lunch,
Over the years,
those tactless enough to gawk across the intimate yet airy dining-room of
But nothing else
about her fits the mamma stereotype. Her parents were Communist peasants. In
the 1970s,
As she gulps at
her kir royal to soothe her nerves, Anna Maria makes
a first hesitant inquiry: "Why have they brought us a dish of olive
oil?"
"To
dip our bread in."
"Is that
what you do in
Of
course, the dish of olive oil. Come to think of it, I couldn't remember seeing
one in a restaurant in
My encouraging
response to this first apergu does little to boost
Anna Maria's confidence. When the antipasti arrive, she tastes everything
methodically, ponders for several moments, and pronounces her opinion on the
bresaola with rocket and Parmesan: "Buono." She is reluctant to elaborate. I begin to
worry that she's going to need more chivvying than the rules of my experiment
allow.
When the pasta
course arrives, she takes a clam from her spaghetti alle
vongole. Some thoughtful chewing,
and it is declared to be "buona". This looks
like being hard work.
But then she
tries a forkful of spaghetti and everything changes. Puzzlement is the first
emotion to flash across her face. "Un po' scotti!" (a bit soft), she exclaims. After sampling another few
strands, she is rapidly and visibly filled with a disdainful self-assurance to
match any of the showbiz demigods who have eaten here. She angrily observes
that they've done something "very strange" to the dish, because the
oil and juices have become a viscous sauce. After the third forkful, she is
still mystified, and refuses to touch any more.
Her attention
then turns briskly to my taglierini con gamberoni (fresh pasta with prawns) and her ruling is
peremptory: "roba da ristorante cinese," she
snarls loudly "like
something out of a Chinese restaurant". The tomato sauce does indeed
have a strangely tangy chilli
sweetness. She dismissively wonders if they have used monosodium
glutamate.
There is no
stopping Anna Maria now. When the second course is set in front of her, she
blurts out: "Che orrore!
What have they done to the saltimbocca?" Saltimbocca alla romana is, like everything
on the San Lorenzo menu, a classic: a thin slice of veal, with
News of the
British food revolution has clearly not reached
Day one,
dinner, Strada
That evening, we
take my two-year-old son Elliot to a pizzeria, a Strada.
This chain has been in the vanguard of re-Italianising
pizza for the British: the words forno a legna (wood oven) are printed proudly on the canopy
outside, and there are no giant pepper-grinders. It's a promising concept.
Pizza is both
ancient and modern. As it comes from an extended Mediterranean family of
flatbreads, its roots are prehistoric. But Neapolitan pizza as we know it,
topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella, is a newcomer from the mid-1800s. The
Margherita dates back to 1889 when it was named after the queen. In the late
1940s in
The Strada staff prove that they have
one quality that is a sine qua non in any pizzeria: infinite patience with the
under-fives.
As I try to stop Elliot kissing a dog and rolling on the floor with his racing
cars, I blindly order garlic bread, suspecting we'll get more fuel for Anna
Maria's ire. What arrives is a pleasant surprise: a light focaccia with a sheen of oil and
some fresh rosemary. Elliot is impressed enough to eat a big slice. Anna
Maria likes it too, applauding its authentic simplicity. "Buona." The basket is quickly finished; a
good start.
But when she cuts
into her pizza Margherita, Anna Maria's face drops. "It's
raw." I taste it. Raw is an exaggeration, but the base is pale and
undercooked. Yet again, she won't eat any more, leaving Elliot to pick off the
basil leaves. My pizza rustica (tomato,
mozzarella, sausage, oregano, artichokes, capers, roasted tomatoes, and onion)
is scarcely greeted with more enthusiasm. "C'h troppa roba sopra",
she says - "there's too much stuff on it". She adds:
"And, as a peasant's daughter, I can tell you that there is nothing
'rustic' about tinned artichoke slices." Anna Maria's tolerance has been
tested to destruction. In the pizzeria, too, the inglesi
still have much to learn.
Strada, branches nationwide (www.strada.co.uk)
Day two,
breakfast, Carluccio's
The next day
begins at Carluccio's, where the espresso is buono enough to satisfy Anna Maria, and the chocolate
pastry even better. Her judgements now have an
imperious ring. She sniggers at the peasant women on the cover of Carluccio's cookbooks. "Is this how you see us?"
But a taster of lemon-infused olive oil even elicits a "buonissimo". Phew. With renewed optimism, I try to
tell to her about the British food revolution. But she remains sceptical: "Why do the inglesi
have to exaggerate? Look at those pizzas last night: 15 different
ingredients on top. Or those awful spaghetti alle vongole. I still
can't understand what they did to them. When a thing is good, lasciala stare"- "let it be".
Later, on the way
into town, I try to manage expectations, explaining about UHT cream and giant
pepper-pots. But Anna Maria is only half listening. It is only her second
visit to
When we emerge
into the sunshine at
Carluccio's, branches nationwide (www.carluccios.com)
Day two,
lunch, Il Siciliano
Perhaps out of
sympathy for our plight, Anna Maria is now taking her new role as a restaurant
critic very scientifically. Once we're settled into the window seats in Il Siciliano she picks linguine alle
vongole in order to compare it with
After lunch, we
settle down with a limoncello to chat to the
waiter, who is also from
The menu at Il Siciliano tells the same sad story. At some point in the
restaurant's recent history, somebody Sicilian clearly tried to make its offer
more genuine. For example, pasta cu li sardi (pasta with sardines) is among the specials, handwritten
in dialect. It's one of the many highlights of the island's cuisine -
pasta dressed with a mash of fresh sardines, wild fennel, onion, salted
anchovies, saffron, pine nuts and tiny raisins. It's a unique and unforgettable
taste. But the people who pass through
Il Siciliano,
Day two,
dinner, Pane Vino
Our last, best
hope lies across the road from Kentish Town Tube, at a little family trattoria called Pane Vino, which
specialises in Sardinian food. We start our dinner
with a generous local antipasto, which certainly looks delicious: a disk
of Sardinian "music paper" bread (something like a hard poppadom) comes loaded with olives, sliced aubergines in oil, salame, pieces
of hard sheep's-milk cheese, and two or three amber strips of bottarga (compressed, dried mullet roe).
Before we can
begin, a waitress approaches with a giant pepper-mill - a worrying signal,
at which we both shake our heads. Apprehensive, I then watch Anna Maria take
her first tasters, which are by now habitually deliberate and thoughtful.
"Buono?" I suggest, in hope. "No," comes the clipped reply. "Squisito."
She says the word
so matter-of-factly that its meaning takes a second to register - "exquisite".
"These are the real tastes of the
The antipasto
inspires such confidence in her that she ignores the spaghetti alle vongole at the top of the
menu and just opts for what she really wants to eat: paccheri
(napkin rings of pasta) dripping with an oily tomato sauce made with pieces of
Sardinian sausage and clams. It's so good that Anna Maria is genuinely
enraptured. My fregola (grain-sized pasta) in a
fish and saffron broth with mussels and clams is declared to be just as good:
it is delicate, aromatic and fresh.
Stefania, who runs Pane Vino, comes over to explain that fregola
is a cousin of couscous and harks back to the North African origins of
pasta. (
Through the small
talk, it emerges that, although the chef is Sardinian, Stefania
herself is from Marino, a wine-producing town just a few kilometres
from Genzano. Somewhere in the Roman hills, in the
1970s, her circle of friends intersected with Anna Maria's. It is the beginning
of a very talkative evening, punctuated with some fabulous food.
Midway through
the second bottle of Karmis, after hearing our horror
stories from the past two days, Stefania
solves the mystery of the gloopy spaghetti alle vongole at
Stefania goes on to reassure Anna
Maria that the British food revolution is not a myth: things are genuinely
improving.
"Yes," reflects Anna Maria. "The situation in
Pane Vino,
Delizia! by
John Dickie is published by Sceptre
(#20). To order a copy for the special price of #18 (free P&P), call
Independent Books Direct on 0870 079 8897
The
ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (and are Archived) on:
Italia
Italia
Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com (3 years)
Annotico
Email: annotico@earthlink.net