Rice and Gold

Risotto alla Milanese. Risotto allo zafferano. Risotto al Nero di Seppia. These succulent and savory rice dishes of northern Italy satiate the palate and define the region's cuisine. Their very ingredients define the region's agricultural and maritime history, and point to a rich commercial and cultural exchange with the Far East. So just how did a pasta-loving country become Europe's biggest producer of rice, a foodstuff from China?



There was a time when this nutrient-rich grain turned up on farmacy counters rather than dinner tables. Its medicinal properties have long been touted for many uses and cures, including cosmetic treatments for skin hydration and emmolience in Asia.



The Venetians, a folk known for embracing foreign cultures, adopted this grain in the kitchen, absorbing rice as their own. With an openness this maritime city exhibited in the face of new and foreign customs and foodstuffs, from spices to the concept of sweet and sour they did not discriminate in terms of good culinary taste, regardless of the ingredient's origin.


Lombardia, however, is where our Italian rice story starts. It all began in the fourteenth and fifteenth century in the provinces of Vercelli. Cavour created Europe's most modern irrigation systems, helping rice to really take off in the region, and by consequence, country. The canal which bears his name, Canale Cavour, winds from the Po in Chivasso into the Canton Ticino in Switzerland. The deviation of freshwater used to soak these northern Italian rice paddies gave birth to a rice cultivation that continues to supply the grain to the rest of the continent to this day.



Risotto allo Salto is a delectable example of this grain's preciousness in the annals of northern Italian cooking. It was a dish savored exclusively by nobility, who would dine on the saffron-scented creation at Milan's reknowned Scala. Between the first and second acts of the opera, on small ovens in backstage dressing rooms, their servants would cook this mid-performance snack, ready for their 'salto', or intermission. A bit of home for the weary aristocracy when out about in their best frocks, its warmth and intensity coated them in a comfortable carbohydrate-rish meal not unlike 1980s American TV dinners, taken to a whole new level.


The mixture of salty and sweet is exemplified in Risotto al Melone. This luscious dish combines the musty, soft sweetness of melon and the dense, creamy texture of risotto finished in butter and Grana Padano cheese (not unlike a good, aged Parmesan cheese), and creates a perfect marriage. Some melon is kept apart from the risotto and left to boil in a water that will be added to the risotto, bit by bit, along with vegetable broth, adding more melon depth to the dish.


According to ancient Chinese legend, a feudal lord moved by the sight of his starving serfs, asked his farmers to irrigate his fields with water from the nearby river. He then put his own teeth into the water. Millions of rice plants grew, feeding his people and putting and end to their hunger and suffering. The legend associates rice with abundance, with the lord's teeth serving as symbols of seeds of future happiness, peace and prosperity. This Asian superstition, as it were, was brought to Italy and is now incorporated in the throwing of rice at weddings. The gesture is a benediction and a communion, for the couple, that they never be in lack, neither literally nor figuratively.

Castelmagno - Royal Blue of Piedmont

Aromatic, sapid and persistent, the cow's milk cheese Castelmagno enriches many of Piedmont's 'primi piatti', or first courses. The complex and earthy cheese takes its name from the town of the same name, in the province of Cuneo, at the foothills of the Italian Alps. It is produced today in Castelmagno, Pradleves and Monterosso Grana.

Records from 1272 prove a long and mighty reign for Castelmagno. The Marchese of Saluzzo, feudal lord of Valgrana and Valmaira, accepted the cheese as a form of payment for rural taxes. The exchange of a food product for its equivalent monetary value speaks not only of evident proliferation of Castelmagno in the region, but also of its codifiability. We can assume that any cheese could have been chosen to appease the medeival taxman. A certain standardization and guarantee of quality must have been well established and accepted, and therefore Castelmagno's history likely stretches back further than we can trace.

There are four principal factors that render Castelmagno a rather unique and expressive cheese. The microclimate of the region, at 1100 meters above sea level, must first be considered. The southern cut of Piedmont is enriched by alpine air, humid days and cool nights. Of course, the gray-white cows grazing in the area's pastures, of the Piedmontese breed, may produce less milk than their northern Bruno-Alpina cousins, but make up this lack in spades of richness and texture. The cows' steady diet of fresh, local cheese and hay from surrounding fields helps to create a creamy and erbaceous materia prima, and ultimately a truly Piedmont foodstuff.

In Italy, quality food products are regulated by the government, and guarantee to cheese lovers not only the confirmation of their regional origins, but the very means of production. The DOP, or Denominazione di Origine Protetta, which means Protected Designation of Origin, was established for Castelmagno in 1996.

Castelmagno is produced with whole Piedmontese cow's milk, with the allowance for a small percentage of sheep's milk or goat's milk, which adds either a spicy or buttery texture, respectively. The raw milk is mixed with liquid rennet and made to coagulate at 35-37 degrees Celcius. The resulting curd is then cut and placed in a container for 24 hours, when a second beaking of the curd takes place, during which the cheese is seasoned with salt and placed in wood moulds.

Castelmagno's crust, initially thin and of a pinkish-yellow hue, darkens and thickens as it ages, and the pasta, pearl or ivory, becomes yellow, with thin, blue-green veins. The veins are the result of the fungus penicillum, added to the cheese during the aging process. Traditionally, Castelmagno belongs to the family of blue cheeses, although this is changing as a dangerous market trend dangers the very essence of this king of Piedmont.

The polemic of Castelmagno's shrinking veins is, some would say, a mirror of the cheese's own disappering act. Today, the consumer prefers a delicate, moderately sapid flavor, and without herbs. To this end, a shorter aging period is chosen, with the addition of sheep's milk or goat's milk, up to ten percent by law. It is still possible to find Castelmagno with blue veins and a good amount of aging balanced on aromatic shoulders, the same way it has been produced for centuries. The problem is that market-led changes to the cheese's production are the very characteristics that make Castelmagno such a unique whole milk cheese.

It is always a tenuous situation in the gastronomic world, taking into account the philosophy of Slow Fooders and back to the earth traditionalists who believe in purity first and foremost, when the consumer's whim can spark the demise of a food that has resisted certain death for over 700 years. What is a producer to do, risk short term loss in reduced sales in exchange for the preservation of his craft? I would argue that this cheese is worth saving. There are always two roads to take - educate the end-user about its history and essential properties, or crumble in the face of the dollar and create a pseudo-Castelmagno whose destiny is to become unrecognizable and anonymous, yet more consumer-friendly.

Luguria - The Seaman Longing for Land

"Lenta e rosata sale su dal mare

la sera di Liguria, perdizione di cuori amanti e di cose lontane.

Indugiano le coppie nei giardini, s'accendon le finestre ad una ad una

come tanti teatri.

Sepolto nella bruma il mare odora.

Le chiese sulla riva paion navi che stanno per salpare.

- Vicenzo Cardarelli, 'Liguria'

Translation:

Languid and pink, she rises from the sea,

the evening of Liguria, perdition of loving hearts and far-away things.

Couples linger in the garden, the windows light up one by one,

like many theatres.

Buried in the mist, the ocean breathes.

The churches on the waterfront are ships about to set sail.

There is a word in Portuguese that is almost impossible to translate: saudade. Saudade is more than longing or nostalgia, more than missing someone or something. It can be a term of affection, for someone that see again after a long absence, and it is not only tied to our heart, but to our soul. If there be a region in Italy embodied by this painful tug and pull and incongruous sense of place, it is Liguria.

Surrounded on its entire western side by the waters of the Mediterranean, and a seafaring people who have over the centuries traded far and wide, from Africa to Asia and back, one would presume their diet include fish and mollusks along with spices from various voyages across the globe. Ligurian gastronomy instead speaks of earth - animals of the land, herbs from the fields and nothing exotic. Saudade, longing if we have to choose an equivalent English word, is written into the region's very cuisine. After long trips across the ocean, when Ligurians are home, they leave their boats in the port, and do not bring them to the kitchen table, figuratively speaking.

The symbol of Genoa, Liguria's biggest city, is the lighthouse, or that which indicates home to those out at sea. In the local dialect, 'mare' (sea) and 'male' (bad) are the same word, 'ma'. When the ships dock, Ligurians say they have reached 'salvamento', or 'safety'. Land equals salvation. Whereas Venetians, an equally seafaring folk, live their waters with an opportunistic eye. For the Genovese, the ocean is an obligation. In fact, the classic Ligurian expression for someone digraced speaks volumes: 'essere a pane e pescetti', or 'to be reduced to bread and small fish'.

Il Naso

Something happened to my nose today. A great opening of the olfactory canals, the tiny hairs that feel and filter life's parfum, stood at attention, saluted (politely, of course), the Sauvignon Blanc from Cloudy Bay and moved on to a 1997 Chardonnay from Napa Valley. And in an instant, I sensed a noseful, complete saturation, an awakening of this essential, primal sense. This was not a door that fell on its hinges, but a door that had been carefully unlocked, with time and sensitivity, days of truffle-nosing the glass and just one peek inside revealed a new world.

Sensory analysis mixes statistics with individual and group psychology to arrive at a consensus of a certain food or wine product. When it comes to the nose, we often find ourselves entranced, and at the same time speechless, unable to communicate that which we are experiencing. It's not just part and parcel of a beginner's mind, stunned in the new details of a wine tasting.

The olfactory sense is pre-linguistic, before language, and is connected to the oldest part of our brains, otherwise known as the Paleomammalian brain. Emotions and memories are stored here. This is why one sniff of a great wine can make us swoon like a young lover meeting his beloved.The human nose is capable of detecting 10,000 different scents. Many of these are tied to memory, the collective, genetic memory of humankind and the specific life experience that one brings to the tasting table.

The experiental nature of a wine's nose intrigues the hell out of me, to be frank. It is the opposite of riding a bicycle (once you learn you never forget), and I do love a challenge. It is a constant, humbling pursuit. And of course, the identification of a list of olfactory responses is not an end unto itself. Why does a Sauvignon Blanc talk to me about white peaches, citrus and lemongrass? Because it couldn't think of anything better to say? Or is it because of the grape itself, the terroir, the human touch in the wine's fermentation and eventual refinement? Now we're talking. A sommellier is an investigator, on the train of a wine's origin, identity, its very roots, and all the way back to the glass.

Fresh and First

To be honest, I am not the neatest bird in the nest, and never have been. Speaking of nests, I remember the pile of clothes that my sister and I would gather, like little fledglings, in the middle of our room, when it came time to do the laundry. I felt there was something warm and soft in all of the shirts and pants and underwear and socks that had kept our bodies covered and dry. Not to say that we were raised as street urchins, although our middle-class upbringing in America's most exclusive and expensive summer resort might have given us that slanted impression.

I've nailed cleanliness, for sure, but organization is somewhat of a foreign country that still won't give me the visa, after many, many attempted visits. What I had perhaps forgotten was that sharing a room with someone who is very neat would be challenging, and therefore essentially a learning curve. Or as my therapist in London used to say, an 'AFGO', 'another f**king growth opportunity'.

Here I was, 'appena arrivata' (just arrived), unpacking the carefully folded clothes that my friend Betsy packed into my suitcase ... I know, helpless in this department, and thank God for such good friends. Sure, I put on a good show, with neat corners of ironed shirts and freshly laundered bras folded into the cups, straps tucked in between. I knew in my heart of hearts that the piles I was making in the two drawers I was allotted would last two weeks at best, until the samsara of creation and destruction would mean me backtracking every weekend to put the Humpty-Dumpty-ness back together again. Never mind, I had more important things on my mind, like the first day of school ...

Waking up at 730am when in my body it was still 2 or 3 in the morning was jarring at best. I was somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, closer to the US and certainly not on Italian time. A strong espresso at the cafe downstairs bought me some time, and to my surprise the woman serving me the brew was Brazilian. Hallelujah! A bit of 'home away from home', as I lived in Rio de Janeiro for most of last year, and was dying to continue speaking twangy Brazilian Portuguese. If all went pear-shaped, I thought, at least I'd have a language secret enough to complain in.

My roommate Lisa and I walked into the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, one of the former summer palaces of the Medici family and a gorgeous, cream-colored 17th century building. We found Antonio, Giuseppe and Alessandro waiting outside the school's offices. I instantly felt my foreignness creeping in, and remained silent so as not to betray my identity before I absolutely had to. Silly, I know, but just for a few moments I wanted to be anonymous, Italian like them, or at least not a 'straniera', or literally, a 'stranger'. They chatted amongst themselves about their backgrounds, and I came to learn that many of us were here for a life change. Already the energy of that forward movement into the unknown felt good. I was in the right place, receiving soft and gentle nudges from the universe and God above.

In between one informal presentation and another, the school's coordinator Giulia came outside to greet us. She and I had gotten acquainted by phone in the past six months, and to my surprise she was young, spritely and informal. To think that we had used the polite grammar form of 'Lei' all this time, and were more or less the same age ... Giulia ushered us into the building and off to a room with coffee number two. Caffeine racing through my veins, I felt more ready to mount a horse than sit in a classroom for eight hours. At this point there were just two students missing, a Japanese girl named Junko who was still awaiting her visa, and Matthias, a German-Italian bilingual speaker from Alto Adige, Italy's northernmost province.

Matthias waltzed in like a Seinfeld character, hair purposely unkempt and then gelled, trendy running trainers, the kind you'd never run in, and a hipster fabric belt, circa early noughties. He had spunk and mischief written all over his face, and I knew that at the very least we would have a few laughs as a class, a bit of comic relief when the wine-going got tough.

To round out the group was Lorenzo, like my other roommates straight out of high school. His gravely accent from Arezzo, southern to my ears or rather a mix of Tuscan and Roman intonation, made me feel right at home. He was strikingly 'terra-terra', down to earth, and uncomplicated. I could almost feel the fresh air coming in through the windowsill when he spoke, with zero pretension and absolute honesty.

The real shock of the morning, which of course we were all expecting and had been duly warned, was the handing out of military uniforms. Stripped of our identity, we would be wearing either all-black with name tags or penguin suits in the form of white shirt, black jacket and black pants. To be fair, our school clothes would get us into the proper sommelier habit of looking presentable and discreet, and ironing on a daily basis. Which of course has always been my dream in life.

Preened of our individuality, we were then asked to present ourselves in front of the entire faculty of the school. Gulp. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I was sure they could hear it in the front row. Even thought my Italian is nearly perfect, I was conscious of not wanting to make even the slightest grammatical mistake.

Arrivata

A young man runs in a deserted field. A girl rides by on her bicycle. A lime grasshopper perches on the train windowsill. Despite the jet lag, the hunger and obvious anticipation, my soul underneath is calm. I feel like maybe I need to be here, in this place, at this time. Just to breathe. If nothing else. And of course there will be so much more. Just like wine is more than a liquid we imbibe and school is more than courses and books, my new perch has roots deeper than the mind can perceive. The mind after all is good for calculating, not deriving meaning. Meaning rests in spirit. And so, I arrive, sono arrivata.

The train station in Colorno is a room scratched with graffiti and a few outdated signs about schedule changes. One of my new roommates had offered to accompany me from the station, and I had described myself to her so that she would find me easily among the other passengers. As it so happened, just one other person got off in Colorno, a man, and I found three girls waiting for me at the station steps. It all felt a bit awkward at first, a mixture of first day of school and summer camp. The girls were very sweet, two straight from high school, Giulia and Silvia, and Lisa, Milanese and the same age as me. Lisa, like me, was looking to change careers, and had left behind a lucrative but unchallenging job in Milan.

We arrived at the apartment and I was told that I’d be sharing a room with Lisa, which came as a huge surprise. I had specifically requested a single room, and hadn’t had a roommate as such since college. The idea of spending three months with absolutely no privacy was harsh to say the least, but I decided I would make the best of it, and rationalized that I’d be saving money.

A decidedly more pleasant surprise arrived in the form of fireworks. The annual event had been rescheduled due to inclement weather, and I was offered the greatest welcome into the town of Colorno that I could’ve ever imagined. In front of the stunning, eighteenth-century Ducal Palace, the region put on a show of light and fire with suggestive accompanying music the likes of Enya and Debussy.

The difference between spectacle and performance and perhaps nodding to greater cultural divide was evident in this fireworks display: in the US, on the Fourth of July, there is a massive explosion of the biggest and best fireworks, with no music. Here, instead, it is all artistry, where less is more, but that less is none the less beautiful and enigmatic. Thank you, Colorno, for welcoming me with such panache!

Quasi Arrivata (Nearly There)

The first thing I see is corn. I've travelled 5,000 miles from the corn fields of Wainscott on eastern Long Island to arrive in Emilia Romagna by train, en route from Milan, to find more corn. Which is of course strangely comforting. This region is known as the Food Valley, its fertile soil and timeless gastronomic traditions the backbone of prosperous cities such as Parma, Reggio Emilia and Bologna. Hence, food before wine, and corn fields before vineyard rows.

Alma's cooking school came way before its wine program, only in it's second year, as had it been in reverse I hazard a guess that it would've been situated in Tuscany or Piedmont, regions with more substantial wine-production. I was of course tickled to be surrounded by chefs and pastry makers, cooking a huge passion of mine, and to bop around to different food festivals taking place throughout the fall.

Chugging along the cornfield express, I have a feeling that I'll be seeing a lot more of this train, en route to fields of a different crop. As we blow through a stop called Remedello Sotto, I remind myself that no matter what it looks like on the outside, I am doing the right thing. I am following my heart's path. No matter how much corn separates me from the nearest decent vintage. Have wine cork, will travel.

I recall a conversation I had last night with Paolo, a friend of a friend I'd met in Milan over the weekend. We were talking about why Italy had lost the last World Cup. It was all in their heads, he said. There was too much pressure from having won the previous Cup. Take another example in Italian sport, Valentino Rossi, the motorcycle racing champion. He just keeps winning, and it's not just because he tucks into curves like he's eating a sandwich. It's because of the strength of his will or 'volonta', from the Latin 'voluntas', which means to intend with desire and inclination. His will is so strong, and so unwavering, that he can't help but win. Valentino Rossi is my new totem, my new model and inspiration for the beginning of this step into the unknown. Here's a quote from Motosprint Magazine, in response to his motivation to commit to three more years of racing: "Racing is the thing in my life that I love the best: it’s my passion, I don’t need any other motives." Nuff said.