Meet the Italian ‘Fruit Detective’

When Isabella Dalla Ragione assesses a Renaissance painting, she doesn’t immediately notice the brushstrokes or the magnificence of the imagery. The first thing she notices is the fruit.

She steers us to one more Madonna with Child, the center of an altarpiece painted by Bernardino di Betto, better known as Pintoricchio, in 1495 or 1496. It is all glimmering blues and reds and golds. “Look, there,” she exclaims, pointing to the bottom of the painting. At the Madonna’s feet, just off the gold hem of her azure robe, are three gnarly looking apples—oddly shaped varieties you’d never see in a market today. 

For most viewers, they would be an afterthought. For Dalla Ragione, the apples, including a variety known in the fruit science lexicon as api piccola, represent a key to restoring Italy’s disappearing fruit agriculture, with characteristics not found in today’s apples: Crunchy and tart, they are capable of being stored at room temperature for about seven months and maintain their best qualities outside the fridge. Mark Schapiro, Smithsonian

Apple Cake

"Apple Cake" è il titolo del racconto di Allegra Goodman uscito sull'ultimo numero del New Yorker. Si svolge intorno al letto di Jeanne morente e ha una delle più belle scene di morte che abbia letto, "She wanted to open her eyes, to rise up from her bed. She wanted music and she wanted apples. She wanted to touch the sandy beach, to feel summer's heat. She wanted all this, but she couldn't have it. She died because she couldn't breathe". 

In un'intervista Goodman fa anche una considerazione molto interessante tra letteratura e cibo, "My mother Madeleine’s rugelach were unbelievable. I could not use them here because they would have upstaged everything and everyone else. Apple cake is food for a short story. Rugelach require a novel". I rugelach sono dei dolci ebraici, delle specie di croissant (v. foto). newyorker.

Artists in the Kitchen

Auguro a tutti BUON ANNO NUOVO con la segnalazione di un curioso libro di cucina, The Modern Art Cookbook, di Mary Ann Caws (Reaktion). Ecco quel che ne dice Alex Danchev:
"Connecting the senses is what The Modern Art Cookbook is all about. For Mary Ann Caws, the larger purpose of this delectable anthology is the association of reading, looking and cooking. It is a potpourri (or perhaps a bouillabaisse) of literary texts in verse and prose, recipes and images: paintings, for the most part, spiced with photographs and film stills – Salvador Dalí photographed by Luis Buñuel, Cadaqués, 1929, opposite Pablo Picasso’s Scramble in Sea Urchin Shells (sixteen sea urchins, six very fresh eggs, two soup spoons of crème fraiche, twelve chervil sprigs, salt and pepper); Edward Weston, “Pepper No.30” (1930), opposite Nancy Willard’s “How To Stuff a Pepper”; Bogart and bottle in Casablanca, opposite a recipe for Maryse Condé’s Planter’s Punch; the servants at table, below stairs, in The Rules of the Game, opposite a recipe for Jean Renoir’s Potato Salad, from that same film".TLS.

L'aggiornamento del blog riprenderà  il 10 gennaio 2014.

Tastes Like Chicken

Jackson Lander cerca l'origine evolutiva di questa comune espressione "tastes like chicken". "The range of species I’ve heard compared to chicken, flavor-wise, is very broad across the evolutionary spectrum: various birds, of course, but also snakes, lizards, small mammals, certain fish. Which made me wonder: Can we trace the taste of chicken back down the evolutionary tree to a common ancestor? What was the first creature in evolutionary history that tasted like chicken? And for how long in the Earth’s history has life been tasting like chicken? Something had to come first, and I don’t think it was either the chicken or the egg". slate.

A Girl and Her Pig

A Girl and Her Pig è il titolo del primo libro di cucina di April Bloomfield, chef e co-proprietaria di tre noti ristoranti di NYC, The Spotted Pig, The Breslin Bar & Dining Room (citati dalla guida Michelin) e The John Dory Oyster Bar. "The cookbook, which Bloomfield collaborated on with the food writer J. J. Goode, enthusiastically advocates for the oft-derided British cuisine, championing hearty, rustic dishes. Alongside recipes inspired by Marcella Hazan and England’s Mediterranean neighbors (gnudi, mussels stuffed with mortadella, carta da musica with bottarga), appear Anglo-Saxon classics like potato bread, beef-and-blue-cheese pie, trifle, liver and onions, “faggots” (baby-fist-size packets of pork cheeks), and Eton mess". newyorker.

Man With a Pan

Man With a Pan. Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook for Their Families, a cura di John Donohue (Algonquin Press). Il titolo è molto carino, e questa volta è il motivo per cui scelgo questo post. Carina è anche la copertina. Si tratta di un'antologia di padri, famosi e non, che raccontano delle loro esperienze in cucina, farcendo le loro storie con aneddoti vari e a volte dando anche delle ricette. "Mr. Donohue, the editor, lashes things together with an essay that notes that, with more women working, men do about one-third of the household cooking today. There are side benefits. He mentions a survey indicating that men who cook are more likely to have spouses who are in the mood for sex". nyt.

Assisterati, umami, e altro

Assisterati: For six weeks, at a cost of $7,000, Columbia University offers recent college graduates forgettable workshops, fleeting encounters with important editors and access to the best unlisted job openings in book publishing and magazines. After swift job placement, these hyper-literate 20-somethings occupy a peculiar professional class: the Assisterati. Their institutional affiliations lend them a sense that they are the caretakers, soon to be inheritors, of a sublime patrimony. Their proximity to literary creation - via email, telephone or fax - suggests they possess a cultural credibility they couldn't acquire in, say, Chicago, or on Wall Street. Underpaid but brimming with hope, they, like the people they assist, will one day run this town and steer the course of American literature. That is, if they stick around with their egos intact. nyobserver.

Umami: è uno dei cinque gusti percepiti, secondo wikipedia. Qui ci serve per introdurre un libro carino, The Flavour Thesaurus, di Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury), "The book lists 99 flavors and common flavor pairings for home cooks, say, combining celery and horseradish or melding tomato and anchovy. Each of the 900 pairings (out of a possible 4,851!) comes with a short digression." goodfood.

You and I: in un articolo molto interessante Robert Lane Greene analizza il significato di questi due pronomi nel mondo dei nuovi media: perché iPad, e YouTube? intelligentlife.