Photograph of Elena Kostioukovitch by Massimo Pasquale

Elena Kostioukovitch is not Italian. She was born in Kiev, Russia. But Kostioukovitch is deeply in touch with her Inner Italian. How do I know? I’ve been reading Why Italians Love to Talk About Food, the Farrar, Straus and Giroux publication of her book.

Kostioukovitch’s day job is to translate the literary works of Umberto Eco and other authors into the Russian language. Also an essayist and literary agent, she has lived in Milan for more than two decades. She explains in the preface to her 400-plus page tome, “This book was born specifically to assemble in a single volume stories about the symbolic foods of each Italian region and their ‘ideological’ meanings.”

She creates an intellectual journey from the north of the peninsula to the south, exploring culinary history, characteristic dishes, and cultural eccentricities of each region. Her research is rigorous — footnotes and bibliography cover more than 30 pages.

We learn, for instance, that the aperitivo Campari was created by Gaspare Campari at the Caffè Zucca in Milan in 1867.

We practically taste the brine on our lips as we discover that the remaining wilderness of Puglia fosters in the locals a preference for unadulterated foods. “The tendency to eat unprocessed food is especially evident in the consumption of raw fish. In fish markets, for example, it is customary to set out plates of raw shrimp, cuttlefish, and mussels for customers who are waiting, to be eaten on the spot with a squirt of lemon.”

And who knew that Nutella, the jarred gianduia paste created by the Ferrero brothers in Piedmont, makes a political statement? Kostioukovitch explains, “Nutella, loved by children (naturally) and adults, was also prized by nonconformists and leftists. As Italy’s answer to [American peanut butter], it is winning, uplifting, and youthful, a sign of democracy and leftist ideals.”

Essays interspersed between the regional food chapters are quirky and informative, covering topics as diverse as the “Jews,” “Early Gifts from the Americas,” “Totalitarianism,” and “Joy.” I particularly appreciated “Preparation Methods,” a roster of dozens of cooking techniques written in sort of a shorthand code. Not much is spelled out for the Italian home cook in printed recipes—presumably the cook learned these methods at an older cook’s elbow.

“Soak prickly pears.”

“Extract the ink from cuttlefish.”

“Shape polenta in a cloth.”

“Crogiolare (bask or laze comfortably): cook a food over a slow fire, with a little liquid, for a long time.”

One word of warning: Perusing this volume can be hazardous on an empty stomach. Hunger ensues. References to Roman coda all vaccinara (oxtail stew), Neopolitan sartù, (a rice mold with giblets, mushrooms, peas and mozzarella), Ferrara’s pumpkin filled tortelli, Calabrian jujume (sea anemone fritters), Sicilian granita with brioche, and more dishes too numerous to recount will surely make you long to be dining at an Italian table.

Kostioukovitch bottom line is this: “Examining the culture of food, we also come to understand its unique ability to inspire joy and create harmony. Whether at table with family, in a restaurant with friends, or at a scientific conference—food is talked about in a language that is accessible to all, exciting to everyone, democratic and positive.”

What conversations have you enjoyed around an Italian table?

Comment below.

Story and Photographs by Melinda Rizzo

The Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence.

Florentines are accustomed to waiting.

From Michelangelo to Botticelli, DaVinci to Galileo, Florentines have cultured their passions into pearls, like a single grain of sand nestled deep inside an oyster and emerging over time to become a gem of the sea.

This year was my 30^th, or Pearl, wedding anniversary.

To celebrate this milestone, my husband and I opted to take a trip to Florence, the heart and breath of Italy’s Tuscany region.

In January, we made the decision to travel to Italy at the end of November. Planning and executing this trip—one in which we’d invited a cousin and were traveling with our 12-year-old son—took time and patience. Patience, you might say, of the Florentines.

I’ve never considered myself a patient person.

Cathedrals take time to build, often centuries, still Florentines seem content to wait knowing their labors are never in vain.

The Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, commonly know as The Duomo.

As Carl Jung, a 20^th century Swiss psychiatrist would contend, any work with purpose regardless of its nature, ultimately provides satisfaction and even pleasure for the worker.

Prosciutto crudo (air dried and cured pork) from Parma and arguably the pride of its area, can take as long as two years from start to finish to be ready for consumption.

Two years for a ham and cheese sandwich, but what a sandwich it makes! Prosciutto for me, and my son, is porcine transcendence.

Does anyone ordering a prosciutto focaccia pressed and toasted, consider the amount of time it took to create the ham? A moment of mastication melts these buttery mouthfuls, and they are gone.

Florentines linger over osteria menus . . .  along alleyways . . . and outside the windows of leather shops.

Street performers sing operatic arias. They pump life into an accordion’s complication.

They strum a guitar or play the love theme from Florentine Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet in the Piazza Signoria, where I rented our apartment. They spend time and care honing their musicianship. For those who love music, they offer kinship without translation.

Street performers share their art in exchange for spare change dropped into a basket poised at their feet. Skilled musicians bear witness to patience and waiting.

Witnessing the patience of Florentines: to execute a 17-foot-tall statue of David in marble, paint the mythological birth of Venus over the ocean waves or slice tissue thin prosciutto from the seasoned hindquarters of a pig, taught me a thing or two about this most elusive of virtues.

Consider the amount of time it takes for someone to carve mounds of
Nutella, vanilla or tutti fruitti gelato, into tempting, irresistible towering creations
decorated with fruit slices, nuts or plump, glistening blackberries and shiny
currants.

Florence Awaits continued

One in an occasional series of Q & A profiles of  “wannabe” Italians

Melissa Muldoon is a freelance graphic designer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through her firm, Melissa Design, she creates graphics  for Web and print.  Raised in the Midwest, she studied studio art and history at Knox College. At the University of Illinois at Champaign, she worked as a teaching assistant and earned a Masters degree in Art History. Deciding she’d rather be “doing” art rather than “talking” about art, she pursued a career as a graphic designer. She is married to Patrick Muldoon and has three boys and a beagle. Her passion for art opened the door to Italy for her. During college she participated in a study abroad program in Florence and discovered a country full of history, culture and tradition, yet overflowing with contemporary style and quirky idiosyncrasies. Her love for art brought her “home” to Italy for the first time.

Q: Living “Italian”. . . Is it a great way to live or the greatest way to live?

A: Ma dai! Non c’e’ un modo migliore! Come on! There is no better way to live!  

Q: Why?

A: Let me just start off by saying I am a classic type A personality. I am impatient, competitive and a list maker. I don’t know what I like better, adding things to my “to do” list or checking them off.  I’m usually up late finishing a project or starting the next. I zoom from one appointment to the next and despise sitting in traffic or wasting time at stoplights. Now, while a type A lifestyle is great for getting things accomplished and moving ahead in life,  it may not be the sanest way to live.

Fortunately for me, I found Italy and discovered how to “live Italian.” Italy is my alter ego. It balances out my yin and yang. When I am in Italy, time slows down and I relax. I let go and go with the flow. My senses are reawakened and my creative side is nurtured and flourishes. I savor meals and notice things like the multi-colored marzipan pastries elegantly displayed in the panetterie and bars, or the wheels of cheese stacked up like oversized building blocks in the corner markets. I feel the cobblestones, worn and rounded by time, under my feet. I hear the clang of the church bells and the ronzare of the Vespa bikes. I meet the most interesting people, Italian locals and fellow travelers, and develop long lasting friendships.

Settimo Dalla Ricca escorts us through the Grana Padana cheese factory in Mantova.

Read more about Melissa's Inner Italian

Subscribers to Kathy McCabe’s award-winning Italy travel newsletter Dream of Italy will see Sharon’s work in the November 2009 issue. She penned a profile of “Stile Mediterraneo Cooking and Wine School” owners Cinzia and Marika Rascazzo and also a feature “Sisters Share Their Private Puglia” with the siblings’ travel recommendations for their region on the heel of Italy.

If you don’t subscribe to Dream of Italy, there’s no better holiday gift for your Inner Italian. Check it out here.

Cheese Ravioli with Sage Butter

When Natalie, the niece of a yoga buddy of mine, invited me to make ravioli at her Foundations of Education Class at Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC), I thought she must be one very confused student. “How would preparing stuffed fresh pasta help to edify future teachers?” I asked myself.

“We want the students to experience learning and teaching through different modalities,” explained Mary Braccili, LCCC Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, when I called her to inquire about the proposed session. “The five senses — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting — can all be used in the classroom to enhance learning. And because the unit’s sub-theme this semester is Italy, Mary added, Natalie thought of asking you to make an Italian dish with our students.

(Natalie, I retract my initial doubts — you go to the head of the class!)

Professor Mary Braccilli, "agent" Natalie, and Sharon at the LCCC ravioli session.

And so it was, earlier this week, that my number one sous chef Walter and I had big big fun with a hands-on session in preparing Cheese Ravioli with Sage Butter at the LCCC Fowler Center kitchen.

Sharon gives an overview of stuffed fresh Italian pastas -- such as tortellini, cappelletti, and ravioli -- to LCCC education students.

The students rotated in groups of four in rolling the prepared egg-flour dough on a hand-cranked pasta machine into gossamer 4-inch wide strips. Then they dolloped on the filling mixture of ricotta, Parmigiano Reggiano, Gruyere, and parsley. Quickly they folded the dough strip over, tamped out the air between the dollops, and cut and sealed the ravioli with serrated wheels.

(Left to right) LCCC education students Michele and Eddie fill and cut ravioli while Sharon shows another student (also named Eddie) how to prepare the dough for rolling.

As I supervised, the young cooks experienced how the dough should look and feel — as smooth as modeling compound but not sticky. As the end of class neared, we boiled the ravioli just for a few minutes, then drained and tossed them in sizzling butter and fresh sage leaves. The nutty herbal aroma evoked an idyllic autumn day. At last, we tasted the tender morsels. A-plus to the ravioli makers at LCCC!

Cheese Ravioli with Sage Butter recipe