Let’s come to the prophet, Pellegrino Artusiil Garibaldi of the tricolor cuisine. Writing the book Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well (1891), the man from Forlimpopoli transplanted to Florence created a common gastronomic identity in the recently unified country, collecting the traditional recipes of the various Italian regions – and subregions – enhancing the typical features and spreading knowledge. This is how it sparked a surge of national pride for the different Italian cuisines which, over the centuries, have each been characterized in a different way, through various historical involvements, peasant civilization, court cuisine (including papal cuisine), bourgeois cuisine, the beneficial infiltrations and contaminations of peoples and cuisines from beyond the Alps and overseas, and, why not, also through hunger and poverty.
Orio Verganithe Milanese custodian, journalist and writer (1898-1960), is a figure of great importance in the history of homeland cuisine. It was he, together with other lovers, who in the 1950s sensed the risk that the good tables of the Bel Paese were running, threatened by the standardization and flattening of tastes, undermined by an industrial and standardized cuisine. It was he who distinguished the dangers in mass tourism and the high tide of modernization. The sacrosanct fear and alarm of Vergani they were dictated by the fear of losing the authenticity, quality and connection with the territory of our gastronomic tradition at the table. To combat the threat, the special guest founded the Italian Academy of Cuisine in 1953, already underlining in its name the diversity of culinary art in the various parts of Italy.
The Academy, a cultural institution of the Italian Republic, continues to this day, with its delegations in sixty countries around the world and 8,000 members, to advance the good name of Italian cuisine. It is no coincidence that three actors supported the Unesco project, two of which were linked to the Romagna “prophet” and the Milanese “guardian”: the Casa Artusi Foundation of Forlimpopoli and the Italian Academy of Cuisine born, precisely, from the intuition of Orio Vergani. Third player is the magazine Italian cuisinefounded in 1929. Paolo Petronipresident of the Academy, comments: «The UNESCO recognition represents a great medal of valor for us. We will celebrate it on the third Thursday of March in all delegations around the world and in diplomatic offices with a dinner based on conviviality and sociability. The menu? Free. Each delegation will relate it to the territory and tradition.
UNESCO has recognized Italian cuisine as an intangible heritage, going beyond recipes and simple nourishment, considering it a cultural system, strengthening Italy’s role as ambassador of a cultural model in the world as our cuisine is a living social practice, which transmits memory, identity and connection with the territory, enhancing conviviality, rituals, family sharing, such as Sunday lunch, seasonality and daily gestures, as well as promoting inclusion and sustainability through anti-waste recipes handed down from generation after generation. The recognition does not celebrate specific dishes as has been done with other countries, but the entire culinary and cultural art that binds communities, families and territories through food. It recognizes the intelligence of traditional recipes born from peasant poverty, which teach not to waste anything, a concept of ancestral sustainability. It embodies the link between nature, local resources and cultural traditions, reflecting the diversity of Italian landscapes.”
It’s a shame that not everyone thinks like this, see the attack by the British food critic and writer Giles Coren in the Times. After having well dipped his pen in hyperbole, satire and insult, Coren he started a bayonet attack against, in his words, the recognition assigned by UNESCO, a predictable, servile, obtuse and irritating recognition. The commentator says, also taking it out on his snobbish compatriots: «Since I’ve been writing about restaurants, I’ve been fighting against the presumed supremacy of Italian food. Because it is a myth, a mirage, a lie fueled by upper-class Englishmen who, at the beginning of the nineties, moved their summer residences to Tuscany.”
He replies Petroni: «I believe that the article by Coren is a joke, the joke of someone who deep down, and has demonstrated this in other articles, appreciates Italian cuisine. To label the whole thing as a joke, just read the part in which he praises English cuisine by nominating it for UNESCO recognition for the cultural value of “burnt toast just before the fire alarm goes off”, “spaghetti with ketchup”, “British Barolo”, “Chinese noodles glued to the tablecloth” and other pearls of this kind. It should be underlined, however, that UNESCO’s response was unanimous: the 24 members of the intergovernmental committee for the protection of intangible cultural heritage voted unanimously in favor of Italian cuisine. There wasn’t even one abstention. The first request was rejected. In 2023 we presented it again. It’s the word “immaterial” that stopped us. It is difficult to define an immaterial kitchen without falling into the material. For example, UNESCO did not recognize pizza as pizza, but the Neapolitan art of pizza. The journey was very difficult but, in the end, we managed to unify the daily practice, the gestures, the words, the rituals of a varied cuisine and the result was there. Italian cuisine is the first to be awarded a prize by UNESCO in its entirety.”
Se Coren he joked, Alberto Grandiprofessor at the University of Parma, author of the book Italian cuisine does not existwent down heavily in the article on The Guardian. The title is enough to understand how much: «The myth of traditional Italian cuisine has seduced the world. The truth is very different.” «Big he went so far as to say that the Americans invented pizza and that the real parmesan is found in Wisconsin. Everyone knows that Italian cuisine does not date back to Roman times. Before the discovery of America, cooking was something else. Today’s one was born in the nineteenth century from bourgeois ovens and stoves. If you remain in peasant civilization, you remain in soups or little more. The poor classes had no meat to eat.” Petroni he concludes, removing a pebble from his shoe: the exultation of the star chefs, the “cappelloni”, as he calls them, is understandable but they have nothing to do with it: “I’m happy that they approve the recognition, but let’s be clear that this goes to family, domestic Italian cuisine”.
Who deserves the most credit for the UNESCO recognition? “TO Maddalena Fossatithe director of Italian cuisine. It was she who turned to the Academy and the Casa Artusi Foundation. We prepared the document with the precious help of Massimo Montanarihonorary academic, professor at the University of Bologna, and presented with the support of the Undersecretary of Culture, Gianmarco Mazzi».
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