Not so slow: Italian food and technology

[Fat Guy]

Italy has a reputation as the home of rustic, simple, earthy, agriculturally driven cuisine. Yet, some comments on the recent gelato topic got me wondering: how many core Italian foods are actually dependent on expensive and elaborate technology?

For example, gelato. Serious gelato seems to require a super-expensive machine. If you don't have such a machine, you aren't going to be turning out a top-notch product.

Espresso. Sam Kinsey pointed out this similarity. You need substantial, and substantially expensive, equipment in order to pull really great shots and steam milk up to standard.

Another one that occurs to me is dried pasta. Just try making it at home without heavy-duty extruding machines.

Pizza. You need to build a wood-fired brick oven costing tens of thousands of dollars if you want to make Neapolitan pizza at a high level.

I'm sure there are other examples.

Meanwhile, it seems you can make most of the French haute cuisine repertoire with a spoon.

[melkor]

Why does something need to be cheap to be slow? Good espresso can be made with a lever machine, but that takes much more skill than pulling a good shot with a Synesso. Dried pasta has never been the sort of thing you make at home - fresh pasta absolutely.

I also don't think anyone considers pizza, gelato, or dried pasta haute cuisine.

To make bistecca florentine completely at home, you not only need a wood fire but you also need a 3,000 pound Chianina steer.

Much of Italian cooking is accessible to the home cook, you're just highlighting the things you can't do with $3.75 in your pocket and less room than Paris Hiltons jail cell.

[Dave the Cook]

The irony is in the preparation, not the ingredients (even great Italian butchers in Tuscany have trouble getting Chianina beef; see Buford's Heat) or the style of service ("haute" is a French term that apples mostly to French restaurants, and these days is more about service than food). If we look at the French equivalents of gelato and espresso -- popular iconic dishes with broad international appeal -- we might choose the croissant and steak frites.

Croissants means mixing up butter, flour, water and salt. (Yeast, maybe; I can't remember.) Mix up a dough, and keep folding and rolling it until you have a million layers. Cut, roll, bake. A machine makes it easier, but I haven't seen anyone on eG Forums saying you need one of those to make good puff pastry.

Steak frites: well. Hot pan, knife. Tongs, probably. The aforementioned spoon for basting.

The other side of the coin is that I haven't seen anyone -- until now -- say that you don't need an expensive machine to make excellent gelato or espresso.

[Maureen B. Fant]

Italy has a reputation as the home of rustic, simple, earthy, agriculturally driven cuisine. Yet, some comments on the recent gelato topic got me wondering: how many core Italian foods are actually dependent on expensive and elaborate technology?

For example, gelato. Serious gelato seems to require a super-expensive machine. If you don't have such a machine, you aren't going to be turning out a top-notch product.

Espresso. Sam Kinsey pointed out this similarity. You need substantial, and substantially expensive, equipment in order to pull really great shots and steam milk up to standard.

Another one that occurs to me is dried pasta. Just try making it at home without heavy-duty extruding machines.

Pizza. You need to build a wood-fired brick oven costing tens of thousands of dollars if you want to make Neapolitan pizza at a high level.

I'm sure there are other examples.

Meanwhile, it seems you can make most of the French haute cuisine repertoire with a spoon.

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Buongiorno, Fat Guy

With all due respect, I feel that, while you raise valid and interesting points, you are approaching Italian food from somewhere in left field. (And I beg indulgence in advance if, in attempting a reply, I wander into left field myself.)

Italy is known as the country that gave the world the adorable Fiat 500. But it is also the home of Ferrari, one of the heavies of Formula 1. Parma is the home of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, but it's also where some of the world's best food-processing equipment is manufactured. This is a modern industrial country that also appreciates good ingredients and has a very complex gastronomic landscape.

Italy does rustic better than anyone else, but just because a dish is traditional, it doesn't have to be rustic (risotto alla milanese, for example). Yet many (non-Italian) people think that if a dish, or restaurant, or what-have-you, isn't peasant-grandmother-food and -style, it's not really Italian. The French are allowed to do haute, but the Italians are supposed to toss that pizza and smile?

With the exception of pasta, what you are calling core foods are not what I would call core foods. Also, there is a strong social component. Going to the bar and being served by a skilled barman is as much a social ritual as a gastronomic experience. In fact, many people swear that the actual best coffee is made at home in a stovetop napoletano – grandmother coffee. At the very least, there are two standards of coffee. You have your favorite stovetop or home brew and you have your favorite bar coffee.

Gelato is not a traditional core food. It’s a modern social thing. You go for gelato with your friends. You go around town trying new flavors. You argue over Giolitti versus San Crispino. It’s Italian, but it’s not traditional, so why shouldn’t it use machines? Many cooks do make excellent sorbets and gelati at home, but it doesn’t replace the whole gelateria scene. Like coffee, it’s about much more than the taste of the final product, important as that is. This would probably be the moment also to recall that Algida and Giolitti inhabit different planets. That is, the distinction that has to be made is not between homemade and industrial but between air-pumped mass production and artisanal or quasi-artisanal, with truly homemade a third category.

Likewise (don’t shoot) pizza is not a core food. The core food is bread. The many kinds of pizza and focaccia are members of the bread family. Now, if you go to Ostia Antica, to the apartment building known as the House of Diana, you will see a communal oven in the courtyard. Today in Rome inscribed over the doorways of old bakeries you’ll often see the word Forno. Those places were not just bakeries, they were neighborhood resources for housewives who had no place at home to bake the lasagne. The point is, people didn’t have their own ovens. Baking was always communal. Few people today would think it was important to have a wood-burning oven at home, even if they could afford one. And even if you have one, you would hire a professional pizzaiolo for your parties. Again, many people do make pizza at home, but it doesn’t replace the ritual of going out to the neighborhood pizzeria.

Pasta, yes, is a core food. And as you point out, heavy machinery is needed to mix and extrude hard-wheat pasta. You got a problem with that? Instead of looking for an Italian Paradox, why not just look on dried pasta as a product of the unique Italian landscape, inventiveness, and technical prowess? And again let us keep in mind the difference between mass production (Barilla, say) and high-end artisanal-in-spirit dried pastas (e.g., Latini, Cavalieri, and many others). The issue of industrial-versus homemade dried pasta doesn’t exist. At home you make a different thing, fresh pasta, with or without eggs, using soft-wheat flour, or sometimes a mix of various flours. You can dry your homemade fettuccine carefully and store them. Seems to me there is no inherent paradox in Latini’s using state of the art techniques to mix, extrude, and dry the pasta made from their heirloom wheats, while my pal Oretta uses her humongous Bolognese rolling pin, and superior skill, to make tagliatelle with supermarket flour. One is as genuine, and “slow,” as the other (only Oretta is probably faster).

I think if we were to go look at a Ferrari car being made, we would see that those Grand Prix speeds are attained through very slow craftsmanship. Remember what the emperor Augustus used to say: “Festina lente,” go fast slowly. Maybe that’s the Italian Paradox.

And btw, to make a risotto or a tomato sauce or a minestrone, an old wooden spoon is all you need.

[divina]

Another Adopted Italian checking in...

If you are living in America.. you need big bucks for what Italian get by walking out the door.

I don't know one Italian with a ice cream maker...

or an expresso machine.

Most do have woodburning ovens in old houses or country houses, as wood was free in their land, and electricity was expensive.

In Italy... having a electric dryer or air conditioning is considered a luxury...

so perhaps it is truer to say trying to recreate a culture.. is expensive!

I pay 4.95 euro for a small jar of peanut butter here..

Levi 501's are 100 euro.

But i can go to the bar on the corner and get a Illy Expresso for 1 euro!

and if i wanted a Pavone machine ( pump) I can buy one for 333 euro!

and so can you on the website of my local kitchen store!!!

with an american plug.... and shipping included! ( what you save in the tax refund pays for shipping!)

one man's heaven is another man's hell.

[Pontormo]

Ave Maureen piena di grazia.

ETA trans: Hail M-- full of grace

Edited June 13, 2007 by Pontormo (log)

[jmolinari]

Divina raises the exactly correct point. It is expensive to RECREATE here in the US what Italians buy super cheaply across the street.

Having grown up in Italy ice cream makers were non existent in homes, as you could walk 10 minutes to get a really good one. The only espresso machine was the moka because you could walk 1 minute and get a good one for 1 euro. A pizza is 6 euro for something that is better than 99% of the pizza here.

So it is only expensive here because you're trying to recreate at home what in Italy is a commercial item.

[Fat Guy]

I didn't realize everybody in Italy lived in cities, within walking distance of espresso bars, gelaterias and pizzerias. Of course, if you live in a place like New York City, you have all that within walking distance too. Either way, it still requires expensive technology to make these foods well, whether you're in Florence, New York or Tokyo.

[Carlovski]

All artisanal products require an investment to produce, sometimes financial, always time and in most cases both. As discussed already, no one makes espresso, dried pasta or gelato (although I guess semi-freddo maybe?) at home. You missed a few out too, olive oil and a lot of breads which cant be made by hand.

The difference in Italy is that businesses and craftsmen survive by making things that are impractical or impossible to make at home. In the US and the UK you can survive by making things that people can probably make better at home, they just can't be bothered.

[Maureen B. Fant]

I didn't realize everybody in Italy lived in cities, within walking distance of espresso bars, gelaterias and pizzerias. Of course, if you live in a place like New York City, you have all that within walking distance too. Either way, it still requires expensive technology to make these foods well, whether you're in Florence, New York or Tokyo.

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Nearly everybody in Italy lives in a village. Cities are just a lot of contiguous villages. So yes, almost everyone does live within walking distance of an espresso bar, a gelateria, and a pizzeria, though pizza is more important in some areas than in others.

[Maureen B. Fant]

You missed a few out too, olive oil and a lot of breads which cant be made by hand.

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Olive oil, yes indeed. It has always been expensive to extract, and today it's very high tech. For an idea of state-of-the-art oil making, see Armando Manni's site: www.manni.biz.

[Maureen B. Fant]

Ave Maureen piena di grazia.

ETA trans: Hail M-- full of grace

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Pontormo, sono commossa!

[Carlovski]

You missed a few out too, olive oil and a lot of breads which cant be made by hand.

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Olive oil, yes indeed. It has always been expensive to extract, and today it's very high tech. For an idea of state-of-the-art oil making, see Armando Manni's site: www.manni.biz.

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Thinking about it though, not a great example - olive oil production is probably still a lot more possible in a farmhouse than rapeseed extraction.

An interesting thing to find out would be what a great barista drinks at home....

[slkinsey]

I would argue that you can make 95% of all Italian foods using regular home equipment. The only central Italian food you truly cannot make at home is dry pasta. For this reason, I'm not sure you picked a good list of "iconic Italian foods" (they are more "iconic Italian" to those of us who are not Italian than to actual Italians). I also think that one could pick a similarly difficult to make list for other countries.

Your list is espresso, gelato, dry pasta and pizza.

I would say that most everyone who lives in Italy lives within a reasonably short distance from a bar where they can get a decent shot of espresso (and a good cup of gelato and a decent pizza). But, more to the point, espresso is largely a 20th century machine-age invention. Meanwhile, most Italians who drink coffee at home use a mokka and make a slightly different style of coffee that is equally good, just different.

I would argue that gelato isn't considered an "iconic Italian food" inside Italy (they simply think of it as "ice cream"). I would also argue that making quality ice cream at any level requires lots of expensive equipment. Yes, you can make old-fashioned American-style ice cream with nothing more than ice, rock salt and a hand-cranked machine, but it won't be as good as the stuff you get at Emack & Bolio's after your homemade stuff has spent a day sitting in your freezer. And, for that matter, if you feel like keeping your ice bath a little warmer, cranking a little more slowly and eating your gelato on the same day you make it, you can have absolutely outstanding homemade gelato for very little money. It's just a huge pain in the ass.

Dry pasta is a factory-made product. Not sure there is anything in French cooking that compares to this.

As for pizza, I would argue that access to wood-fired ovens capable of making great pizza is not all that unusual in rural Italy, and of course it is possible to make a certain style of "casalinga" pizza with typical home equipment.

But, as I said, it would be possible to say similar things about other cuisines. For example, what is more "iconic French" than the boule and baguette? Impossible to make at the highest level without an expensive oven (unless you live in the country and have access to a traditional communal oven). There are, of course, all kinds of effects that are possible on expensive French restaurant equipment that are difficult, if not impossible to duplicate in a home kitchen -- certainly no more possible to duplicate than making Italian coffee, pizza or gelato on a home setup. What about "iconic" American barbecue? Needs an expensive pit. "Iconic" Chinese wok cooking? Need an expensive wok burner setup. The list could go on and on and on.

Edited June 13, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[MarketStEl]

All artisanal products require an investment to produce, sometimes financial, always time and in most cases both. As discussed already, no one makes espresso, dried pasta or gelato (although I guess semi-freddo maybe?)  at home. You missed a few out too, olive oil and a lot of breads which cant be made by hand.

The difference in Italy is that businesses and craftsmen survive by making things that are impractical or impossible to make at home. In the US and the UK you can survive by making things that people can probably make better at home, they just can't be bothered.

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(emphasis added)

I think this post gets at the heart of what must have rattled Fat Guy after that Slow Food juggernaut ran him over.

The Slow Foodies appear to emphasize simple, traditional, artisanal fare that is made without the benefit (or bane, it appears) of modern technology. The problem, as Fat Guy accurately pointed out in his initial post, is not with the technology itself, it's with the uses to which it's put. The boldfaced statement above captures this.

[Maureen B. Fant]

The Slow Foodies appear to emphasize simple, traditional, artisanal fare that is made without the benefit (or bane, it appears) of modern technology.  The problem, as Fat Guy accurately pointed out in his initial post, is not with the technology itself, it's with the uses to which it's put. 

Dunno about that. I think I'm as Slow as the next guy, but I have no problem whatsoever with Italian food technology and its works. Anzi, I think technology is saving a lot of traditional Italian foods, starting with olive oil and wine. Nothing makes Italian foodies roll their eyes faster than another Italian saying a food is "roba genuina," straight from the contadino. The producers who get the most respect are the ones who have a 21st century outlook paired with a serious respect for traditional products and tastes. There have been some generational battles over this. The challenge will be not to eliminate modern equipment but to maintain awareness of traditional tastes in future generations.

Likewise, I'm not sure simple is exactly right. Traditional definitely, also artisanal or quasi-artisanal (artisanal with privileges?). But I don't see ribollita or coda alla vaccinara or sarde in saor or risotto al castelmagno or sartù di riso or fiori di zucca fritti or carciofi alla romana as particularly simple, except in the sense that they manage to be both labor-intensive and without artifice.

If Fat Guy was implying that Italian cooking is not being true to its rustic self when it uses high-tech methods, I say he is wrong in two ways. First because it is wrong to classify the ideal of Italian food as rustic -- there is too much variety here, and great sophistication; rustic is only part of it. And second, because, except for pasta, the foods he chose to illustrate his point are popular today but not particularly important in the rich, complex bigger picture of the history of the gastronomy of the Italian peninsula.

I'm new to egullet, so I don't know if it's usual for Fat Guy to be interpreted like some kind of Delphic Oracle, but I hope he's enjoying it.