Preserving Food Culture and Traditions in Italy

At the beginning of this year I talked about finding people who are working in positive ways to improve food culture.  This takes on many different forms from the agricultural aspect to the place something ends up on a plate.  This article features a likely yet unlikely character, Daniele De Michele, who is collecting and recording old recipes from all over Italy.   I say likely because it is no surprise to me he is Italian.  They are passionate about their food and I’ve seen first hand how seriously they take their food traditions.  I say unlikely because he is a 40 something year old DJ from Puglia!  The recipes will be printed in a book and others are posted on his website Artusi Remix as they are contributed.

Slow And Dirty

Despite the fact that Slow Food was started in Italy, they have still been subject to many of the ridiculous regulations around food production.  Especially on rural farms where many of the peasant traditions are being lost, there has been a scrubbing and sanitizing of the old ways and their “dirty” conditions.  The EU has swooped in with their plastic and stainless steel anti-bacterial rules, scrubbing away individuality until it can be rinsed down the tile floor drain.  The microclimate and regional conditions that make cheese and other fermented products unique have become unsanitary.  Many small producers have struggled to make the changes necessary without money to do expensive remodels and small farm based products have been pushed out of the local markets due to such overbearing policies.  De Michele is asking two important questions as stated in this piece:  How do we create development without industrialization and how do we preserve centuries-old customs in the face of globalization?

Food Traditions

In a recent article called The Rise of Egotarian Cuisine, Alan Richman talks about the transition away from traditional dining over the past few years to what could be considered an overly perfectionist and self-centered type of cuisine.  The over saturation of food media outlets has had far reaching effects.  In the U.S.it has given rise to a new type of dining brought about by younger people with far less experience than the generation of chefs before them.  One could argue that the definition of chef has drastically changed or at least the road to becoming one has been shortened to the point of taking away most of the meaning.  Apparently, Italy has not been immune to these trends and it has become a contributing factor in the disappearance of traditional foods.  

Memory-Based Identity

What gets lost in the rush to modernize is local food culture.  The preparations and the crops grown for them become marginalized.  As De Michele says about his project, “to take a snapshot of Italian working-class cooking today” is to record part of those cultures before it’s too late.  The foods that differentiate towns, villages, and the historically separate regions of Italy are a memory-based identity for the people of those places.  Memory is perhaps the most powerful part of eating.  It ties us to our own personal history and that of our communities.  Thankfully there are people like De Michele interested in keeping those communities alive.