1
" Renzo from Roddino leaves us on the doorstep of Osteria da Gemma, a Langhe culinary landmark in a village scarcely large enough to fill the restaurant. Before we can shake off the wet and the cold, before we can see a menu or catch our breath, the waiter comes by and drops a cutting board full of salumi between us. Prego. Then another plate comes out- carne cruda, a soft mound of hand-chopped veal dressed with nothing but olive oil and a bit of lemon, a classic warm-up to a Piedmont meal.
The plates continue, and it soon becomes very clear that we have no say in the matter. Insalata russa, a tricolore of toothsome green peas, orange carrots, and ivory potatoes, bound in a cloak of mayonnaise and crumbled egg yolk. Vitello tonnato, Piedmont's famous take on surf and turf: thin slices of roast beef with a thick emulsion of mayo and tuna. Each bite brings us slowly out of the mist of emotion and into the din of the dining room. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
2
" The great cheeses of Europe were born during the Middle Ages- Cheddar in southern England in the twelfth century, Gouda in the Netherlands not long after; Parmigiano-Reggiano, the king of Italian cheeses, emerged as a staple of the cuisine of Emilia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From there, cheese began its inexorable march toward diversification, from sharp, funky blue cheeses aged in caves to unpasteurized triple creams to tangy pucks of goat cheese rolled in lavender and fennel pollen. By some estimates, more than four thousand varieties of cheeses are produced today- a thousand in France alone- made from a dozen different kinds of milk: cow, sheep, yak, reindeer, even human. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
4
" Gian Pero Frau, one of the most important characters in the supporting cast surrounding S'Apposentu, runs an experimental farm down the road from the restaurant. His vegetable garden looks like nature's version of a teenager's bedroom, a rebellious mess of branches and leaves and twisted barnyard wire. A low, droning buzz fills the air. "Sorry about the bugs," he says, a cartoonish cloud orbiting his head.
But beneath the chaos a bloom of biodynamic order sprouts from the earth. He uses nothing but dirt and water and careful observation to sustain life here. Every leaf and branch has its place in this garden; nothing is random. Pockets of lettuce, cabbage, fennel, and flowers grow in dense clusters together; on the other end, summer squash, carrots, and eggplant do their leafy dance. "This garden is built on synergy. You plant four or five plants in a close space, and they support each other. It might take thirty or forty days instead of twenty to get it right, but the flavor is deeper." (There's a metaphor in here somewhere, about his new life Roberto is forging in the Sardinian countryside.)
"He's my hero," says Roberto about Gian Piero. "He listens, quietly processes what I'm asking for, then brings it to life. Which doesn't happen in places like Siddi." Together, they're creating a new expression of Sardinian terreno, crossing genetic material, drying vegetables and legumes under a variety of conditions, and experimenting with harvesting times that give Roberto a whole new tool kit back in the kitchen.
We stand in the center of the garden, crunching on celery and lettuce leaves, biting into zucchini and popping peas from their shells- an improvised salad, a biodynamic breakfast that tastes of some future slowly forming in the tangle of roots and leaves around us. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
5
" Few people put more thought into the tiny details than the team behind the ever-expanding Roscioli empire, one of the nerve centers of the cucina romana moderna, found just a few steps from the Campo de' Fiori. Sitting at a small table inside the Ristorante Salumeria Roscioli, a hybrid space that functions as a deli counter in the front and a full-service restaurant in the back, general manager Valerio Capriotti tells me with conviction that Italian food is flourishing- advancing in ways it hasn't in years, if ever, thanks in large part to the efforts of small producers who put their lives into raising rare breeds of pig, growing heirloom varietals of wheat, and milking pampered dairy cows and sheep to create the types of ingredients that drive restaurants like Roscioli forward. "Modern Italian cuisine isn't about technique," he tells me, "it's about ingredients. We know more now than we ever did about how things are made and what they do when we cook and eat them. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
6
" He had in his head a scrapbook of the tastes that had impacted him the most during his travels: goat cheese and olive oil in California, the tropical fruits and chilies of South America, everything that had touched his lips in Japan. When Angelo and Paolo talk about their travels, they turn to the memories- the parties, the people, the crazy times had, always with the metronome of mozzarella beating in the background. But what followed Vito were the flavors- the dishes, the ingredients, and techniques unknown to most of Italy.
"When I came back from Japan, there were six kilos of matcha, two kilos of coconut powder, and twelve bottles of Nikka whiskey in my bag. In Rome they stopped me and opened the bag. They thought they had caught me with cocaine. I told the guy to open up the bag and taste."
Vito didn't drink Nikka (he and his brothers rarely drink alcohol); instead, he emptied all twelve bottles into a wooden bucket, where he now soaks blue cheese made from sheep's milk to make what he calls formaggio clandestino. He stirs up a spoon of high-grade matcha powder into Dicecca's fresh goat yogurt and sells it in clear plastic tubs, anxious for anyone- a loyal client, a stranger, a disheveled writer- to taste something new. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
7
" The Langhe is a paradise, a giardino: pears, apples, pomegranates, chestnuts. Everything you could want to eat falling from a tree. And above all, nocciole. You see those trees? Those are South American hazelnuts. Fatter. Rounder. There are also the smaller Turkish hazelnuts, but Ferrero Rocher uses the big ones to make Nutella. And wine- everywhere, wine. Barbera, Bonarda, Dolcetto, and the king, Nebbiolo, the king of all grapes. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
8
" Later in the meal, the full extent of Massimo's whimsy-driven modernist vision will be on display- in a handheld head of baby lettuce whose tender leaves hide the concentrated tastes of a Caesar salad, a glazed rectangle of eel made to look as if it were swimming up the Po River, a handful of classics with ridiculous names such as "Oops! I dropped the lemon tart"- but it's the ragù that moves me the most. The noodles have a brilliant, enduring chew, and the sauce, rich with gelatin from the tougher cuts of meat, clings to them as if its life were at stake. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
9
" As we walk through Savignio, the copper light of dusk settling over the town's narrow streets, we stop anyone we can find to ask for his or her ragù recipe. A retired policeman says he likes an all-pork sauce with a heavy hit of pancetta, the better for coating the pasta. A gelato maker explains that a touch of milk defuses the acidity of the tomato and ties the whole sauce together. Overhearing our kitchen talk below, an old woman in a navy cardigan pokes her head out of a second-story window to offer her take on the matter: "I only use tomatoes from my garden- fresh when they're in season, preserved when it gets cold."
Inspired by the Savignio citizenry, we buy meat from the butcher, vegetables and wine from a small stand in the town's piazza, and head to Alessandro's house to simmer up his version of ragù: two parts chopped skirt steak, one part ground pancetta, the sautéed vegetable trio, a splash of dry white wine, and a few canned San Marzano tomatoes. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
10
" In the side refrigerators, where Vito so carefully arranges the morning's new attractions, you'll find even more examples of a traditional caseificio gone rogue: a wheel of aged goat cheese coated in a rough armor of wild herbs; a thick, blue-veined goat cheese soaked red with purple with Primitivo wine; goat yogurt in half a dozen international flavors.
You won't be surprised to find that the early efforts of the Dicecca boys were met with opposition- both from the family and the regular clientele. Each brother has a story about the resistance he has encountered along the way- the parental eye rolling at the cacao-coated goat cheese, the sisterly skepticism about mango-stuffed burrata, the customers' confusion at the latest experiment to emerge from the lactic laboratory in back. Every story ends the same way: with one or all of the family members doubting the viability of another esoteric cheese, followed by the long, slow acceptance by enough customers to justify its real estate space in the display case.
"When I started making cheese with the Nikka barrel, they made fun of me, said I was destroying the taste of the cheese. Now they're copying me. That's the pattern we always see: at first they make fun, then they start to copy. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
11
" Real burrata is a creation of arresting beauty- white and unblemished on the surface, with a swollen belly and a pleated top. The outer skin should be taut and resistant, while the center should give ever so slightly with gentle prodding. Look at the seam on top: As with mozzarella, it should be rough, imperfect, the sign of human hands at work. Cut into the bulge, and the deposit of fresh cream and mozzarella morsels seems to exhale across the plate. The richness of the cream- burrata comes from burro, the Italian word for "butter"- coats the mouth, the morsels of mozzarella detonate one by one like little depth charges, and the entire package pulses with a gentle current of acidity.
The brothers, of course, like to put their own spin on burrata. Sometimes that means mixing cubes of fresh mango into its heart. Or Spanish anchovies. Even caviar. Today, Paolo sends me next door to a vegetable stand to buy wild arugula, which he chops and combines with olives and chunks of tuna and stirs into the liquid heart of the burrata, so that each bite registers in waves: sharp, salty, fishy, creamy. It doesn't move me the same way the pure stuff does, but if I lived on a daily diet of burrata, as so many Dicecca customers do, I'd probably welcome a little surprise in the package from time to time.
While the Diceccas experiment with what they can put into burrata, the rest of the world rushes to find the next food to put it onto. Don't believe me? According to Yelp, 1,800 restaurants in New York currently serve burrata. In Barcelona, more than 500 businesses have added it to the menu. Burrata burgers, burrata pizza, burrata mac and cheese. Burrata avocado toasts. Burrata kale salads. It's the perfect food for the globalized palate: neutral enough to fit into anything, delicious enough to improve anything. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
13
" Down every aisle a single thought follows me like a shadow: Brand Italy is strong. When it comes to cultural currency, there is no brand more valuable than this one. From lipstick-red sports cars to svelte runway figures to enigmatic opera singers, Italian culture means something to everyone in the world. But nowhere does the name Italy mean more than in and around the kitchen. Peruse a pantry in London, Osaka, or Kalamazoo, and you're likely to find it spilling over with the fruits of this country: dried pasta, San Marzano tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, jars of pesto, Nutella.
Tucked into the northwest corner of Italy, sharing a border with France and Switzerland, Piedmont may be as far from the country's political and geographical center as possible, but it is ground zero for Brand Italy. This is the land of Slow Food. Of white truffles. Barolo. Vermouth. Campari. Breadsticks. Nutella. Fittingly, it's also the home of Eataly, the supermarket juggernaut delivering a taste of the entire country to domestic and international shoppers alike. This is the Eataly mother ship, the first and most symbolically important store for a company with plans for covering the globe in peppery Umbrian oil, and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano Vacche Rosse.
We start with the essentials: bottle opener, mini wooden cutting board, hard-plastic wineglasses. From there, we move on to more exciting terrain: a wild-boar sausage from Tuscany. A semiaged goat's-milk cheese from Molise. A tray of lacy, pistachio-pocked mortadella. Some soft, spicy spreadable 'nduja from Calabria. A jar of gianduja, the hazelnut-chocolate spread that inspired Nutella- just in case we have any sudden blood sugar crashes on the trail. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
14
" The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie.
Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons.
"I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille."
I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
15
" We navigate the produce stands, plucking palms full of cherries from every pile we pass, chewing them and spitting the seeds on the ground. We eat tiny tomatoes with taut skins that snap under gentle pressure, releasing the rabid energy of the Sardinian sun trapped inside. We crack asparagus like twigs and watch the stalks weep chlorophyll tears. We attack anything and everything that grows on trees- oranges, plums, apricots, peaches- leaving pits and peels, seeds and skins in our wake. Downstairs in the seafood section, the heart of the market, the pace quickens. Roberto turns the market into a roving raw seafood bar, passing me pieces of marine life at every stand: brawny, tight-lipped mussels; juicy clams on the half shell with a shocking burst of sweetness; tiny raw shrimp with beads of blue coral clinging to their bodies like gaudy jewelry. We place dominoes of ruby tuna flesh on our tongues like communion wafers, the final act in this sacred procession. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
16
" Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragù is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragù is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragù; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid.
Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragù issues such as the proper age of Parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region.
On my way out, Anna no. 1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. "Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragù, the one thing you can never forget, is love."
Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds, "And pancetta! "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
17
" The soul of Sardinia lies in the hills of the interior and the villages peppered among them. There, in areas such as Nuoro and Ozieri, women bake bread by the flame of the communal oven, winemakers produce their potions from small caches of grapes adapted to the stubborn soil and acrid climate, and shepherds lead their flocks through the peaks and valleys in search of the fickle flora that fuels Sardinia's extraordinary cheese culture. There are more sheep than humans roaming this island- and sheep can't graze on sand.
On the table, the food stands out as something only loosely connected to the cuisine of Italy's mainland. Here, every piece of the broader puzzle has its own identity: pane carasau, the island's main staple, eats more like a cracker than a loaf of bread, built to last for shepherds who spent weeks away from home. Cheese means sheep's milk manipulated in a hundred different ways, from the salt-and-spice punch of Fiore Sardo to the infamous maggot-infested casu marzu. Fish and seafood may be abundant, but they take a backseat to four-legged animals: sheep, lamb, and suckling pig. Historically, pasta came after bread in the island's hierarchy of carbs, often made by the poorest from the dregs of the wheat harvest, but you'll still find hundreds of shapes and sizes unfamiliar to a mainland Italian. All of it washed down with wine made from grapes that most people have never heard of- Cannonau, Vermentino, Torbato- that have little market beyond the island. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
18
" Using a newspaper, sugar packets, and animated hand motions, Callegari reenacts the creation of the Trapizzino, a pocket of crispy dough that eats like the love child of pizza and tramezzino, Italy's triangular sandwich. Skeptics might see in the Trapizzino the sad pizza cone found on food trucks in the United States and beyond, but this is no half-hearted gimmick: crispy and tender, light but resilient, it is an architectural marvel of pizza ingenuity. Not content with traditional pizza toppings, Callegari instead ladles slow-cooked stews of meat and vegetables- tongue in salsa verde, pollo alla cacciatora, artichokes and favas with mint and chili- that perform magnificently against the crunch and comfort of this warm pizza pocket. "The best of old Roman cooking is like great ethnic food- slow-cooked, humble ingredients with big flavor. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
20
" True to its name (gelato spelled backwards), Oletag is swimming against the tide of cost-cutting convenience that dominates Italy's ice cream industry. Sixty flavors at a given time, rotating daily- most rigorously tied to the season, many inspired by a pantry of savory ingredients: mustard, Gorgonzola with white chocolate and hazelnuts, pecorino with bitter orange. He seeks out local flavors, but never at the expense of a better product: pistachios from Turkey, hazelnuts from Piedmont, and (gasp!) French-born Valrhona chocolate. Extractions, infusions, experiments- whatever it takes to get more out of the handful of ingredients he puts into each creation. In the end, what matters is what ends up in the scoop, and the stuff at Oletag will make your toes curl- creams and chocolates so pure and intense they must be genetically manipulated, fruit-based creations so expressive of the season that they actually taste different from one day to the next. And a licorice gelato that will change you- if not for life, at least for a few weeks.
Radicioni and Torcè are far from alone in their quest to lift the gelato genre. Fior di Luna has been doing it right- serious ingredients ethically sourced and minimally processed- since 1993. At Gelateria dei Gracchi, just across the Regina Margherita bridge, Alberto Monassei obsesses over every last detail, from the size of the whole hazelnuts in his decadent gianduia to the provenance of the pears that he combines with ribbons of caramel. And Maria Agnese Spagnuolo, one of Torcè's many disciples, continues to push the limits of gelato at her ever-expanding Fatamorgana empire, where a lineup of more than fifty choices- from basil-honey-walnut to dark chocolate-wasabi- attracts a steady crush of locals and savvy tourists. "
― Matt Goulding , Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
