In situations like this young graduates have only their family to fall back on. Most jobs in Italy are obtained by recommendation – that is, the family recommends the applicant to someone who is a friend, or who owes a favour. For many years it has been possible to influence the outcome of an exam, since a list of the examiners is published. The examiners can then be approached and persuaded that a particular candidate should not be failed. Many degrees have been obtained by this means, ensuring that in various professions some extraordinarily inept people find gainful employment.
Until very recently the easiest way to earn a basic crust was to become an invalid. There are over one million official invalids in Italy, all of whom get assistance from the state of roughly £500 a month. All that was needed was pliant town councillors, who would fill in the necessary forms in return for a vote. The little village of Militello Rosmarino in Sicily has become famous since the news of its huge invalid population hit the media. Out of its population of 1,200 citizens, 500 are invalids. Investigators have discovered centre-forwards who are cripples and bus-drivers who are blind.
The family unit provides its members with many necessities throughout life, and especially towards the end of it. Old people rarely go to homes for the elderly; they live in the family house with everyone else. The law underpins this system: it is not possible for a man to leave his house on his death to anyone other than his wife unless she is given the right to live in the house until her death. Although King Lear doesn’t figure largely in local folklore, it is rare for anyone to bequeath what they have to relations before their death. The hope of an inheritance is used as a kind of insurance policy by the elderly to ensure that they are never left unattended or homeless.
Because so much of life is organized through the family, the concept of owing your allegiance to a particular group within society is easily understood. If times are hard and government oppressive, it is a small step from here to a larger family such as the Mafia or the Camorra. Originally, Sicilians banded together in self-defence, to protect their families and crops against rapacious landlords or brigands. When large numbers of Italians found themselves in America, far from home and family, not speaking the language, the Mafia became an ersatz family that worked by the same conventions of favours bequeathed and owed, and offered much the same protection from a hostile environment. The web of connections that was offered by allegiance to the Mafia ensured protection from other racketeers, respect for the old, and jobs.
The New York branches are called ‘families’, even though bloodline has little to do with membership. Mafia Dons like to see themselves as a paterfamilias, correcting wayward family members for the good of the group, and dispensing favours and largesse when deserved. Oddly, the idea of a paterfamilias holding the right of life and death over the members of his family goes back to Roman law. Whatever else may be said about the Mafia, it does demonstrate that, when it matters, Italians are prepared to accept discipline. The Mafia and the Camorra are both disciplined groups, rigidly ordered and brutally policed. The loose grouping that is the government, consisting of deputies who owe no allegiance to one another, who share no common bond other than fear of exposure, is no match for the order of organized crime. By comparison, Italian government at all levels from local to national seems both venal and weak, its own self-interest taking precedence over all other considerations. The rapid post-war growth of the Mafia is testament to this.
5
Difficult is Best
Italians are not generally morose, dispassionate and introspective. They are animated, extrovert and, above all, extreme. Their obsession with taking things to extremes is, I must admit, something that I have only recently noticed. It is their extreme behaviour when dealing with food that set me thinking. The twelve-course banquets of which they are so fond are only the tip of an iceberg of immoderation.
When I was in my late teens I spent the summers in Italy. My friends and cousins at that time had just become mobile, largely thanks to the Cinquecento, the Fiat 500. Whole days were spent cruising with the roof open looking for something to do, or preferably people with breasts. Nobody had a factory specification Cinquecento – each car was unique, either because of imaginative paintwork, or because of imaginative engineering. Many different Cinquecenti were made by the coachwork factories of the North – Giannini, Abarth and Autobianchi – who all put non-standard bodies on the Fiat running gear. They were tuned, tweaked and persuaded to exceed the 90 kilometres an hour they were designed to do. They were fitted with air-horns and exhausts tuned to make them sound like a Formula 1. Designed to be admired, they were flaunted and paraded.
Excuses to go somewhere were invented for the flimsiest of reasons, or so I thought. It was not uncommon to drive 30 kilometres past dozens of bar-gelaterie to find a particular gelateria where the ice-cream was said to be infinitely superior to anywhere else. This held true for coffee as well. In the whole of Sora there was no coffee to compare with that in Isola Liri. I was convinced that all the cars we passed on the road to Isola were on their way to Sora, equally convinced that coffee could only be drunk in Sora. I could never detect any difference in coffee or ice-cream that could have justified so long a drive.
I remember several occasions when I was driven nearly 60 kilometres for a pizza. Needless to say, this was pizza the like of which was unobtainable anywhere else. It merited the drive, the expenditure of time, of petrol. I could never spot the subtle differences that prompted these journeys. And yet, when I thought about it, the only difference a car made was to increase the travelling distance. Even on foot Italians behave in the same way. It is very common to be roused from a dinner-table in a restaurant to walk elsewhere for coffee or ice-cream, normally just as you’re getting comfortable. The entire company will be agreeing that coffee in the Bar Roma three blocks away is the only way to round off a meal.
I am now convinced that all this movement has its purpose. It adds colour to the evening and it adds variety. More importantly, though, it is a manifestation of Italian discrimination. With food and drink, discrimination is the Shangri-La to which all Italians aspire. To be able to tell by taste alone whether a pizza has been cooked in a brick oven using vine thinnings or by some other form of firing is impressive. Being able to discover the bar that serves the best coffee marks the discoverer as a man who values the good things in life, and who takes the time and trouble to source them.
The ability to see subtle distinctions is a gift that all Italians have, mainly because it’s something they practise. On a hot August night we sat after dinner with our old friends Wanda and Memmo Regoli in their house in Arpino.
‘Let’s sit on the balcony,’ suggested Memmo.
The house is large, and all the windows that look on to the street have balconies. As I settled myself, looking over Arpino by night, my host insisted on moving again.
‘The air on the study balcony is cooler.’
We moved to the study. The air quality seemed exactly the same to me.
‘Now, that’s better, isn’t it?’
I mumbled assent.
‘Tell you what – upstairs it’s even better. Come on.’
Upstairs, we tried the balconies of all the bedrooms.
‘See how the air moves differently?’
I didn’t, but agreed anyway. The balconies were at most 3 metres apart – the subtlety of discrimination needed to notice a difference was beyond me.
Can they really tell? I honestly don’t know, but everyone behaves as though they do. Shades and nuances are remarked upon, noted and discussed. I have been taken to see a field which was no more than a quarter acre, and had explained to me how the land produced different flavours of vegetables depending on where they were planted. Had it been a 30-acre field with varying soil types, I would have found it easier to believe. And yet it might be true. Vine-growers have always known that grapes develop differently in different parts of the vineyard.
The idea that discrimination is possible even in m
inutiae leads to interesting behaviour. Apart from travelling miles to seek out the best coffee, the inhabitants of the big cities will travel miles into the countryside to buy eggs, olive oil, cheeses and wine from local producers. The guiding principle in all this is whether or not the food is genuino. Food scandals are second in quantity only to political scandals. Some years ago there was a popular table wine called Vino Ferrari. It was cheap and pleasant to drink. It was sold all over Italy until someone with acute powers of observation noticed that for all the thousands of lorries leaving the factory full of wine, not one laden with grapes ever went in. The wine was made with industrial alcohol, colourings and flavourings. Over the years there have been rumours of margarine made from spent sump oil, olive oil made from everything except olives, endless adulterants in commercial wine and tinned meat of doubtful origins. Not surprisingly, Italians have little confidence in the labels listing the contents of what they buy.
This is why a trip to the country at the weekends always includes food stops. Many of the inhabitants of Italy’s large cities have relations in the country. There is a widespread belief that produce bought locally is somehow more genuine. Being Italy this trust is not always well placed, as there are examples of farmers buying eggs from battery farms and then selling them, properly covered in dung, to the seekers of il genuino. Yet, despite occasional lapses, buyers are more likely to obtain real food in this way than they are in a supermarket.
Even people who live in the country will travel for certain things. The tiny hamlets at the upper edges of the Comino Valley, like Fondillo or Forestelle, are home to shepherds whose flocks graze the upper reaches of the Apennines. Until recently, the roads to these hamlets were unsurfaced and distinctly dangerous. This did not prevent people from going there to buy the highly rated sheep’s cheeses made by the shepherds’ wives. Pecorino, caciotta and ricotta, all basic ingredients of Italian cuisine, are most prized when bought on the spot. There is little doubt that cheeses like these, certainly breaking every diktat from Strasbourg on the production of cheese, have a taste second to none. What I find surprising is not that the home-made is preferable to the industrial substitute, but that Italians recognize this and are prepared to endure uncomfortable drives to obtain it.
Above Picinisco lie the Prati di Mezzo, high pastures that in the summer are cool and breezy. There is a stream running through the pastures fed by mountain springs that are clear and cold. It’s one of our favourite picnic spots, since it’s never too hot and ice-cold water is always available. The only sound up here other than birdsong is the dull clanging of the bells around the necks of horses and creamy-white cows brought to the mountains to graze. We often see Italian families carrying plastic bags, which, if they are lucky, are filled with mountain asparagus. These tiny, thin, slightly bitter spears are tedious to collect. Yet the urge for vegetables that are unsprayed and unforced takes people to the hills in droves.
The same urge results in foraging for alpine strawberries, tiny, perfumed fruits with a taste like nectar. These are normally made into liqueur, rather than eaten as dessert. But the foraging instinct reaches its most sophisticated when it comes to truffles.
In the upper reaches of the western end of the Comino Valley is the town of Campoli. Many of its inhabitants make their living wholly or in part from collecting truffles on the lower Apennine slopes. What grows in Campoli in greater abundance than elsewhere in the valley are black truffles, the tuber aestivum. This is not the famed truffle of Périgord, but it can at certain times of the year fetch £250 a kilo, enough to make even an average day pay fairly well. Truffle-hunters have clearly defined areas for foraging, not officially, but traditionally. They are handed down from father to son and the right to these areas is mutually respected by the truffle-gatherers. Casual truffle-hunters in these hills are likely to run into angry men with dogs and guns, jealous of their territory. Although Campoli is renowned for an abundance of truffles, they do grow in the valley proper, even where I have land on Monte Cicuto. There is one permanent resident on Monte Cicuto, who lives in a small-holding right at the very top. His name is Egidio and he is known throughout the valley as an incomparable jack of all trades.
Apart from being a fine chef, importing smoked salmon from Ireland and selling firewood, he also collects truffles. To find truffles you need the help of better olfactory equipment than the human being is provided with. Pigs are used to root them out, but dogs are more commonly used in the valley. Training a dog to hunt for truffles is easy enough. You feed your puppy truffles with all its meals, so before long it associates food with truffles. When it is grown, you attach a strong choke chain to its neck and take it to your truffle grounds. The dog at once starts to sniff out its intended snack and as soon as it starts to dig, you pull hard on the choke chain, take the unearthed truffles and give the dog a truffle-flavoured biscuit by way of consolation. Pigs are better than dogs at sniffing out truffles, but are harder to pull back when they have found some and less pleased than a dog to accept a substitute.
One year I had been given a lot of truffles and I decided that my fortune could be made by training my Irish labrador to become a truffle-hound. I packed a large storage jar with truffles surrounded with rice to keep them fresh and brought them back to Wicklow. Carefully I chopped them into a bowl for my dog. She, equally carefully, chewed a large mouthful and then spat it back into the bowl. And so it was that eight fine truffles went into the bin, and I have yet to own a truffle-hound.
My old friend Nicola Celestino is a doctor who has a clinic three days a week in Campoli. Over the years grateful patients have given him the usual quota of eggs, oil, wine and sausages, but, being in Campoli, he is also regularly given truffles. Like the dogs, he now has an insatiable appetite for them. Nicola travels more than anyone else I know, seven or eight trips a year all over the globe. On a trip to Czechoslovakia he was walking through a forest chatting to the locals. He talked of truffles. They told him the forests were full of them, but that no one collected them or had any use for them. That’s a bit like telling an Irishman they’re serving free beer down at the pub. As soon as he got home he went to see Egidio. They planned a November trip by car to Czechoslovakia with the dogs.
Came the day, and Nicola phoned Egidio to make arrangements for picking him up.
‘I haven’t much cash with me,’ said Egidio.
‘Don’t worry,’ Nicola replied, ‘I’ve probably got enough for both of us.’
Egidio collected Nicola in his old van and they picked up the autostrada at Frosinone. After some 20 kilometres Egidio suggested they stop for coffee. He insisted on paying for the coffees, and when they were back in the car he announced, ‘Well, that’s me cleaned out.’
As it happened, Nicola had enough to get them there and back. What Nicola remembers best of this trip is the flies. Whatever Egidio had been keeping in his van had attracted flies – lots of them. Nicola swears he didn’t manage to get the last one out of the van until they reached Vienna. Unfortunately winter arrives early in the mountain forests of Czechoslovakia and 45 centimetres of ground frost foiled their attempts at truffle-hunting. Five days later they were home, empty-handed.
For years I was ambivalent about truffles. Sometimes we were treated to truffle spaghetti or rice, but I could never really see what the fuss was about. It was good, but not good enough to go out of your way for. But then in 1992 I had Nicola’s truffle salad. The ingredients are simple: 1 kilo of truffles and 1 kilo of fresh parmesan, both coarsely grated and mixed in a bowl with good extra-virgin olive oil. Now I know: truffle love is to do with quantity. A little grated reverentially on top of a bowl of rice is meaningless – it’s a sop to culinary snobs. But Nicola’s salad is an epicure’s dream, simple and stunningly good. My advice is clear: don’t bother with truffles unless you can eat a lot of them.
Not all of Nicola’s dealings with Egidio have been disasters. Johnny the Boar turned out well. It happened like this. Some hunters were shooting wild boar in the valley
and had found a male piglet which they gave to Nicola. Nicola took it to Egidio, who fed and fattened it and christened it Johnny. By the following winter, Johnny weighed in at close to 400 kilos – a monster. Just like real eggs or real olive oil, a boar that has been allowed to root for tubers, and eat acorns and maize rather than a factory-bred pig’s diet, is a prized possession. And 400 kilos is a lot of genuine pork. Johnny the Boar was what is known as a ruspante pig, one that is allowed to forage free range, and as such commands a hefty premium over the ordinary variety.
In the valley battery chickens are rare, though they are becoming commoner with the advent of large supermarkets. There is still a widely held belief that eating battery chickens makes you impotent, a fate worse than death for any Italian male. Chickens are sold in the markets, often still squawking, or in butchers’ shops with head and feet still attached. This gives the buyer a chance to look for the tell-tale signs of battery provenance. Long, thin legs are preferred to short fat ones, since they are a sure sign of a chicken that has done some walking.
All foods are sought out in as close to their natural state as is possible. Pasta is a staple, but Italians would crawl over broken glass for a good plateful of pasta fatta in casa, the home-made variety. All Italian cookery is labour-intensive and home-made pasta is no exception. It is hard work mixing the flour with the eggs, it’s harder still to keep working and rolling it with a broom handle until it becomes like silk. Then it has to be rolled out and cut by hand, either into thin strips for tagliatelle, or into larger rectangles for cannelloni. It is the effort as much as the taste that is appreciated. Most people have little time for short cuts. Some years ago I bought a remarkable machine called a Pastamatic. You put flour and eggs into a container, switch it on, and after a while out comes your fresh pasta in any shape you desire, including the tubular forms. Not one of my friends was impressed. While accepting that the product was like real pasta, it couldn’t possibly taste right since it hadn’t been rolled by hand. About the only device that is permissible is a chitarra – a wooden frame across which fine wire is stretched taut, hence its name, meaning ‘guitar’. The thin sheets of fresh pasta are placed on the chitarra, and then the rolling-pin passed over it, slicing the pasta into strips. Anything that makes life any easier than this is suspect.
North of Naples, South of Rome Page 7
