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Sauce that survived Italy’s war on pasta
- gabythenerd 4y ago> ...He wanted to wean Italy off of foreign wheat imports, which were becoming increasingly difficult to acquire amidst international sanctions and a suffering domestic economy. Rice grew well in Northern Italy, so Mussolini sent free rice samples throughout the country and bombarded Italians with pro-rice propaganda. How did pasta get so popular if they had to import the wheat? Seems they cannot produce enough for the whole population without imports even now, I would think that would make it expensive over staples thay they can grow themselves.
- juujian 4y agoNow, this is just a guess not backed up even by a google search, but being that Italians have been eating pasta since the Middle Ages, I would guess that it has something to do with Northern Italy being part of the Holy Roman Empire.
- sojournerc 4y agoUmm, northern Italy? Where do you think Rome is?
- triceratops 4y agoRome wasn't part of the HRE for a large part of its existence. The emperor was considered the continuation of the old Roman emperors, and was "holy" because the Pope crowned him. I'm not an expert on Italian geography or anything but I think of Rome as the beginning of southern Italy. Milan and Turin are the major cities I associate with north Italy. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_in_the_Holy_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_in_the_Holy_Rom...
- rob74 4y agoMost Romans would probably frown at you for debating whether Rome is in northern or southern Italy. Rome is at the center of the world, or failing that, at least at the center of Italy!
- triceratops 4y agoOk so then it's definitely not Northern Italy :-)
- TheCoelacanth 4y agoWell, yes, as the old joke goes, the Holy Roman Empire wasn't holy, wasn't Roman and wasn't an Empire.
- piaste 4y agoVoltaire made that joke in the late 18th century, when the dying HRE had been reduced to a multi-confessional German confederation. The medieval HRE, especially the Carolingian one, had a much better claim to the titles.
- Bayart 4y agoThe Carolingian Empire isn't the HRE. The HRE started with the Ottonians.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoWikipedia says that the population of Italy nearly doubled between 1861 and 1936, this despite the fact that there was massive emigration of Italians to places like the United States and Argentina over the same period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy
- xeromal 4y agoRomans were importing grain from Egypt in the 0s so I guess Italy has been doing so long it didn't matter.
- philwelch 4y agoWheat had been the staple food of the Italian peninsula since at least the days of Rome, though the Romans ate bread rather than pasta. It was the staple they could grow themselves.
- Eleison23 4y ago[dead]
- masklinn 4y ago> How did pasta get so popular if they had to import the wheat? It didn’t. The population increased and the country didn’t have the wheat-growing regions it would have needed to match. And pasta is not the only wheat sink, bread and other doughs (e.g. pizza) are generally wheat based as well.
- avereveard 4y agoThose are different wheats
- SamBam 4y agoYou still have to import most of them.
- epolanski 4y agoFun fact, most italian pasta brands use american and canadian grains. We just don't have much wheat, never had it even in ancient times. With EU we produce even less of it as we have benefits to focus on farming other specialties or produce cheese and meat.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoThe US is the #1 exporter of grain worldwide. Not the #1 producer, not the #1 consumer -- that's China -- but the #1 exporter. So much produced that they can ship more than anyone. It is a fantastic source of American soft power. And also explains why Americans are so soft around the waist.
- c3534l 4y agoSpecialize and trade. If other regions are really good at farming wheat, why bother farming it yourself when you can produce fish and grapes?
- fsckboy 4y agotrade is ruled by comparative advantage: If country A is better at producing wheat, and country A is also better at producing fish, country B should focus on producing the one which it is less comparatively bad at producing, and then trade. That will give them the highest GDP/income.
- pigsty 4y agoEast Asia imports loads of wheat, yet wheat noodle dishes and breads are still popular. In peacetime, it’s usually better to just import cheap things like grains and focus more on making high value foods. Italy probably makes good money selling their cheese worldwide—they and France are basically synonymous with good, expensive cheese. Nobody will pay a premium for Italian wheat though.
- xeromal 4y agoThe gravy
- jonstewart 4y ago> Both Musollini and Marinetti died in the 1940s Well, technically, -yes-, Mussolini* died in the 1940s… but it wasn’t exactly from natural causes in 1948 or anything…. *note that Atlas Obscura misspells Mussolini
- borroka 4y agoWhat about Filoppo instead of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti? I am puzzled by the lack of rigor commonly observed in English writing when it comes to non-English names or non-English words more generally. I am reading the book "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" about Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel, and 50% of the Italian words or phrases have errors. What are the editors for? PS, Mussolini died in 1945, not technically. Technically, or to be precise, he was killed by a group of partigiani.
- Moru 4y agoCost cuts happened. It has gotten worse the last 20 years at least. Now the writer is supposed to put out texts as fast as possible. Mostly the editor does not have time to look at the text, if there even is an editor.
- klyrs 4y agoFirst ingredient: two peeled potatoes > Prepare the potato water. Boil the potatoes in a pot of salted water until soft. Remove them from the pot and reserve the water, which will be used to thicken the sauce. The potatoes can be used for a different recipe. later on... > Add parsley, a spoonful of tomato sauce, and a few spoonfuls of the potato water to the pan. Let the sauce reduce. > Pour the sauce into a blender and add the anchovies and capers. Blend until thick and smooth. Return the sauce to the pan, adding more potato water if too dry. This is somewhat upsetting. My dad, a professonial cook, would always deride recipes for their use of thickener -- just cook it longer, or add less liquid to begin with! That could apply here... but the second use for the potato water is to thin the sauce! I'm somewhat skeptical of some cooks' generic advice against adding water to a dish; it's perceived to thin the flavor or whatever. But this? It's just potato water! The flavor is nothing to write home about; just use some freaking water! And what are we going to do with those two potatoes? Oh, set them aside for some other dish. Here's an idea, don't put this on pasta, make some freaking gnocchi and don't wind up with a pair of moldy boiled potatoes in the back of your refrigerator. And we're making a whole pot of potato water for, what, two or three spoonsful? Why not boil it down, and keep the powder for ready us? Or just... use corn starch, dance on my dad's grave. It will be okay. And don't even get me started on wasting time to peel the potatoes. Quarter, boil, and the skins slip right off. The sauce does sound tasty, though.
- tmountain 4y agoAbout as necessary as a bay leaf, which I have been waging a war against for years…
- wahnfrieden 4y agotry with a large handful of fresh ones... not sad dry ones. you can also taste its tea to learn
- tmountain 4y agoI believe that a large handful of fresh leaves would influence flavor. My comment is directed at a single dry bay leaf that I have seen on many occasions.
- paganel 4y ago> Marinetti imagined a world in which Italians absorbed nutrients through pills, freeing mealtime to become a form of performance art enhanced by technology, perfumes, and music. Marinetti was way ahead of his time, and most probably also out of geographic place. The Silicon Valley of the late 2010s would have been a much better fit.
- nl 4y ago> The Silicon Valley of the late 2010s would have been a much better fit. "Marinetti is best known as the author of the first Futurist Manifesto, which was written and published in 1909, and as a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto, in 1919."[1] Shared without further comment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti
- Finnucane 4y agoYeah, his brand of techno-fascism would fit right in with the tech-bro culture.
- borroka 4y agoI find this to be an expression of lazy thinking far more than a contribution to the discussion. On Futurism and Marinetti (and Boccioni, Depero, Sant'Elia) I am probably better informed than others--an interest that began many years ago, in high school, when one of our teachers had us read Marinetti's poem "Zang Tumb Tumb," parole in libertà [words in freedom], and then continued through reading books such as Claudia Salaris's books on Futurism, various biographies of Marinetti (the most popular and entertaining is by Giordano Bruno Guerri, not translated as far as I know) and Boccioni, and visits to museums (some 20 years ago, a number of futurist artifacts, including Boccioni's famous Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, were exhibited in a room of the Tate Gallery in London, accompanied by the music of the Chemical Brothers. It was a formidable experience). And to me, the techno-fascim of the Futurists has nothing to do with the tech-bro culture. The first group dealt with machines, the second with software (of course, there was no software then, but machines and Futurism were inseparable entities); the first group showed up in theaters and gave "futurist slaps" to the audience, I don't see any of the tech-bros slapping anyone (and it's much better that way); the Futurists went to war and died in battle, the tech-bros drink kombucha.
- acalzycalzy 4y agoSide note: the reason pasta sauces made with canned tomato base taste so much better than pasta sauce from scratch is that the water taken out from the canned stuff is done with a vaccum evaporizer: it’s able to boil out the water at a temp of 140F vs 212F on a stove top. Less heat == more flavor
- stcroixx 4y agoI don’t think I’ve ever had a canned or jarred sauce that was even close in taste to even the most basic homemade version.
- Larrikin 4y agoCanned whole tomatoes used in recipes are not comparable in any way to canned or jarred premade tomato sauce.
- SamBam 4y agoI don't think OP was referring to jarred sauces, rather home-made sauces made using canned (tinned) tomatoes, as opposed to fresh. The majority of Italian tomato-based sauces call for canned tomatoes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blooalien 4y ago> "Less heat == more flavor" … And that's why my grandma insisted on an all-day (and sometimes all-night) low temperature simmer for such sauces instead of trying to "boil the life out of it" as she used to put it. You can totally taste the difference though. There's a "richness" to a slow-simmered sauce you just don't get from a hurried boil or any sort of quick thickeners.
- agumonkey 4y agoa metaphore for life I suppose
- borroka 4y agoThere is an obvious mistake in the article that could be misleading for readers not well versed in 20th century Italian culture and politics. In the article, it is written :"The essay [Manifesto della cucina futurista] was one of many fascist-leaning Futurist manifestos published in the early 20th century that called for the destruction of the old in favor of the new in fields such as poetry, painting, and cinema". It is important to keep in mind that Futurism as an artistic, much more than political, movement--but some might say that all art is political anyway--"officially" started in 1909 with the publication of the "Manifesto del Futurismo" in the Figaro, the French newspaper. Fascism, on the other hand, as an organized political movement, started in 1919, after the end of the First World War. The Manifesto della cucina Futurista was written in 1931, but it was, overall, forgettable: much more relevant for art and politics were the pre-WWI manifestos. Futurism, as a movement of some influence on the Italian cultural life, was already in decline in 1919, in part because some of the best known and liveliest futurist representatives were killed during WWI (Boccioni, Sant'Elia, Erba). Despite all the problems associated with some of their message--unfortunately those were the most visible and the signature of their political and artistic position--, Futurismo was an avant-garde that saw most of their prediction, or desires, come true. Not many artistic or political movements could say the same.
- burkaman 4y agoWhat is the mistake? After reading your comment I don't see anything wrong with that sentence.
- borroka 4y agoIn the article, it is written: "many fascist-leaning Futurist manifestos published in the early 20th century that called for the destruction of the old in favor of the new in fields such as poetry, painting, and cinema" These Manifesti were not, and could not be, fascist or fascist-leaning because they were all written before the Fascist party was founded by Mussolini in 1919. Mussolini was a socialist until 1914; fascism did not exist as either a movement or a party when most of the Manifesti were published, which makes it impossible for them to be either fascist or fascist-leaning. The Manifesto della Pittura Futurista [Manifesto of Futurist Painting] was published in 1910. The Manifesto Tecnico della Letteratura Futurista [Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature] was published in 1912. Etc., etc. You can find all the manifestos here https://futurismo.accademiadellacrusca.org/manifesti.asp https://futurismo.accademiadellacrusca.org/manifesti.asp Some of the Manifesti, a bit more than one year ago, were shown at the Center Pompidou in Paris.
- spike021 4y agoIf you watch Youtubers who do cooking, Ethan Chlebowski recently did a really interesting comparison video [0] between different types of canned tomatoes, mostly to compare San Marzano across brands. As someone who's not much of a cook it was enlightening to see how different tomatoes can have pretty vast differences in taste/texture. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMFUKibW-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMFUKibW-c
- shever73 4y agoTechnically, all sauces survived Italy’s war on pasta. More accurately, this sauce was the result.
- hanslub42 4y agoThe article mentions the Futurist Cookbook. Wikipedia has more info about it [1], including a link to the freely available Italian text. There is an English translation [2], but that one is not free. In a sense, espresso coffee is the ultimate Futurist hot drink: made with electricity, high-pressure water and stainless steel, giving energy and the will to perform great deeds. It is no coincidence that it became popular in Fascist Italy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking [2] https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/21/futurist-cookbook-marinetti/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/21/futurist-cookbook-...