Italian cooking crimes

A colleague pointed me towards a newspaper article she'd spotted in yesterday's paper called Italy's 10 rules to avoid cooking crimes. It has appeared in various forms in newspapers around the world during the past couple of years and can be summed up in The 10 Italian Cooking Commandments. If you know anyone who is Italian, or simply enjoy Italian food, it makes for delightful reading. I nodded my head in agreement at some of the commandments and raised my hands in question (as Italians do) at others. Tomato sauce on pasta - seriously??

Let's get some things straight.

Pasta is a main meal, not a side dish. It may be one of many courses in a multi-course dinner, but it's not served on the side.

Pasta is cooked al dente (al DEN-te - not al DON-tay) which means that it is actually quite firm. It's every Italian kid's job is to check whether the pasta is ready. This is done by sight, feel and taste - not how long it has been cooking for. I remember my Form 1 cooking teacher telling our class that pasta must be cooked for exactly nine minutes. "Nine minutes!" she shouted at the Italian kids who had started taking theirs out of the pot because it was already done. She wasn't going to win that one.

Spaghetti, or any form of pasta, does not come in a tin. That's impossible.

Cappuccino is a breakfast drink. That means you only drink it with breakfast or early in the morning. People who know me well learn to understand this, to the point where I sometime get txts saying, "you'd be proud of me - I met a friend for coffee and didn't order a cappuccino because I know you don't do that at night." Latte is partially acceptable during the morning, but after lunch it's espresso all the way. To illustrate how wrong it is to order a cappuccino at night, let's say it's like going out for dinner and ordering cereal and toast with a side order of steak. Although people present very convincing arguments that breakfast foods can actually make a yummy dinner (bacon and eggs, etc), it doesn't extend to breakfast drinks.

Apparently it is believed that Caesar salad is Italian in origin. Although I don't claim to know of every single food that originated in Italy, this misconception was news to me.

Pizza has a thin base and very few, fresh toppings. Cheese is not stuffed into the crust and barbeque sauce is not dumped over mountains of random toppings.

Tiramisu is not the only Italian dessert, nor is it particularly traditional. It is a northern dessert that has been adopted as universally Italian but is far less common in the south (although I won't argue about how good it tastes).

Ravioli is nothing like the neat little parcels you find in supermarket chillers. The real stuff resembles flying saucers with a bit of meat in the middle.

Parmigiano-Reggiano/Pecorino Romano is a gift from the cheese gods. It is much stronger than the gently flavoured parmesan-type cheese that most people associate with Italian food. Likewise, homemade mozzarella is nothing like the plastic stuff you find grated on pizza.

How to Live in Italy - Rebecca Helm-Ropelato

I have been reading How to Live in Italy: Essays on the charms and complications of living in paradise. It is a collection of short essays by American expat Rebecca Helm-Ropelato about her experience of moving to a town south of Rome. If you are Italian, or know someone who is, you'll probably (hopefully!) find yourself chuckling and nodding at these tales.

I can certainly identify with the local patriotism Helm-Ropelato talks about. Sure, we have a bit of this going on locally but the sense of loyalty to each region (complete with language, culture and food) is much more defined in Italy. Although I've never lived in Italy myself, I grew up in an Italian community where so many of the mannerisms Helm-Ropelato describes make perfect sense. It is fascinating to view them from an 'outside' perspective and I can sympathise; to us, the You know you're Italian when ... lists are the real thing!

It's refreshing to read stories of someone who hasn't moved to Tuscany. As beautiful as the region is, there is far more to Italy than restoring cliched villas in the north ... oops, there's my regional Italian patriotism coming through!

I laughed as I read the anecdote about movie dialogue being overdubbed into Italian. When in Rome (ha!), I went to see A Beautiful Mind, which had recently opened. I found what I thought was an English language cinema - all the posters were in English - but discovered within the first few seconds that I was in for two hours of struggling to follow a movie with my very limited Italian. I was also amazed at how fluently 'Russell Crowe' spoke Italian! I probably don't need to mentioned that I enjoyed the movie far more

How to Live in Italy is a delightful collection of tales and reflections for expats, locals and wannabe travellers. Download it for Kindle and temporarily transport yourself to paradise.

A Day in Pompeii

A Day in Pompeii is an exhibition showing at Te Papa until 25 April 2010. It chronicles the events of 24-25 August 79AD, when Pompeii and neighbouring town Herculaneum were destroyed and buried by a massive eruption from nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius in Italy. It is an impressive exhibition.

In 2002, I spent a month backpacking around Italy. I remember sitting on the train from Rome heading to Naples and attempting a disjointed conversation with a young Napolitani man sitting opposite me, he in broken English and me in very limited Italian. As we neared Napoli, he seemed keen on pointing out some passing landmarks, many of which I couldn't comprehend, but some I recognised. We started passing a mountain, and his commentary, accompanied by my increasingly confused facial expressions, went something like this: "montagna (mountain) ... Vesuvio (Vesuvius) ... boom!!" The elaborate arm gestures made this one clear: we were passing Mount Vesuvius.

Pompeii was definitely on my list of places to visit while staying in Napoli, and I spent about half a day walking through the reconstructed and excavated streets of a town that existed nearly 2000 years ago. There were the usual town attractions: the forum, central meeting places, stately villas with grandiose names like House of the Faun etc. However, reality struck as I walked up towards the back of the town and went into the homes of the villagers, saw their bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms ... these were everyday people who lived just as we would have in those days, and not just some distant historical figures we read about in school.

Pompeii bakery

With trees and greenery growing in the streets and homes, it's almost like walking through any vacant town. For some reason, the town bakery also captured my attention, or perhaps it was the terrified expressions on the faces of the two plaster casts on display of people caught and buried alive in the lava. Again, these were real people and this was an incredibly moving experience. I later saw some of the original artefacts and frescos which were removed from Pompeii and are now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

A Day in Pompeii attempts to recreate life at the height of the Roman Empire before the fateful events of that day. Everyday life wasn't too far different from parts of society today, with people eating takeaways, painting graffiti on walls and buildings, going to shops and bars, and even indulging in illegal gambling. The exhibition features interactive displays and 360 degree virtual tours of a typical house, the town itself, and various artefacts from the time. There was an area with several plaster casts of bodies in the positions they were found; this is haunting to experience. As we sat down to watch the short 3D video giving an impression of the effect of the eruption over 24 hours, I had to laugh as I heard a student behind me exclaim, "it's better than Avatar!"

If you're going to be in Wellington before 25 April, it's well worth checking out A Day in Pompeii.

The Sicilian Girl

The Sicilian Girl (2009) is a fact-based drama about a 17-year-old girl, Rita, from a mafia family who broke the code of silence to bring down mafiosi from her village. I was fortunate enough to win tickets to this subtitled movie (yes, the competition junkie strikes again) and went with a friend to one of the opening screenings yesterday.

The Sicilian Girl paints a raw, unglamourous and unglorified portrait of Mafia life quite different to The Godfather (1972) or anything by Martin Scorsese. It is angry and courageous, dark and gritty, and pulls no punches; corruption and betrayal is rife and the mafioso hierarchy rules all. Initially seeking revenge on her father's (and brother's) killers, Rita comes to see that nothing will change unless the whole mafia is brought down and she puts her life on the line to do it.

I vaguely remember parts of the court case hitting the media several years ago; I had no idea that it was a 17-year-old girl who was responsible for these mafiosi's fall from grace. I'm sure that jailing some mafia leaders will not be the end of the story, but it's certainly an historical start.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke

View the trailer here: