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Francesco Rigatelli – Florence
Walking through the aisles of the Leopolda in Florence, where Taste—the Pitti fair that, with the consultancy of gastronaut Davide Paolini, selects the most refined producers of Italian delicacies—came to a close on Monday, one notices a curious trend.
Italian ingenuity is focusing on crossovers, which often coincide with a return to origins. This is the case with pink salami or mortadella. “It had disappeared and we decided to bring it back to the shop,” say the young Scapin brothers from Bologna, who from their small Artigianquality shop on Via Santo Stefano opened a laboratory outside the city to make cured meats the old-fashioned way. Hence the classic mortadella, the Mora Romagnola one, the organic version, with black truffle, with pistachio, and indeed the salami. For the latter, cuts of shoulder, jowl, and ham are finely knife-chopped and, combined with mortadella paste, create a delicate meeting point between cooked ham and mortadella.
Challenging tradition—and Campanian ire—is Nicola Rendine, with a career in dairy and now an entrepreneur with Mò bufala. In Andria he has brought back the breed once donated to the Bourbons and, alongside classic mozzarellas and bocconcini, offers the burrotta, a burrata filled with ricotta. All buffalo milk, of course: “Innovation passes through Andria,” he explains, “which has always had a strong cow-milk tradition. Ours is a slow cheese with the addition of Apulian lactic starter. After maturation, the curd is cut and, during stretching, the mozzarella passes through brine, which gives it character.”
Another profaner of Campania is pastry chef Gabriele Ciacci, who with his partner Elisa founded Opera waiting in Poggibonsi, near Siena, to innovate in his field. The colomba, while waiting for Easter, thus becomes colombabà, soaked in rum as a tribute to the Neapolitan dessert. Here too there is an idea of recovery, because panettoni, cakes, and biscuits are made with cereals and old Tuscan varieties. It’s not only a cultural matter, but also one of values and renewed flavor. Recently there are the panfette, rusks made with sourdough and ancient grains; the savory panettone with marine plankton, capers, olives, and candied lemon; as well as croissants packaged without preservatives using panettone dough.
The same idea of crossover and recovery lies behind the mix of semolina and durum wheat flours processed by Apulian mills that, in Ruffano near Lecce, creates friscous, part frisella, part couscous, with the addition of turmeric. By cooking it and letting customers taste it, meanwhile, in Monasterolo di Savigliano near Cuneo, Claudio Olivero began marketing Olivero Claudio zabaglione, in the traditional Piedmontese version with Moscato and in the passito version, called Sanbay, recalling the original recipe of Fra Pasquale De Baylon, from which the cream of San Baylon—later sabayon or zabaglione—derives.
Other creative spirits are the Modenese producers of Giusti balsamic vinegar, who, in addition to balsamic panettone, also propose a new vermouth aged in the barrels of Modena’s “gray gold.” Bibanesi, small breadsticks from Treviso, are now also made pizza-flavored. The sciuclloni, peppers revived in memory of Pietro D’Elia’s grandfather in Teggiano, between Campania and Basilicata, become chips and, not far away in Irpinia, the team at Cannavacciuolo refine cakes made strictly with marron glacé and, riding the wave of cross-pollination, even a caciocavallo shaped like an Easter egg.
