BBC - Italy Unpacked: The Art of the Feast

i'm andrew graham-dixon and i'm an art historian i'm giorgio lucatelli and i'm a chef we are both passionate about my homeland italy the smells the color what food is all about for me the rich flavors and classic dishes of this land are in my culinary dna and this country's rich layers of art and history have captivated me since childhood it's meant to make you feel as if you are being whirled up to heaven we're stepping off the tourist track and exploring italy's northern regions of emilia romagna lombardy and piedmont it's part of italy that's often overlooked but it drives the old country and i want to show off its classic dishes not to mention its hidden legacy of artists designers intellectuals one of the world's great buildings this week we are in emilia romania the birthplace of modern italian cuisine and home to some of italy's most fascinating artists and powerful dynasties we are beginning our journey through this wonderful region in bologna its capital i first came here with my parents when i was about 10 years old and we must have visited just about every church in the city and everywhere we went we bought postcards of the altar pieces the sculptures the paintings and i always remember going home and sitting at the kitchen table with my mum for about a week off and on we made this scrapbook maybe it's my very first lesson in art history i want you for to see all these producers to put some faces on on on these people and i talked through the telephone you know ordering stuff because you know our menu always has something that comes from this place since the middle ages bologna has been known by three nicknames ladotta la gracia elarosa the learned the fat and the red renowned for a striking bread building militant politics and rich cuisine bologna represent quality and taste not to mention power i love this statue and you know for me this is really bologna this big breast and they hold it the abandons the abundance it's a symbol of the fact that bologna has always thought of itself as a rich city a powerful city you know we can get jambalanya the greatest sculpture of his age to come here and create our neptune fountain and you can feel bologna's sense of its own power as the capital of emilia romania here it's the architecture of power the scale is enormous it's not only that it's also like you know the culture i mean the culture of food is incredible you know parma ham is is is more recognizable than the italian flag isn't it this is more representative of italy parmesan cheese cheese you know all produced in a very traditional artisanal way tradition is important in bologna a city which likes to remember its past at its heart is the oldest university in the world established in 1088 the home of la dotte learn it one of my favorite italian authors studied here and he's agreed to show us around you belong wow it's fantastic you're just coming off the street like that the most influential families the most wealthy family in all around europe send their children for a tour of the main universities and uh it was uh almost a compulsory to pass from here in bologna are these their sort of graduation plaques yeah the graduated students left here the cotto farms of their family in 1562 bologna began a massive remodeling of the city center including an expansion of the cathedral of san pietro when the pope realized with some alarm that the cathedral was destined to become bigger than saint peter's in the vatican itself the money was diverted to these magnificent university buildings and it gave birth to a new type of pilgrim to bologna students you know andrew what i think as well is that all the students come here and this is not only important what they bring in and learn but also they take away of the color of the building but these hallowed halls have seen the likes of dante petrarch and thomas are beckett pass through them and there's one room which i'm particularly excited about seeing a true example of how art can inspire learning wow this is one of the great things not just of bologna this is one of the great things in the world it's the only really authentic surviving early early anatomy theater and that is a renaissance coffered ceiling and in the middle we've got apollo with his lyre pointing down the god of medicine pointing straight down probably to the hand of the anatomy teacher as he demonstrates his students how to cut up a body i feel a bit presumptuous doing this but i think it's the only way to understand the space which is a theater of learning he loves it out there yeah because the professor in ancient times was also an actor right yeah absolutely was performing absolutely absolutely teaching was a form of rhetoric and you feel that up here my job how about you hey george come up here georgia come on my job would have been to be down here i tell you sweeping up the blood and then craves left over and so now you're on the spot and you've got all the figures of the past gail and hippocrates they are all caught in a frozen moment of their teaching and and this canopy on the top of us is an allegorical figure of anatomy but it's supported by these grisly figures of skinned men so you can see the tendons yes and the muscle and everything this is incredible he's even got a peeled penis you don't see many of those in world art see that figure at the back do you know what he's holding no he is holding a human nose because that is taliakotsi the founding father of cosmetic surgery who apparently he did he did the first nose job so that's why he's holding the laws oh my god how many years ago how many years ago how many how many nurses ago madonna enrique i have to say thank you it's just a masterpiece it's not hard to see how bologna earned its nickname la dotta learn it walking through these stunning buildings the sense of the most living places of learning really is striking they give the whole city a sense of life and vivacity but just like an army's students and their teachers march on their stomachs and it's time to discover a true bolognese meal you know what with all this culture and everything i think that you know now we should just explore the second bits enough daughter enough intelligence let's have to work out something about the grasa we can't come to bologna without eating the king of italian dishes pasta a dish that's known worldwide but another name spaghetti bolognese in italy we are fabulous for our pasta and bologna is the place to come from fresh egg pasta which artisan ears have turned into a work of art no wonder this city is known as the grasa the fat one so yeah the same attention to detail the respect to art and to music you know space to food and so here you are look this is all made by henry look at what he says how long do you want it so if you want every sauce shortening if you have a light sauce like a pesto or a tomato sauce then long time you tell it two four or one form they call them so this is taylormade pasta but not only look he says to fool your husband because you take the moment you tell your husband you made it yourself you don't come here just to buy stuff it's not like a fuel station then you come in and you fill up the car and go you talk to them they talk to you look there's a chair you can sit down if you're tired food here is a living tradition this shop has been in the same family for 130 years it's obviously very serious business is very serious this is the perfect place to get the italian tele for dinner tonight this is like a cathedral we entering now the inner chamber when you eat spaghetti or when you eat dry pasta the one who comes from the south that's durum wheat okay so doodoo wheat contains a lot of protein these because in the north the top of soil they just only grow soft wheat so the soft wheat hasn't got any protein in it so the al dente won't be there the pasta would be very mushy okay so by putting the eggs which contains a lot of protein in the eggs you're gonna achieve that al dente texture this is like a an incredible expression of how the actually the land determine what you have on the plates you know all the words eats this spaghetti bolognese here where they made the bolognese in bologna they don't know what spaghetti bolognese is nobody eats spaghetti bolognese so how come the world over people eat spaghetti because the americans you know okay have you seen this this is called matarelo two things to make the pasta and when your ass been come back drunk you wait behind the door and apparently they say the knee if you don't know why you hit him he knows why you eating his husband knows this one very verified is that the right length for yourself oh my god right she said don't use tomorrow that's not bologna don't drop it i'm leaving andrew for a couple of hours to buy some other ingredients for dinner tonight my ragu is based on a classic recipe written by pelegrino artuzin in 1891 buongiorno bonjourno his book science in the kitchen and the art of eating well is my bible in fact here in italy is everybody bible while giorgio focuses on the local cuisine i want to find a delicacy of my own of the artistic type i'm on the hunt for one of bologna's hidden gems every major italian town has a pinacoteca nazionale national art gallery which houses the work of local artists thankfully there's 25 miles of porticos covering bologna's pavements to keep the sun off my head and with their frescoes even these are artistic as well as functional hey sonostag i'm exhausted are you okay it's too hot yeah it's okay but look if you found this place it's not easy to find but this is what i like you know here we are it's an unassuming part of bologna really really unassuming you wouldn't even know that this art gallery was here it's just a little subtle sign minister of eddie bennet but i found the real treat inside for you this building may not be as impressive as the ufc in florence but inside there are real treasures to be found the pinnacle of italian art is not restricted to tuscany in rome bologna and emilia romagna also produced some fantastically influential artists the bolognese do not like this idea that you simply paint what you see realism is not their thing art is about conveying an idea it's a much more intellectual approach to painting guidoreni was born in bologna in 1575 and became celebrated throughout italy but his fame dimmed as the bolognese style of painting fell out of fashion this great painting was commissioned for bologna's san domenico church and you can just imagine the impact it would have had as you stared at it over mass certainly draws your eye it's a drama it's a drama it's the massacre of the innocence so that's what they are the little kids this is one of the bloodiest scenes in all of the bible you know a genocide enacted upon children and yet the idea here in bologna was that if you actually painted it as if it were real it would just be so sensational that people wouldn't think about what's really going on whereas if you distance it all people can bear to look at it and therefore they can think about it in a different way and be affected by it in a different way for dinner andrew and i will enjoy a bolognese masterpiece of a different sword pasta ragu it's a dish that sits firmly on a local tradition of rich italian food must be one of the reason bologna is also nicknamed lagrassa the fact bologna ladotta would not exist without bologna la grassa the fat one for my regulars i'm following pellegrino artusi classic recipe artusi was obsessed by the idea of compiling comprehensive lists of recipes from every italian region artusi he's one of your heroes right he's definitely my you know he was the first writer then actually sort of put together in the book a concept of italian cuisine you know because we have so many different regions with so many different microclimatic conditions and so many different ingredients so obviously the diet is a little bit different so his belief is was not just to give you a recipe they didn't give you the all history of the recipe and the meaning of the recipe so it's kind of a culinary portrait of italy garibaldi unified italy politically but he kind of unify italy gastronomically do you know what i mean i'm gonna have a little nice slap of butter you said you were gonna put some heart in it was it yeah the butcher then we went this morning to get the thing he says oh you want two hearts as well i thought yeah i'll have their hearts as long as i thought it was really good to put some artists so you must have liked nutella if you've allowed otello to alter the great artoozies recipe yeah that's true you're right if you get some good advice in the market or it just seems right i'll tell you so my meat is now kind of brownie i gotta put the vegetable in it then i already cooked today when i went to the butcher and hotel say not to put the tomato but just a nice little spoon of tomato perril color for the color but you know what you're doing here you know what you're doing you are going to get hit on the head with that rolling pin because she said whatever you do if you're making the ragu bolognese you don't put the tomato in it but i really want to put a little bit of tomato a candy a little bit you're a heretic you're a heretic i tell you what i tell you what artusi has to say to you artusi had a very nosy priest right who lived near him right and he called him don pomodoro do you know why because this priest got his nose into everyone's every one business every sauce is like the tomato he gets in everywhere in everywhere yeah and look i just put in literally like a spoonful maybe two you should give some leftovers to her and see if she knows me to the success of your heretical pasta sauce recipe while my sauce is cooking we got time to take in the sunset over bologna that's if we can make it up all the 280 stairs i mean what are you trying so working up an appetite that's what we're doing working up an appetite for you we arrive come oh look at the moon andrew look at the moon it's so beautiful look all the centrostarico is just red isn't it now we really landed in bologna to me you know the best dish is tanya tele with ragu it's the best dish ever can i take some cheese parmigiano cozy how much as much as you like i don't like to as much as you can afford usually they say thank you artusi thank you edda i think the pasta salad pasta is delicious i mean if that was spaghetti georgia look that was specific all of that would fall off right that's exactly what it's being caught in the knot that's exactly the spread of the idea of the spaghetti bolognese or with the meat sauce is very much attached to the immigrants the immigrants left italy because there was no enough food so when they went to america you know the only thing they didn't say because there was plenty full of meat there so they put as much meat as you can with every dish of pasta than that so what had before been the dish you just eat once in a while when times are good and you had some meat became suddenly it was something there is nothing like a good shave into freshen up in the morning and i know that andrew would love this place but don't georgia isn't this another example of how in bologna people who do everyday occupations somehow manage to do them in in surroundings of such calm and dignity and beauty you know like the lady making the pasta she's doing it in a in a shop that's like a palace beneath the kalman dignity is a volatile political history it's not just the building that they are reading bologna the politicians do the center of bologna is full of small independent business they all thrive because of socialist policies established by bologna communist party in the post-war years small traders pay much lower business rate in large corporations and is this linked to the communist party that is in more recent times the reason for bologna third nickname la rosa the red your face will feel so good all day you know bologna reputation for political militancy is not limited to the post-war communist years as far back as 1506 bologna so popular uprising against the ruling classes which led to the city in annexed by the papal state the polonie spirit of rebellion rose again during the second world war bologna was a center for the resistance over 1800 resistance fighters were shot here by the nazis bologna la rossa has also left an artistic legacy the 20th century bolognaise artist giorgio morandi spent his career paying homage to humble everyday objects right up until his death in 1964. day after day he sat in this studio rearranging and painting these pots he's revered in bologna his studio is preserved as a shrine and his life work is displayed in this new museum it's a painting of apparently almost nothing there is this sort of like flavor of old italy it reminds me of like grandparents keeping things and never throwing away anything and giving a personality to each of the objects that they mean something to them you hardly ever get in morandi anything that looks like luxury color this is not luxury this is simplicity if you think about it then you have all those color in front of you it's like the ingredients you get a lot of ingredients and most of the chef just put them all in the dish like you know what it takes a lot of strength and and self-assertiveness to make sure that you only pick the right one and it will work for you i think that's part of his cleverness as an artist he's very much painting during the rise of global capitalism right and if you wanted to find his sort of opposite in world art it would be andy warhol who's painting the ordinary objects of american life but it's heinz tomatoes and it's it's brand names brillo boxes i mean maybe that's maybe that's bologna rossa maybe maybe this is a kind of counter plus because he's painting these pictures up until well he dies in 1964. so maybe he's the sort of counter blast to warhol for me bologna definitely lives up to its three nicknames ladotta la gracia and la rossa and they're all intricately intertwined a fascinating marriage of food culture and politics it's quite a comfortable in a very bourgeois town that you you'd think maybe had forgotten its socialist past but it's still there do you think i think so so it's goodbye to bologna now we're off to explore the rest of the media romania this is the po valley this fertile land has nourished the region's rich history and fed the local culture both literally and metaphorically the beautiful river paw is the artery of emilia romagna it has painted the region in a palette of swirling fog deep dark soil and lush arable farmland many of the rich historical traditions of this region stem from these waters this river is also the source of my best memories of romania they tamed the land to grow what they want and here they even tame the sea you know and this is like something very special about it i wanted to show andrew one of the great pastimes of the paw valley with the land of the river as a backdrop the patalone is a traditional way of fishing where friends can get together to share in the peace and tranquility of this land and get a meal too these are your sochi me me misha because they all own this hat together it's like going to the bar isn't it it's a bit more secluded it's like it's like the golf club except with fish but what i really want to know is i want to know um you know how it works it works if you push that one the trick is done questa freitas pins required okay press okay oh it's coming up look at that look how big he is that is fabulous look at that oh look at the crab can you see the crowd oh that's what we're gonna eat first is refers to the shape of the net which resemble the giant pan the fishermen fry the kachin this baby red mallet they're all different you see so when you deep fry these little chips just put a bit of flour and deflate that's it it's not very difficult kind of fishing i mean i have to say i think it's italian people spending time together is about the drink and the food the food always brings them together for honest working men like convert and banana this pose from life is typical of the media romania rooted in the place semolino and a little bit of double zero flour okay there's one stick to it the other one is going to make it really really crispy now the only place they jump is in the pot how long do they take to cook jojo very very fast we're going to cook him in about maybe one minute very good i really wanted you to come and see this because this is really when we're talking about richness of this land culture and the real power of this land is really on its people and on this river then it's brought down for thousands and thousands of years this goodness from the arts and it's brought it down to them and they've been here every day taking a little bit with respect and we love and you know look at the variety the color the beauty and the abundance this is what is all about media that you know it's just just a little step towards freedom isn't he is your father after a strong coffee we're back on the road and heading to the historical city of ferrara definitely the worst for a while this is it was fantastic the city of ferrara was built on the banks of the po it was the stronghold of the estee dynasty who ruled here for over 300 years until the end of the 16th century like many dynasties the estee used arts and architecture to express their power and wealth i wanted you to see this art show that was designed by alberti the father of renaissance architecture yeah and on the top is a statue of nicolo i feel like i'm taking a reluctant eight-year-old on a tour around the architectural delights of ferrara yes i'll have to find something better for you eh today ferrara is a bustling university town full of students and bicycles the university was established by alberto the fifth of the estee in 1391 yesterday invited artists architects and scholars from all over europe jewish bankers persecuted elsewhere were welcomed here in fact the doors were flung open to all who could contribute to making ferrara powerful and successful if you came from anywhere else in italy and you arrived here you'd be like stumbling out of the dark ages into this new renaissance idea of what is a city you know these wide streets this was really the first emphatic expression of a very particular renaissance idea which was a planned town you know town planning the medieval town just grows like an organism and you end up with this labyrinth where poor lives next to rich everything's a kind of chaos here in ferrara for the first time the estee said no we're not going to have that kind of city anymore we're going to have a planned city wide streets but only for the rich and it's just lined with palaces in all directions and at the center of it all this thumping great expression of estee paw the palazzo de dimante yeah with these amazing kind of sharp diamonds of stone all over it studded like a kind of piece of chain mail i mean there's nothing else like it in renaissance architecture not quite like this it looks very modern isn't it yeah i think it is i mean you know fascist architects looked at this building when they were designing you know in the 30s and the 40s they were looking at this kind of symmetry this architecture of power i think it's very beautiful but i also think there's something slightly sinister about it it's telling you if you're one of the ferrari's poor don't mess with us or we'll come down on you like just the fist yeah absolutely in their heyday the estee were as dominant as the medici and even married into other powerful dynasties including a notorious union with lucrezia bordja but in 1598 with no air to continue the line ferrara was claimed by the papal states today the estee dynasty is largely forgotten because the estee lost the power battle all of their buildings got stripped of their possessions got taken to other places so what we're left with is this beautiful fantastic but rather melancholy stage set it's like the set of a play but all the actors are gone we are driving further west along the po valley to modern this city is home to two of my favorite things balsamic vinegar and vascars but it's also home to a truly heart-stopping work of art one that's rooted in the soil and the blood of this i'm region to tell you a story i'm going to give you a role in the story as well if you're the role in the story yeah so you have to imagine that it's 1480 you've done something terrible maybe you've tried to poison the duke of the estee dynasty but you've been caught and you've been sentenced to death now they're taking you down this street when you get to the end of the street they're going to rip pieces of your flesh off with red hot pincers they're going to hang you by the neck until you're dead but you've got some friends with you and they are the members of the local confraternity of the good death and it's their job to make sure that you repent before you die this is their church they stop you here and they bring you in because they want you to see one last thing before i die before you die i would like to have the risotto before i die you maybe you had your last wish already so assume you've had your risotto this object is going to be the last thing really that you should hold in your mind's eye if you want to save your soul it was created in 1477 by an artist called guido matsoni what is he made of it's made of terracotta no yeah it's made of the same earth of emilio romania from which from which all the things that we've been eating grow so the idea behind the sculpture is that you are going to your death and i as a member of the company of the good death want you to have as good of death as possible and that if you look at christ's dead figure lying wow mary the madonna grieves over him well mary magdalene twists her face into the scream of anguish somehow this emotion will transmit from that sculpture into you and that you will feel these things in your heart and you will be moved to turn to the priest who accompanies you on the scaffold you will confess and maybe just maybe this sculpture may help to save your soul i think he does achieve what he set out for these sculptures are refined and sophisticated yet unashamedly proud of their roots having grown out of the humblest of materials the emilio romagna clay itself well you can step out of character now what draws me most to this region is the beautiful produce that grows out of this soil for 25 years i've been buying balsamic vinegar traditionally from the agar sothi family but until now i never met my supplier this is the place where all happens the produce transforms itself and becomes balsamic vinegar traditionally the real deal their real deal the agatsati family has been making vinegar since 1714 the family has perfected the art of creating a symphony of flavor out of the most modest of ingredients grapes patience and a colony of bacteria that the vinegar producer called the mother itself right so what does the mother do to this liquid i mean the natural sugar then there is inside the mother of the sugar so the mother bacteria colony that you still use in every batch every year was actually first sort of created and you're still it's still the same bacteria exactly it's not this is the same it's the same that's exactly what the value will be the value of the achitaya is on the value of the matter if you start tomorrow you're gonna have to wait quite a long time before right but summer vinegar is often swept aside as a simple condiment that you use to dip your bread in or throw over a salad but balsamic vinegar traditionally is a very different normal balsamic vinegar and that's why this tiny little bottle of 25 years old vinegar costs 250 euros the aging factor i think is a typical expression of this land this patient this idea of you know i can't wait to have something fantastic it's wonderful it's wonderful i dream of you chips chips the sweet with the salt it's even more intense it takes 25 years to get the balsamic out of that battle isn't it after 25 years we actually managed to meet each other well here's to both of you etre georgia this trip to modern is a dream for me first i get to meet etern and now i get to satisfy my second love fast guards modena is home to enter ferrari and we can't come here without going to visit the new ferrari museum a testament to his life work he was obsessed with racist childhoods and he turned his dream into a quest to build the ultimate racing machine today ferrari is famous worldwide enzo's original workshop on office founded here in 1929 is still standing sheltered by this spectacular museum designed by architect jan kaplinsky it's a perfect demonstration of how tradition meets modernity and technology in this region it's all white it's like an art gallery the cars are on plinths so beautiful aren't they i think cars deserve to be looked at in terms of you know especially these kind of sculptures look that we're looking at these cars as if they're sculptures but they do actually look like sculpture of the 1940s you think of henry moore if you think about that sort of biomorphic that was in the air so even the cars are like that even if you are ugly you look good on this one ferrari seems to me to be the man who almost like literally gives it the engine to drive into the future emilia romagna has also given the world ducati maserati lamborghini what a roll call for one fairly small region this real modern aesthetic and this culture of design why do you think it flourished in northern italy i think it's the passion and the drive you know they want to show everybody that they could do something really great they dream about being that's what entrepreneur used to say i dream about being ferrari i dreamt to be ferrari and i become you know just you know can you imagine how strong you must have been feeling to dream about it no more medicine no more medicine no more stay no more than they took the mantle on and they took it on through showing something that they could do so they they went forwards with that this is so important but this card weren't just made to be looked at they were designed to be driven every aspect of these cars is a product of craftsmanship even today every engine is signed by the mechanic and put it together i'm crying that's so good oh that was so good you enjoyed it oh yeah georgie i enjoyed it i feel my blood is going round finally we arrive in palma our last stop in emilia romania this town is famous for the highest quality delicacy palmer parmesan cheese and quality control has become a business too the eu as bases food standard agency in this tiny town baptistry archbishop's palace cathedral beautiful romanesque cathedral it's not just the food that's world-class church after you one of the world's great buildings and how cool is it it's like instant air conditioning you come out 40 degrees heat in here you can relax you can enjoy you can see here in palmer's cathedral there's one of the most innovative or inspiring works of art of the whole renaissance it's in the 1520s antonio allegri dettol was commissioned to paint the dome of the cathedral but now you now you look up to the dome wow and it's showing us the assumption of the virgin mary she's being whooshed into heaven after her death and she's going to meet her son jesus christ in heaven it's so uplifting it's like goes like like a spiral unbelievable it's a painting that's meant to make you feel as if you are being whirled up to heaven it does it dies it really feels like it's lifting you up levitation but what's amazing about this is that it's ten years after michelangelo's finished the sistine chapel and the people in palma think ah we're not gonna be outdone by those romans so what they do this is not a ceiling this is not a ceiling this is a dome in the past if they painted a dome they just painted it blue with gold stars heaven corregio set himself the challenge to paint the madonna entering heaven was he really appreciative for this people see this is the terrible paradox titian supposedly the greatest painter in the history of painting right he heard about this and he looked at it and said this is incredible you couldn't pay corregio enough for this in fact if you turned that dome upside down and made it into a bowl and filled it with gold it wouldn't be enough money but the tragedy of it is that the patron the cannon of the cathedral was obviously a very conservative man he simply said it looks like a stew of frog's legs that was his judgment and and corregio finished it in 1530 took him eight years from start to end he never got another commission in palmer no it was like thank you very much but no thank you just a little way out of parma is my great friends massimo spigerolli's farm parma is famous for his dry dam and i think massimo culatello di cebello is definitely some of the best in the world culatello is a type of parma ham only made with the finest cut of pork ramp so massimo what do we use is very very simply salt pepper salt and pepper garlic garlic red wine fortana territorial meat from the pig which is a ramp what makes this recipe is the fog is the silent these are the ingredients as well of these pigs time and time time is what plays like for the balsamic vinegar again the master of time the master of time when they make ferraris the master of time when they make culatello they know how to wait for something that gets better and better and better the meat is massaged with garlic and wine then is covered with salt finally is wrapped tightly in the pig's bladder it's a technique that hasn't changed for centuries that's the same way and his grandfather used to make culatello for giuseppe verdi what giuseppe verdino they used to buy culatello from his grandfather look this is where they actually the artisan is king you know fantastic how long will it be hanging it can stay up to two three years without any problem when it's ready it's down to the cellar i can smell it the march of the pig leads here this is the paradise of the pig this cella has been used to cure culatello for nearly 700 years they're like sleeping bats look at that massimo that's prince charles's one look at that prince habit of monaco this seller is like a perfectly honed machine to work best massimo must keep exactly 5000 culatello hanging in here he decides every day how much to open or close the window depend on the temperature demand of the humidity so the fresh air will come in with the fog the humidity and these activate the noble white mold then give that characteristic flavor to the cure meat this is the last ingredient coming naturally through the wind and the men decide how much to expose the culatello too into if a woman smell like that would be my lover speak for yourself all right how wonderful that something as simple as fog or even silence can generate such incredible flavor i've been struck for the first time on this trip that the features of the landscape are actually just as important to the art of the region the fog that swirls through caregio's fresco in palmer cathedral just as it swirls around massimo's cellar centuries old traditions are vital to these region livelihoods even today so preserving them is important to everyone who lives here palmer's palatine library contains a rare historical treasure that i'm desperate to get a peek at wow that is what i call a library fantastic this book is one of the earliest existing italian recipe books written in 1680 by carlo nasha who was private chef to the duke rancho farnenze this 400 years old manuscript has recently been restored this book is very important it really tells you what the cookery of that time was like obviously this is not the cookery of the poor people this is cooking of the rich the recipe are very simply written but he's a very intelligent book because he has a reference to french food he has reference to far east food so it shows you how sophisticated they were on their taste even that long time and just some of these recipes have just caught my eye like what don't touch it you've been to oxford you should know that you don't touch a manuscript i touch it because i got the gloves so get your hands off for one time can i look intelligent that you look like a peasant for one time yeah please you know carefully i got the gloves from dukes of the 17th century would use these astounding banquets as political tools demonstrating their power and wealth to visiting dignitaries who'd be left in awe and wonder this is amazing and the smell of this poop is mess of a kitchen smell it for chefs like carlo nash and pelegrino artusi food is not just something to fill up your belly it smells of the kitchen it also can fly and be used to great intellectual ends this is what modern cookery is all about and this is how we start to learn is when people like that start to write these books this book has been restored by a group of very special ladies who call themselves the fornello dining club they want to ensure that these recipes are kept alive and most importantly enjoy for our last meal in emilia romagna they have invited us to try out one of nash's recipes i'm going to cook something for you which is this really special dish that is the rosa de parma simple very simple ingredients the fillet steak filet filetto aperto open up butterflied open then we've got some garlic some rosemary some pomegranate some parmesan and again jared without the effort of these women this recipe and many others would have been lost forever is stuffed with parmesan cheese and parmesan then rolled and tied yeah i love the way that the cheese mixes in with the palm of ham we get this sweet flavor and then the wine kicks in that's right with the creamer i mean this is rich food this book proof that the banqueting was sanford and was not just about food was about showing your power your understanding of what was sitting around the table what they were going to hit and show them your understanding of the words around you to get things from genova to get things from veggies to getting from sicily that was a show of power cheers everybody these ladies might be just a bit more glamorous than our friends at the fishing hub but the sentiments the same to keep the heritage and traditions of this region alive emilia romagna is where centuries old traditions have met with the modern world the people here know how to appreciate the silence with the speed richness with simplicity and all is with an eye to enjoy life one thing i was struck by particularly in bologna for me a great rediscovery was the extent to which people doing relatively modest occupations like making pasta or you know being a barber managed to carve out for themselves this fantastic environment to work in they've kept that tradition of the small respect of the working person yes that doesn't have to be a multinational company you can stay small and it will still work what do you think your abiding memories would be of this trip through emilia romagna oh it's for me it was just incredible to see these people then they got this such a joy of life in one side almost like the southerner you know and then in the other side you have this absolutely tough work ethic they can wait for their produce you mean sort of the joy of the south and the work ethic of the north that's right fused well this theme of patience or you know taking a long time to get something just right i think it's true of the art as well do you remember that that amazing dome painted by correct my favorite thing that was my favorite thing ever i've never seen anything like that that's much better than this 16 chapel you think that's much better than this teacher much better spoken like a true northern italian so where are we going to go next i'm going to take you to lombardy i'm going to take you to my region my view of the world started from there i want you to have a look at it from it as well so you're just going home at diamond push down on the accident you

Channel: KakaTonyLa

Views: 1,009,831

Keywords: Italy, Unpacked, The, Art, of, the, Feast

Id: BW9-b3J3-DY

Length: 59min 1sec (3541 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2013