Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds. Oretta Zanini De Vita
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Oretta tells the captivating story, through its people and their food, of the continuity and coexistence of this unique capital and its surrounding countryside with its multifaceted hinterland—not just popes, peasants, and shepherds, but Jews, poets, politicians, paupers, priests, nuns, brides, grooms, innkeepers, fishermen, and movie stars.
The revisions to and expansion of the original Italian book have been made for this edition and have not been published in Italian. Oretta writes for educated Italians in a spirited and lighthearted way. We have tried to gloss or annotate allusions that educated English speakers would find mysterious. Such notes are necessarily laconic, but—I would suggest—could be jumping off points for explorations in Latin and Italian literature, history, political theory, geography, sociology, urban planning, and agronomy. Oretta touches all these subjects, and more.
I’ve preferred to use the Italian Lazio to the Latin Latium, though that archaism still turns up in English. Modern Lazio only partly coincides with ancient Latium and so should have a different name. The Italian adjective form of Lazio, laziale, offers no solution in English, so for this I have kept with the Latin and use Latian.
Since Rome and its river, the Tiber, are household words in English, Roma and Tevere are translated. Otherwise, the region’s toponyms have no equivalents and are necessarily given in Italian. Ancient names are left in Latin. For example, aqueducts that existed in antiquity are spelled aqua (Latin), while papal constructions are called acqua (Italian), which is how both sets are known in English.
The recipes may be historic, but they are meant to be cooked—not that we are expecting frog frittata to become all the rage—and have accordingly been recast to bring them closer to the format Anglo-American cooks have every right to expect. The Italian future and future perfect tenses have been eliminated so that most actions are now in chronological order. Ingredients are presented in order of appearance instead of importance, the Italian way. Nevertheless, we’ve tried to keep a lid on the Anglicization so that the recipes would still convey something of the traditions they represent. For this reason, most prepping is in the body of the recipe, as Oretta wrote it, not the ingredients list, as is current in modern English-language cookbooks. I have more to say on the specifics of the recipes, such as measurements and substitutions, at the beginning of that section. We are less accommodating about substitutions than modern cookbooks like to be, but if you make some allowances for eels, frogs, some of the offal, and some of the game, the recipes are really quite accessible (and delicious).
Translating Oretta is a privilege, a pleasure, and a challenge. You don’t even want to know what translating Italian recipes is like (add enough salt and cook it till it’s done?). The recipes would not be so easy to follow without the careful ministrations of our copy editor, Sharon Silva, nor, for that matter, would the text. For her skill, knowledge, and patience she has our profound thanks. Oretta joins me in thanking too our agent, Jennifer Griffin. And finally, our most affectionate thanks to Darra Goldstein, Sheila Levine, Kate Marshall, and Dore Brown at the University of California Press, who have given this book, long after its initial low-profile publication in Italy, the home I have always felt it deserved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have accompanied me in this long and exciting journey through the cucina of Rome and Lazio, and all have my heartfelt thanks. First among them must be mentioned Ernesto Di Renzo, who introduced me to the world of food anthropology and who has kindly written a foreword to this book. Maureen Fant has translated me admirably, putting heart and soul into the work as only she is able. Mariano Malavolta led me by the hand through the intricate maze of ancient Roman politics, and Marcella Pisani made me see the beauties and remains of Rome with fresh eyes. Finally, I thank the staff of the library of the Fondazione Marco Besso, Rome, for the kind and professional help they have always given me in my research.
Arthur J. Strutt, wagon for carrying wine into the city
(Biblioteca Clementina, Anzio)
Introduction
The food of Rome and its region, Lazio, is redolent of herbs, olive oil, ricotta, lamb, and pork. It gives pride of place to the genuine flavors of foods, making it a very “modern” cuisine. It is the food of ordinary, frugal people and had no role in the development of the kind of cooking that over time became elaborated and codified in the palaces of the nobility and later in the temples of haute cuisine. The introduction of products from the New World, such as the tomato, the potato, and corn (maize), did not transform the hearty popular cuisine; they merely enriched it.
From earliest antiquity, Roman and Latian cooks were thrifty1 and remained so even in the period of the famous Lucullan banquets—rare privilege of the wealthy few. The most important meal for the ancients consisted of puls (plural pultes), a porridge based on a grain, notably far, or emmer, to which fava beans, chickpeas, or lentils were added. With it, they ate mostly vegetables and to a lesser extent milk and cheese. Meat was extremely rare, and what little was used was from chickens, rabbits, or game.
In the last centuries B.C. and the first centuries of our era, the typical daily menu consisted of bread, oil, milk, olives, honey, and eggs. On those few occasions when meat was served, it was almost exclusively in soups seasoned with garlic and onion. Meat did not include beef or veal, since oxen were too valuable as work animals to slaughter them for the table. Protein content was provided mostly by eggs, which the Romans loved.
A primitive unleavened bread was made by mixing water and flour and then shaping the dough into a flat focaccia. The same dough could be used to make what was probably a sort of tagliatelle or maltagliati, called laganum in Latin. A simple recipe using lagana has come down to us.
Meals always included vegetables, most commonly turnips and cabbage. Every family, even the poor, had a little garden sufficient for the daily requirement of greens. Salt for food preservation came from immense deposits under the southernmost of Rome’s canonical seven hills, the Aventine,2 which were in turn restocked from the salt marshes at the mouth of the Tiber.
Even the common people’s kitchen enjoyed the effects of contact with Greek civilization and trade with the East. The Sabine hills, northeast of Rome (bordering present-day Abruzzo), came to be covered with olive trees, and the use of olives and olive oil was introduced. To this day, the oil produced there is one of Italy’s best.
By the height of the empire, the middle and upper classes were consuming more meat. But in the countryside, people went on as before and continued to eat simply, relying above all on homegrown fruits, legumes, and vegetables.
In the Middle Ages, the struggles among baronies caused hard times, including famine, in Rome and Lazio, both city and country.3 The splendid gardens that had adorned houses within the city walls under the empire were converted to the growing of vegetables. These kitchen gardens contributed to feeding the people of Rome until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were swallowed up in the building frenzy that accompanied the arrival of the Kingdom of Italy.
With the Crusades, contact with the East was reopened. The tables of the rich became laden with such exotic products as sugar, spices, and oranges, all of them imported by the maritime republics (Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi), which dominated trade in their day, and not just in the Mediterranean. But unlike them, Rome remained highly conservative in its cuisine and anchored in tradition. Romans continued to make their sweets with honey and ricotta, to make their wine with the grapes grown in their own vineyards, and to cook their vegetables, fish, and meat in lard, guanciale, or olive oil.
For centuries to come, the population of Rome was only a few tens of thousands. Cut off from the political scene and its troubles, the people continued to live and cook simply, bringing in most of their food needs from the various surrounding zones that today form the region of Lazio—Tuscia and Sabina4 to the north, Campagna to the south, and Marittima,5 or coastal area. The rural population and the people in the small surrounding towns had thus maintained and cultivated a cuisine that remained very close to that of the city: a roast kid cooked near Sora, in southern Lazio, or one in Amatrice, at the region’s northern tip (and formerly in Abruzzo), differed little