Dateline Pisa:
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| Medieval Fair - Volterra 1398 AD |
As we ponder our last long
menu at our last historic site, we return to the conversation that mixes the
two - Italian food and ancient history.
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| Pizza in 1398? With what? |
It has become clear that food was not always so nice here. Most of Italy’s ancient old sons (and
old daughters) never tasted “Italian cooking.”
Left to their own devices, the
choices of the Italian cook would be about as varied as salt, olives, bread,
and wine - plus what they could kill.
Spaghetti, as a major example, was a relatively recent import,
not from Marco Polo’s visit to a noodle shop - but from the Moslems bringing in
the durum wheat from Persia that would make hard pasta.
Europe sent a
few waves of Crusaders down south, and up came coffee, sugar, rice, dates, mulberries,
almonds, coconuts, watermelon, bananas and citrus fruits (oranges, limes and tangerines) into today’s menus.
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Modern Delivery to
Medieval Streets |
Europeans were once so hungry for flavor that major wars
popped up over the few boatloads of cloves, cinnamon and a couple of other
items that started to leak in from the “Spice Islands” of Asia. Those spices, I note, are mostly absent
in Italy’s recipes. I imagine after a few months at sea in a boatload of the
stuff, no Genoese, Venetian or any Italian sailor wanted to smell it ever again.
You want some
sauce on that Spaghetti? No
tomatoes or peppers until Columbus “discovered” them while looking for water
buffalo milk to make mozzarella.
Europe exported plague, cholera, syphilis, smallpox and the cross to the
Americas - in exchange for corn,
potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, vanilla, beans, pumpkins, tapioca, avocados, peanuts, pecans, cashews,
pineapples, blueberries, sunflowers, squash, wild rice, quinine, vanilla and chocolate. Oh, and tobacco - perhaps Montezuma’s real revenge.
As we plop down in a
restaurant in an old palazzo on a piazza in Pisa. We ponder our plates.
If we reject all pre-Columbus items on
the menu, Bill’s pepperoni-peperoncini-parmigiano
pizza pomodoro would be out. My panini of pancetta and pecorino,
gone too. Eleanor’s plate of panzanella and Jean’s polenta and penne pasta con
pesto - nope. Chris couldn’t even sneak in the pile of pastrami much less a panacotta.
All that would be left is the bottle of prosecco and a couple of cold Peroni beers. So while the piazza pulses Pavarotti’s Puccini from the
nearby palazzo, we are happy to be eating our last supper in Italy today, and
not way back then.
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| Pisa? Pizza? (Shrug) |
She may need an arm to
steady her, or legs to peddle her and she may forget what she can’t see or hear
so well - but she is here. And I
am glad I got my wish.
