Sapori e Saperi Adventures Flavours and Knowledge of Italian Artisans
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Resources
  • Tours
    • Small Group Tours >
      • Celebrating Sardinia
      • Tuscan Heritage
      • Giants of Sardinia
      • Autumn in Tuscany
      • Tastes & Textiles: Woad & Wool
      • Tastes & Textiles: Hanging by a Thread
      • Tastes & Textiles: Carpet Weavers of Sardinia
      • Tastes & Textiles: Wine to Dye For
      • Tastes & Textiles: Sea Silk in Sardinia
    • Tastes and Textiles
    • Sardinian Tours
    • Day Adventures
  • Courses
    • Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany
    • Advanced Salumi Course Bologna-Parma
    • Simply Salami
    • Art & Science of Gelato
    • Artisan Bread Course Tuscany
    • Theory & Practice of Italian Cheese
    • Mozzarella & its Cousins
    • Mozzarella Consultancy
    • Olive Oil Tree to Table
    • Truffle Course
  • Booking
    • Enquiry
    • Booking Conditions
    • Fill Booking Form
  • What people say
  • Blogs
  • Contact

To Cook or To Cook

28/12/2014

0 Comments

 
The first year I went to the International Truffle Fair at San Miniato one of the sideshows was a small bookstall.
Picture
White truffles
A woman thrust a book into my hands and explained exasperatedly, as she touched a finger to her head, that it had been written by her loopy husband.  Perhaps he had insisted she listen as he declaimed each of its 121 pages. As I read the polemical Cibo Contro Natura (Unnatural Food) I could hear Signor Pitinghi shouting his manifesto while gesticulating with his hands. The flowery language can be over the top, but far from being mad, it’s full of insights into a passing Italian food culture. This is a frustrated man with the memory of a flavour in his mouth which he finds harder and harder to reproduce in the kitchen. Perhaps his wife is a bad cook, but this isn’t what he laments. He’s dismayed by the swamping of natural food by industrial food, of slow food by fast food, of real cooking by virtual cooking, of found ingredients by packaged and marketed products.
Picture
The cover illustration is also by Pitinghi.
Having read a chapter or two, the book itself got swamped by other literature I picked up at other food fairs and only re-emerged recently. My experience of Italian culture, not to mention my comprehension of the Italian language, has grown in the intervening years and many of Signor Pitinghi’s ideas set me thinking and exploring half-trodden paths.

Among his many provocative statements is the chapter title ‘Bisogna provare a cucinare o almeno…a cuocere’, which translates literally: ‘It is necessary to try to cook or at least…to cook’. The dilemma for me is one of linguistics and culture; for him it’s one of action. I check my excellent Italian-English dictionary by Ragazzini and Biagi just to make sure both cucinareand cuocere mean ‘to cook’. They do, but there’s a hint of a difference. Cucinare can also mean ‘to do the cooking’. My Italian friends sometimes correct me for using one or the other incorrectly, but I haven’t quite got it yet.
​
Back in San Miniato having lunch with Riccardo and Amanda, my truffle hunter and his wife, I ask them if they can enlighten me.
Picture
Amanda and Riccardo in their kitchen
We’re eating a typical Tuscan lunch, a simple roast chicken with potatoes and onions. Amanda explains that if she had bunged the chicken into a roasting pan and stuck it in the oven until it was done, that would be cuocere. Instead, she had seasoned the chicken, browned it in olive oil, deglazed the pan with white wine, put it in the oven and basted it from time to time. She’d cut up the potatoes and onions and added them to the roasting pan to cook and become glazed by the juices of the chicken. All very simple yet this is cucinare. Now I could transfer it to my own culture: ‘I can boil an egg, but I can’t cook’.
Picture
I want to reach into the photo and grab a potato!
Pitinghi reminds his Tuscan readers how simple their cuisine is and muses on whether in our ‘global village’, with mother at work and incessant television cooking programmes interleaved with adverts for snacks full of preservatives and breaded fish fingers ready for frying, the family no longer knows how to keep traditions alive, especially those of cooking and local food. He ends with this exhortation ‘to all of us: “let’s try to cucinare!” or at least, if this verb seems too challenging “let’s try at least to cuocere something”.’
0 Comments
    Email Subscription
    Click to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    RSS Feed

    Subscribe

    Author

    Erica Jarman

    Categories

    All
    Advanced Salumi Course
    Agriculture
    Artisans
    Baking
    Beer
    Boat Tour
    Bread
    Celebrating Sardinia
    Cheese
    Cheesemaking
    Chestnuts
    Cooking
    Courses
    Festival
    Food
    Gelato
    Giants Of Sardinia
    History
    Italy
    Italy Vacation
    Life
    Lucca
    Makers
    Milk
    Mozzarella
    Music
    Olive Oil
    Olives
    Prosciutto
    Salumi
    Sardinia
    Seafood
    Slow Travel
    Small Group Tours
    Textiles
    Tours
    Tradition
    Travel
    Tuscany
    Wine

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2025
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    January 2019
    December 2017
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    May 2011
    March 2011
    September 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009

Subscribe to Newsletter
Enquire about Tours
Picture
We acccept
Picture
Read about us
International passenger Protection
Picture
contact us | terms & conditions | privacy policy 
copyright 2017 sapori-e-saperi.com | all rights reserved
Website by Reata Strickland Design
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Resources
  • Tours
    • Small Group Tours >
      • Celebrating Sardinia
      • Tuscan Heritage
      • Giants of Sardinia
      • Autumn in Tuscany
      • Tastes & Textiles: Woad & Wool
      • Tastes & Textiles: Hanging by a Thread
      • Tastes & Textiles: Carpet Weavers of Sardinia
      • Tastes & Textiles: Wine to Dye For
      • Tastes & Textiles: Sea Silk in Sardinia
    • Tastes and Textiles
    • Sardinian Tours
    • Day Adventures
  • Courses
    • Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany
    • Advanced Salumi Course Bologna-Parma
    • Simply Salami
    • Art & Science of Gelato
    • Artisan Bread Course Tuscany
    • Theory & Practice of Italian Cheese
    • Mozzarella & its Cousins
    • Mozzarella Consultancy
    • Olive Oil Tree to Table
    • Truffle Course
  • Booking
    • Enquiry
    • Booking Conditions
    • Fill Booking Form
  • What people say
  • Blogs
  • Contact