Searching for Italy
Stanley Tucci’s six-part “Searching For Italy”, Sundays on CNN, is charming, and cinematographically wonderful. A staggering 1.52 million viewers watched his first program. The second episode, “Rome,” drew 1.64 million viewers.
With his endless curiosity and his frequent and enthusiastic “Oh My God !” as he watches a dish being prepared and then pops it into his mouth, Tucci offers vicarious traveling and eating for Italy-loving viewers. It was comforting to see places I have known all my life, and the appearance of people and families familiar for decades. Adding additional substance to “Searching For Italy” is the inclusion of social/food activists, some of whom have encountered enormous resistance in implementing their programs. Particularly charming in the third episode, Tuscany, is Tucci’s remark, seemingly spontaneously, as he dips a wine biscuit (cantucci in the plural) into a sweet Vin Santo : “how can you not love something that ends with ‘tucci’ ?” I appreciate his special focus on Italian culinary regionality.
Now however that you have seen Tucci (his series ends this month), and when you are in Italy (it won’t be long), where do you turn to discover food artisans and authentic culinary experiences ?
For all of my professional life running Marjorie Shaw’s Insider’s Italy, I have been interviewing Italians like those whom Tucci meets, and drawing them into the individual travel plans that I carefully craft for each traveler.
My Italian food artisan network are committed to tradition and regionality, while their hearts and livelihood are rooted in the production of outstanding things to eat and drink.
These are producers, cooks, farmers….
….restaurant owners and winemakers.
Central to Insider’s Italy is educating myself fully in what they do, and then opening doors for our clients into their worlds.
Equally important to me is my commitment to passionate Italians who are educators, craftsmen and craftswomen….
… archeologists, guides, owners of hotels and inns and villas. Promoting their work is one of the great privileges of running Insider’s Italy.
The San Marzano tomato, featured in Tucci’s premier episode, Campania, is a sauce tomato variety that flourishes in the rich volcanic soil of the Campania region. The tomato is by far my favorite summer vegetable : all things tomato are of intense personal interest.
Having myself visited a number of San Marzano fields in the “Protected Designation of Origin” Sarno-Nocera area, I am concerned about the health of the earth, of the tomatoes and of the people that farm them. Yet a few kilometers away, up the slopes of Vesuvius, and to the immediate south of the Amalfi coast, there are other traditional tomato varieties that are cultivated in the same volcanic soil but organically, with exceptional respect for the earth and its products. Here, flavors sing even more sweetly.
“But how will I find them ?”, you ask.
“How will I taste them, learn to cook with them ?”
This of course is where we come in.
We have planned personalized tours with a tomato theme, including for the author of “Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato”. We have done the same with a fig theme, an autumn trip for a client seeking the unforgettable scents and tastes of his Mediterranean childhood. For several clients we have planned trips with an artichokes focus (we too can never have enough of them during the late winter and early spring months in Rome.)
In your personal itineraries we will incorporate restaurants where superb heirloom produce is grown, prepared and served with reverence.
In the same premier installment, Tucci dedicates a substantial segment to spaghetti alla Nerano. This pasta and zucchini dish relies utterly on the quality of the zucchini, and can be made well only during certain months of the year when the zucchini — which should be one of several specific heirloom varieties, not readily available — are at their most flavorful. The best variety for this dish is the cylindrical zucchina striata di Napoli….
.… which has its most intense flavor when it has been allowed to grow on, in and through walls. It is then superb in spaghetti alla Nerano. It can be interchanged for this dish with the zucchina romanesca variety…
…..which is also used for zucchine alla scapece, another locally celebrated dish that is the essence of summer.
Every one of the zucchini that grows in our farmer/cook’s gardens is special, heirloom and bursting with flavor. When the season is right you will learn to prepare a variety of extraordinary dishes including parmigiana di zucchine and the perfect fried zucchini flower, as well as spaghetti alla Nerano. These fried zucchini flowers have been made with the delicate San Pasquale zucchini, another traditional variety.
Classes with our farmer-cooks on the Amalfi coast start in their vegetable garden and then continue directly to the kitchen.
All across Italy, I have food artisans who are eager to share their talents with you. Let me pick up where Stanley Tucci leaves off, and guide you, as I have for 30 years, into their homes and workplaces, opening doors to wonderful flavors, skills and knowledge.
While our travel planning is custom made for individuals, families and friends, we feel fortunate in our friend Pamela Sheldon Johns and her superb company Italian Food Artisans LLC (https://www.foodartisans.com/) Pamela offers very small group tours focused on food and wine in Italy’s 20 regions. Individuals or small numbers of people can join. Pamela nurtures friendships with food artisans that result in incredible interactions for her clients, and has a number of regional programs running this year and next. Enticing is Raccolta 2021, her Farm to Table program, celebrating new season, fresh pressed oil.
For Campania, her next scheduled small group trip will be 2022. Contact her directly (pamela@foodartisans.com) to discuss feasibility and conditions of a private trip.
