Farming and Food Culture in Italy

Left and right my dreams are coming to fruition in Italy. The dream I’m talking about today is my dream of someone teaching me how to cook, and what’s more is that the person I am learning from is a Toscana woman.

For some context here’s a little background about myself, I come from medium sized town in the middle of nowhere Washington. A place referred to as the Tri-Cities, but I hail specifically from Richland. It’s a typical suburban American town, picture and endless row fast food, strip malls, and chain restaurants, where Italian food is Olive Garden and Chinese food is P.F. Chang’s. Outside of these stereotypical American infrastructures lies acres upon acres of farm land, almost exclusively conventional. Though in Katherine Cole’s book Voodoo Vintner she did mention a biodynamic vineyard in the Tri-Cities, which I am very impressed to hear. My father was a conventional farmer of alfalfa sometimes corn in addition to a herd of cattle and my uncles are cherry farmers. I’ve always known that farming is hard work, and that food doesn’t just magically appear from a grocery store. Even though my family grew food, cooking was not something that we did together. I ate a lot of bland food, maybe some tuna helper, steak, potatoes, again I feel like a bit of an American stereotype. I’m definitely not blaming my parents for not instilling a love for food on a deep cultural level because I can’t think of anyone of my friend’s families that were food centric, unless they were hiding it from me.

I started caring about food and thinking about it in the context of culture in my early twenties thanks to an ex of mine. We would spend our weekends watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations while he cooked and I sat on the counter occasionally stirring something. Remember I had never cooked anything before, the best I could do was assemble a sandwich. I eventually moved to Portland and was exposed to the restaurant scene there, I worked as a server for a little bit at a small bistro, then started working in specialty coffee at Extracto in NE Portland, which is surrounded by amazing restaurants such as Beast, DOC, Pok Pok Noi, and Grain and Gristle to name a few. There is no avoiding good food, hip restaurants, and food sourcing in Portland, and really why would you want to? It’s a cornucopia of localvores. May it live on forever.

Inspired by the community of food lovers and chefs that I became a part of I eventually taught myself how to cook very simple dishes. Learning how to sauté vegetables elicited both a sense of pride and embarrassment for not knowing this simple act sooner. I fell in love with how food brings people together, the excitement of feeding people, how cooking with people can be a fun activity to do with friends, and sitting down at a table to enjoy the labor of love. All of the things that so many food movements talk about I was feeling.

Even though I can sort of navigate my way around a kitchen, and cooking isn’t quite as scary to me as it once was, I’ve been longing for someone to teach me a few skills through hands on experience rather than someone giving me a verbal tip. I hope through my long-winded story of my food journey you understand how excited I am to spend four weeks helping Elena prepare meals.

For a typical dinner that serves about eight people, Elena will start cooking around 4:30 or 5:30 pm. It takes around three hours to prepare everything, but that includes the time it takes to stop and feed her five-month-old, or attend to her other three children. Also, she makes a lot of food, so there are usually leftovers that will be eaten for lunch the next day or two.

The following pictures are us preparing a rice dish. First, we make a simple broth (brodo) with one potato, two carrots, and onion, fresh herbs from her garden, olive oil, and salt. Let that simmer for about an hour. In the meantime, cut the vegetables that will go into the rice. It’s spring time right now so we’re using asparagus, artichokes, zucchini, and zucchini blossoms. You want to set the tips of the asparagus aside to be quickly sautéed right before serving, the zucchini and the blossoms are also set aside until closer to the end because they’re softer and will cook faster.

Elena is also preparing a chickpea tart type dish, using 100 grams of chickpea flower and 300 grams of water, an unspecified amount of olive oil (Elena just said a lot), salt, finely ground pepper, and herbs. That’s baked in the oven for about thirty minutes and is incredibly delicious with a soft, yet crisp texture.

After an hour of simmering the broth is ready to be used. Elena cooks her rice in broth, HOW HAVE I NEVER KNOWN TO DO THIS BEFORE?! After learning this I understood why her rice had so much more flavor compared to most rice I’ve had in my life. We then add the artichokes, asparagus ends, and carrots to the pot. Once the rice has almost finished cooking we add the zucchini and blossoms as well as a little bit of cream, a lot of olive oil, and some salt.

Most of my meals here have been vegetarian, not a lot of meat is consumed. Maybe once a week we’ll have chicken, or a delicious roast beef smothered in a very mild mustard, but really, it’s all about vegetables. The vegetables are steamed and then doused in olive oil and a little salt. I’ve decided that I need a pressure steamer when I return, it’s been very convenient for root vegetables such as beets, and also for tougher vegetables such as artichokes. Beans would be another reason for a pressure cooker. They also eat raw vegetables, at lunch and dinner there is always a salad which is just lettuce, maybe arugula, then add olive oil and salt. Done.

This evening we also prepared the sauce that would be used for the follow night’s lasagna. I minced carrots, onion, and celery together, which was slowly sautéed in olive oil. This lasagna was to be vegetarian so Elena used lentils instead of meat. Add the lentils and let that simmer for a while and you have yourself a delicious sauce for lasagna, or to put over pasta.

I’ve also noticed that there isn’t a lot of food waste happening at Nico. First, Elena uses the vegetables that Federico doesn’t sell at the market, the vegetables that might not look like what we’ve been conditioned to see at the grocery store, but are still as delicious and nutritious as the better-looking counterparts. Because they are also running an agrotourism business Elena is cooking for guests often, and there are often leftovers, which are then taken to her house and eaten for lunch and dinners until they are gone. Elena only makes a new dinner for guests or if her family and the other workers on the farm have eaten all of the leftovers. This is what living in a perfect food world is like.

In summation, I’m learning that you really don’t need to do anything fancy to make a delicious meal. Having good ingredients is essential, the liberal use of olive oil helps a lot, and adding a few herbs from your garden is ideal. Also, cook everything that you can in a broth!

On Sunday, April 8 I attended my first sagra in Italy. You’re probably wondering what a sagra even is, that’s fine. They are not common in the United State, not even close to common, there is only one that has existed before that I know of and it’s because I had the pleasure of helping organize it with Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network. When promoting this event last fall in Portland most people slowly repeated the word back to me with a lot of inflection, sometimes pronouncing it “saga”.

We all know that Italians love food, I mean if they didn’t then what am I doing here? Sagras are a celebration of food, and each one is a celebration of one type of food that is traditionally farmed and consumed in a specific village. They slowly begin in April and really hit it off from May until September. The origins are a little unclear, but from what I’ve read they come from pagan festivals, but I can’t say for sure. The Italians I’ve talked to about sagras don’t know when they started either, so I guess it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they do exist and they are so much fun.

The one that I attended was in Valdottavo, a small village tucked away in the mountains in the province of Lucca. It was called Valle dell’Olio, a festival for olive oil. At the event, there are local olive oil producers for attendees to sample their products, as well as food, wine, live music, and other booths with local artisans and maybe a scarf vendor. This olive oil festival takes place every year around the same time, which is how all sagras operate. For example, in May there is a sagra dei pici (a type of thick spaghetti pasta) near Siena that always takes place during the last Sunday of May. There are books that give lists of sagras that take place in different villages, but they are also advertised on street fliers. As a tourist, the one downside to the sagra is that you usually need a car to get there because they are not in cities.

Olive oil is life in Italy, or at least that’s how it appears to an American outsider. It’s in every recipe and smothered on vegetables whether they are steamed or raw. I’ve felt like every day is a celebration of olive oil since I’ve been in Italy, but it was really fun going to an event dedicated to this beautiful substance.

There are a lot of olive oil producers throughout Italy, and in the provence of Lucca it’s one of the main agricultural products. Lucca is known for having a more delicate tasting olive oil compared to other parts of Toscana due to the variety of olive tree grown here, Frantoio. Federico produces about 100 kilos (220 pounds) of olive oil per year for personal consumptions, Elena said that to make it through a whole year of cooking she needs about 200 kilos (440 pounds). I do not doubt those figures.

The idea and sprit behind this sort of event is really wonderful. A whole weekend, sometimes a whole week, dedicated to a specific food that is also deeply tied to the people living in that area is fantastic. People of all ages are there, dancing, eating, and enjoying the magnificence of food. I’ve talk to Elena more about sagras in Italy, and the one I went to was early in the year, so it was a little different than a sagra in the summer. Once the weather is consistently nice, so around May, a typical sagra starts in the evening, around 8 pm, and there are generally 3 different vendors preparing the celebrated food each in their own style. To try one of the dishes you pay about 20 euros, which doesn’t include wine, and you get a lot of food. You can buy just one dish or try all three, the choice is yours. After the eating, there is usually live music, dancing, and of course more wine. In southern Italy, it is not uncommon for a sagra to go for an entire week, but in Toscana they are usually from Friday-Sunday. Elena suggests going to one is southern Italy because the music is generally better. I’m really hoping to be able to attend another food festival, maybe the Sagra di Pici when I go to Siena next week.

While I wait for my next sagra encounter I’m thinking about how to make these more common in the United States. Why they haven’t already swept the nation is unclear to me, essentially having a party about one crop, or one style of curred meat, or one type of pasta is arguably the best way to get people excited and informed about what they are eating. It builds community, it supports local agriculture, it spreads awareness, am I missing anything?

If this type of event sounds like something that has been missing from your life, perhaps a hole that you didn’t even know existed until I started talking about sagras, do not despair because sagras are coming to the Pacific Northwest. The Culinary Breeding Network is bringing them to the Seattle and Portland area this fall and winter, and we hope to continue to expand them nationwide. There are a lot of big ideas in the works and I’m excited to see them unfold. For now, I’m going enjoy my olive oil covered vegetables in Toscana.

Ciao!

Small-scale organic farming has been a huge movement against monocropping. As part of small-scale organic farming I’ve definitely heard the term ‘intercropping’ used. Intercropping involves planting multiple crops together in the same bed. Now, I have a new, related term to incorporate into my food vocabulary: ‘companion planting.’ I’m sure this isn’t excluded to biodynamics, but I’m learning about it now and it’s also a very common thing in biodynamics from my understanding so I’m going to talk about it.

Intercropping’s goal is to save space in the garden, while companion planting is the idea that you should be planting crops together that will aid the other to grow to its best ability. Federico has a few different companion plantings taking place such as zucchini and onions, the onions help ward of insects that like to bite the young zucchini plant. Also, peas planted with carrots, lettuce and radishes, tomatoes and onions, and so on. If you’re interested in more ideas about companion planting I suggested reading the book Culture and Horticulture: The Classic Guide to Biodynamic and Organic Gardening by Wolf D. Strol, he provides a great list of different crops to plant together. Strol also writes that plants that engage in this symbiotic relationship are often one that are often eaten together, but this is not a hard and fast rule, so do a little research before planting your favorite recipe ingredients next to one another hoping that they will be best friends.

As you might have noticed, many of the preparations require a specific part of an animal to be used while buried in the ground. Each part of the animal used was chosen for a very intentional reason. Biodynamics views soil as a living organism and there is some anthropomorphizing of plants and soil taking place in the ideology. The cow’s horn is chosen because of the cow’s incredibly complex digestive system and the way a cow horn is shaped, which is supposed harness the power of the earth to transform the manure and the quartz in 500 and 501 respectively. In 502 the bladder of a stag is used because there are high levels of potash in the bladder. 503’s use of the cow’s small intestine is due to this being the area where calcium processing first begins in the cow. 505 uses the skull of domesticated animal because the head of an animal correlates to the roots of a plant, in biodynamic theory. In 506 the mesentery of a cow is used because the its nervous system is also a part of the digestive system, which is tied into the human consumption of chamomile. Think about how you enjoy a soothing cup of chamomile tea before bed to calm your nerves.

It’s also important to note that each animal used must come from a reliable source, where the animal is raised using holistic practices. I was talking to Federico about where he acquires these animal parts because the only animals he has on his farm are chickens, donkeys, a rabbit, a dog, and at least two cats, nothing of use for these preparations. He said he has to order them from a nearby farm, but in Katherine Cole’s book Voodoo Vintners, she writes about how people are able to order tablets of these preparations online that are Demeter certified. From what I’ve seen and read so far, biodynamic farming has so much to do with the closeness of the farmer to their land, so ordering something online feels a bit like distancing oneself from the process. That being said, I am not a biodynamic farmer and I’ve only helped stir one preparation, I am by no means an authority on this subject.

Compost has been an important part of organic farming forever. It’s a craft that can take a long time to master, one might think of it as a very long experiment. There are many suggestions on different ways to compost, some say the ideal compost is to do a layer of dead plant matter then a layer of manure followed by a layer of green plants, add some straw in there and repeat, other say to just throw all of these elements together without regard to structure and call it a day, and there is even a compost tea that is an option. Between the unorganized pile and the neat layers, there is a commonality, which is to pay attention to the amount of dry plants to green plants ratio. Federico does his compost in layers, and was taught by his very first WWOOFer who he says was a compost master.

If there is too much green plant matter it can cause the pile to get too hot, which is not beneficial to microbial growth. Initially the compost heap will be between 45 degrees Celsius and 50 degrees Celsius (113-122 degrees Fahrenheit), and after a week or so the heap will slowly cool down which will make desirable environment for fungus and microorganisms to make this their new home.

When a healthy compost has been made the worms will come, they are essential to transforming the pile from organic material to humus by eating and mixing the contents. The compost heap should be monitored to make sure that the temperature does not rise above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) to ensure that the happy decomposers don’t vacate the premise. If you do notice the temperature rising add some water to the top of the heap to cool it down, but be careful not to add to much because the minerals within the heap will likely leach out into the surrounding soil. It’s probably a good idea to take notes on how much of each substance you’ve added to the heap to avoid over heating in the future. Adding too much fresh manure, and the type of manure added (poultry and horse manure creates the most heat) has a great effect on the temperature. Using older manure might be a good option because the heating potential is less than that of fresh manure.

Once the compost’s form is established it’s time to add the preparations. The preparations will help speed the process along and add more nutrients to the heap, which will be added to the soil where crops are planted, in turn making a healthier plant. Below is an illustration of how the preparations are to be placed in the compost pile:

And there you have it, a biodynamic compost heap! Let the humus rich, mycroryze party commence!