I shake my head when I see Italian polenta on a menu or magazine article presented as some exotic gourmet dish. Where I came from (that would be the wilds of central Pennsylvania) cornmeal boiled in water is cornmeal mush. Has been for a long time. American writer Joel Barlow wrote a mock-epic poem about this humble daily staple. As a New Englander, he knew the porridge as hasty pudding.

Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant
Palanta call, the French of course Polante;
E’en in thy native regions how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson’s banks, while men of Belgic spawn
Insult and eat thee by the name suppawn.
All spurious appellations; void of truth:
I’ve better known thee from my earliest youth,
Thy name is Hasty-Pudding!

The Hasty-Pudding, Joel Barlow, 1793

Italy didn’t have corn, of course, until Columbus brought it back from the Americas. While the habit of eating fresh corn never really caught on among Italians, cooking the ground dried kernels did. Generations of Italian peasants survived on polenta. I once interviewed an American woman whose father had grown up in the Veneto. His family ate polenta three times a day. On good days, a few pieces of salami or cheese might accompany the porridge.

More about polenta

The hams are cured in the small prosciuttifici that dot the countryside around Parma.

As the gossamer slice of prosciutto di Parma melted on my tongue, my senses of taste and smell transported me. I was no longer in a crush of gabbing food folks in the uber-hip Santos Party House in lower Manhattan. I was soaring above the fertile gentle landscape of the Italian province of Parma.

Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto—Tuscan-born chef Cesare Casella’s recreation of a genuine salumeria on the upper West Side of Manhattan—was offering the sampling of Parma ham and other cured meats. The occasion was last night’s kick-off for the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ upcoming annual conference scheduled for the end of March in the Big Apple.

Observing the chef carving the prosciutto was a joy. With practiced rhythm, he used the foot-long knife to slice the Parma ham in one fluid motion parallel with the bone. Rotating the knife so that the flat side of the blade turned up, he gently lifted the slice onto a plate letting it fall in folds like a ribbon. Between slices, he ran his free hand over the surface presumably to smooth out any unevenness.

Parma Products Among Italy’s Finest

My encounter between tongue and brain reminded me of the loving labor that goes into producing the magnificent prosciutto di Parma which carries the PDO certification (Protected Designation of Origin) of the European Community.

The production is monitored from inception to inspection. Italian pigs are bred specifically for Parma ham production and fed a special diet that includes the whey left over from making Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. After nine months, they are butchered, the hind quarters are trimmed, salted, cured, and then air-dried. No sugar, nitrites, smoke, water, spices or additives are allowed. The entire process can take as long as two-and-one-half years and the finished ham will have lost one-quarter of its weight.

To learn more about this unique food product visit the Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma web site.

The Money-changer and his Wife (Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello)

What were the 1 Percent of quattrocento Florence doing with their gold florins?

Buying exquisite works of art by Botticelli, Beato Angelico, and the Della Robbias.

The current, and timely, exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence through January 2012 shows how the modern banking system developed in parallel with the most important artistic flowering in the history of the Western world.

Money and Beauty: Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities is co-curated by art historian Ludovica Sebregondi and Tim Parks, writer, translator and author of Medici Money – Banking, Metaphysics and Art in Fifteenth-century Florence.

I know of Parks through his entertaining books on the expat life Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. I’m intrigued to learn he’s a scholar of Italian art history.

According to the program notes, “the exhibition is conceived as a ‘duet’, in which the two curators present different – and sometimes opposing – views of the exhibition’s content. [They] aim to provide the visitor with an opportunity to look at art from a cross-disciplinary perspective involving economists, politicians and diplomats. It examines the story of how the Florentine Renaissance grew from the supposedly open, but more often actually hidden, relationship between art, power and money.”

The Florentine bankers practiced usury on a scale the world had never before witnessed. But, unlike today’s 1 Percent, they at least left us with The Birth of Venus and countless other treasures.

A piadina filled with prosciutto, cooked greens, and fresh ricotta cheese.

As la pizza is to i napoletani, la piadina is to i romagnoli.

In Romagna, the part of the Emilia-Romagna region on the Adriatic coast east of Bologna, the flat bread piadina is ubiquitous. It’s ancient and like so many other good foods was born of cucina povera. It consists of flour, strutto (lard), and water (sometimes milk). Numerous dialect names attest to its favor: Piada, pie, pjida, pièda, pji, pida.

Genuine piadine are flavored with pure lard which is soft at room temperature. If you can find unhydrogenated lard (I bought some at an Amish butcher) use it. Otherwise, olive oil is a better choice.

Piadina is flat like pizza but with important differences.

Pizza dough is prepared with yeast. Piadina is not although bicarbonate of soda is sometimes added.

Pizza dough contains no fat. Piadina is tenderized with lard and increasingly these days with olive oil.

Pizza is baked in a very hot oven while piadine are grilled on an unglazed terra cotta stone known as una teglia or uno testo. More energy efficient! Once upon a time, the grilling took place over the ashes of wood fires. Now it’s completed on a stovetop. A cast iron pan or griddle works beautifully.

Piadine actually have more in common with Mexican flour tortillas than with pizza. Like other quick breads, they must be eaten warm when they’re most flavorful and pliable. Cut into wedges, they are a welcome addition to an antipasto platter.

A vintage ad for piadine on a wall in Dozza: The best snacks with genuine products.

Piadine also make delectable panini. Thinly sliced prosciutto or other salumi, sautéed lascinato kale or chard, any soft cheese, arugula, whatever you fancy—just lay the fillings on top of the bread and fold.

Piadine are fun for a casual do-it-yourself supper where guests grill and fill their own. The dough can be mixed several hours ahead of time and left to sit, covered in plastic, at room temperature or in the refrigerator (warm to room temp before grilling).

I tried several different recipes from good sources, including a fine one from Chef Paul Bartolotta in Food & Wine. His piadine are 10-inches wide, a bit too broad for my cast iron skillet, so I narrowed the width.

I experimented with cooling and freezing piadine. I found the reheated breads almost better than the freshly grilled ones. Even in such a thin bread, the layers of pastry were more defined. anche di piu

Even if something isn’t a secret, don’t you feel brilliant when you discover it for yourself? As far as I’m concerned, my current musical obsession Malika Ayane is all mine.

Passing time in Fiumicino Airport in Rome recently, I drifted into Feltrinelli. Since I had zilch carry-on space, buying an Italian book really wasn’t a viable option. But then I spotted the CD rack. I heard my Italian tutor Gabriella’s voice, “Listening to Italian music is a great way to learn the language.” continua leggere qui (keep reading here)