| Newsletter April 2009
Italy, Lazio: The South Pontino local gourmet guide ( Part II )
Topic : Gastronomy - Wines
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Italy, Lazio: The South Pontino local gourmet guide
1. The Roots of South Pontino’s cuisine
This is our first chapter of a Gourmet Guide in the journey to that intriguing world of wonderful dishes and recipes for all the travelers who aim to discover the unique local cuisine of southern Lazio. The South Pontino was historically a
land of passage
where until not long ago’ armies and invaders came, from time to time stayed few centuries and, then eventually left during four millennia of history. The long and fragmented history of this land of passage and many
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invaders who often settled in Lazio suggest also that many different cooking styles are deep-rooted playing an important role in shaping today’s peculiar local delicacies and recipes. For many housewives and in many restaurants’ kitchens the good old traditions are still kicking and alive somehow apparently unthreatened by standardization which is stronger and more evident in other areas in Europe.
The regional cuisine of southern Lazio shows visibly the legacy of this area with its rural roots. You can almost taste the sunny and rugged landscapes of this land of rolling hills over the sea. It is towards this most genuine tradition that our Gourmet Guide aims to direct the travelers in search of real good food in this territory of the Bel Paese.
Our Gourmet Guide will unveil the roots of the local gastronomy with its fascinating world of superb dishes. Our gourmet routes will, of course, cover the two great mountain areas of the Ausoni and
Aurunci
and the southern Lazio coastal territories which are part of Latina province. The Gourmet Guide will explain some of the varied combination of ingredients and products on their journey through history and to our tables when they are transformed into simple but
exquisite dishes
that we can enjoy today. In fact, it is in the traditional recipes that you can enjoy the typical products, faithful custodies of old flavours and traditions of a land. Here in South Pontino, as everywhere else in Italy, the local gastronomy tradition is one of the cultural aspects which is very well preserved and connected to the spirit of its territory.
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The South Pontino is also a sort of historical and cultural border between the centre of Italy and the ‘Meridione’, the south of Italy. This corner of Italy was historically disputed for many centuries between the Catholic Church of Rome and many powerful duchies and families of central and south Italy. At the end of the
sixth century AD
the Church possessed already many holdings in this area of Lazio. The popes showed all their authority dominating the region and possessing much of the land through monasteries and convents which included vast
latifundia .
The latifundia covered very large areas of land and consolidating more and more wealth into fewer hands of Rome’s Cardinals and Popes.
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Traditional dishes and cuisine of southern Lazio
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Latifundia could be devoted to livestock (sheep, goats and cattle) or to cultivation of olive oil, grain, and wine and became the primary source of wealth for the Roman Catholic Church. The popes managed to subjugate powerful families by hiring the best mercenary troops until the end of the
1400 AD century ,
when the Church became to every effect sole patron of land in many areas of the Lazio region; with the exception of few seaside towns, the southern Lazio, became part of the Church’s State along with other territories in the region. The Papal Court, for all of the Renaissance period and the following centuries, lived in the height of luxury, completely deprived of moral scruple, displaying its power through the arts and the construction of monuments. The territories south of Rome remained latifundia for a very long period of time to replenish the tables of Rome, especially, the rich and luxurious Rome of the Popes and the powerful aristocracy of families such as the Colonna, the Borghese and the Caetani.
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Typical rural sceneries of southern Lazio | |
For many centuries, the rich, the common people and the poor used the same ingredients form the fertile countryside around Rome. However, the same ingredients became very different dishes on the table of the rich and that one of the other people. While the cosmopolitan elite of Rome’s aristocracy and the higher ranks of the Catholic Church were starting to make use of far lands’ ingredients and were influenced by the cosmopolitan fashion of France’s cuisine and nobility, Rome’s the common people enjoyed what they had and used the poorest ingredients to prepare their meals. To every effect, Rome became a great city with all its culinary contradictions, having a cuisine of its own, disconnected in styles from the rest of the region, yet with strong traditions from the countryside and a popular culture (the world described by the verses, popular songs, and theatre of Belli and
Trilussa
).
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While almost nothing was left from the cuisine of the rich popes, the cuisine of the common people survived in the course of the centuries and its influences with their old roots in the capital are still alive in today’s daily life through regional cuisine of this area of Lazio.
The popular origins of the Roman cuisine are unquestionable, and the simplicity of the dishes and menus is clearly visible in the recipes which travelers can enjoy in South Pontino. This a popular cuisine which reflect the simplicity of the common people: ancient, wise and plenty of traditional advices on keeping and re-utilising ingredients. In olden times, nothing, but really nothing, went wasted.
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3. Italy, Lazio: A Geographic journey into the South Pontino Gastronomy
Gastronomically speaking, the South Pontino offers an unusual traveling experience rewarding the traveler’s taste and curiosity for the variety of different food and ingredients used. The local traditional cooking has more than one soul resembling its peculiar geography and its history: The South Pontino territory in Lazio is washed by the sea for its entire length, but also flanked by a parallel range of hills and mountains. Despite the constant presence of the sea, over three quarters of this territory and two thirds of its municipalities are located over hill and mountain areas, adding an unusual geographic trait to this province. The local cuisine reflects this diversity in the variety of its ingredients and culinary styles.
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Olive oil: the ancient secret of today’s cuisine
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Different people and way of life, different cultures and ingredients: the peasants, the shepherds and fishermen are all represented on the table.
From a general gastronomic perspective, and despite only half a million inhabitants, the greatest challenge appears to be reducing to a single cultural identity the vast complexity of a local cuisine made of different regional factors: the Roman and Lazio’s origins and influences of the cooking styles are more evident in the north of the territory, around Latina and Sabaudia, whilst the Campania and Neapolitan influences are well visible in the south on the coast between
Formia
and Gaeta and San Felice Circeo as well as on the
Pontine Islands
of Ponza and Ventotene. Nevertheless, this is only a broad difference which explains part of the complexity of the South Pontino cuisine.
Quite surprisingly today’s local cuisine encloses some recipes based on cooking styles imported from very different cultures which reflect the ethnic universe of Latina province since the early 1930s.
In mountain and hillside areas the travelers in search of the local gastronomy should try the
mountain gastronomy
dishes based on ancient and deep local rural roots. A similar gastronomy can be found in the hillside villages found among the Ausoni and Aurunci and also Lepini mountains with pretty much similar examples in the nearby land of
Ciociaria
bordering the north and north-eastern Aurunci Mountains.
It must be said that, apart from a large city as the nearby Rome, it is difficult to find a local community as complex and varied as that of the area from Latina, Pontinia or Sabaudia up to Formia in the South. In the north, the area between the Ausoni Mountains and half way up to Rome it is an immense plain with a complex networks of water canals and it show fully a surprising variety of regional influences in its cuisine. Some dishes and delicacies here come directly by the settlers who came in
Mussolini’s
time from the north of Italy: the regions of Friuli, the Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and from the middle of Italy as the Abruzzo and the Marche; other influences are directly from the Campagna Romana, the rural area and sub-Roman hill settlements from Lazio around Rome.
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Many locals are also fourth or third generation of settlers from Campania, Sicily, and different corners of Calabria. To these influences it may by added that so many immigrant families came from Italians who lived in north Africa for generations, notably in Tunisia and Libya, bringing with them their own north-African culinary traditions. Around the 1880s quite some Italian families from southern sold their small vineyards in Sicily and Calabria and bought many acres of virgin land in the north of Tunisia and Lybia and also from other corners of North Africa as Morocco and Algeria. There, they planted European grapes then started producing quality wines in their family cellar. Such good wine reached Europe and was the same which full-loaded cargos to serve the best markets of France at the beginning of 1900s.
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In 1960s, many north African countries took important and severe measures dispossessing all the goods and properties of foreigners. Suddenly, a life-time of hard work and sacrifice was wiped out. Many of these families came back to Italy and relocated here in southern Lazio. These immigrant families, mainly from Tunisia and Libya came to live around the Ausoni hills in South Pontino, bringing with them some of their own culinary traditions. For example (amazingly enough) it is no so surprising, to find well-prepared couscous in this part of Italy. This is why the South Pontino cuisine is a rich and delicious summary (within a fairly small territory of Italy) of a varied gastronomy that received contributions from bordering regions and other communities with several different traditional cooking styles. Apparently unthreatened by globalization and standardization, much of the typical traditional local cuisine was preserved until today. And it is towards the discovery of this traditional cuisine that our Gourmet Guide aims to direct the people searching for authentic good food in Italy.
Our next chapter will describe some gourmet routes to discover the local delicacies in the areas of the two great Ausoni and Aurunci mountain massifs and coastal territories towards the south of the province of Latina. Along our gastronomic routes we will unveil how ingredients and products are rearranged and transformed into simple but exquisite dishes found in the local seaside and mountain gastronomy surrounded by the scenery of the
South Pontino countryside .
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