Praise to the Italian taste

There are common features of our cuisine and our gastronomic sensibility that are slowly consolidating in the identity of the Good Country. These are the tastes: of pasta, bread, cured meats, cheeses, wine, olive oil, ice cream.

If these indications may seem too general to some, it is enough to wander the streets of New York, Brussels or Montreal to be convinced - even if only by the name of the most fashionable restaurants - that there is a precise "Italian taste" perceived as such, more abroad than at home. In addition to pasta, there are various culinary myths. Among the dishes: pizza, risotto, carpaccio, homemade ice cream, tiramisu. Among the products: buffalo mozzarella, peeled tomatoes, Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano, raw ham, extra virgin olive oil, Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, gianduja chocolate, panettone. The wine list is also rich, from Barolo to Brunello di Montalcino, from Asti Spumante to Marsala. Not to mention some aperitifs or famous labels of mineral water and espresso coffee that have conquered international markets.

Today it is above all our chefs who spread the peculiarities of the New Italian Cuisine that Enzo Vizzari has summarized in ten points:

1) table quality;

2) restaurants, trattorias, taverns can meet the quality with different costs;

3) the cuisine must be "good and healthy";

4) the heritage of Italian cuisine is the excellence of the products;

5) the cook must be open and curious;

6) the modern and Italian identity, strong and precise, comes from the raw materials, from the individual flavors and their combinations, from a "soul";

7) creativity must lead to the discovery of the characteristics of a product;

8) chemical-physical-technological applications have little value if they intervene only on textures and colors and not on flavors;

9) cooking is not a game and it is not art, nor science; it can be a source of excitement and pleasure;

10) Chefs are not geniuses, artists, actors, but artisans.

This decalogue has caused discussion, but we have taken it up again because it is useful so that globalization and standardization do not make the authentic Italian taste, a victim of its own success, succumb.

At the end of the seventeenth century, the compositional methods developed in Italy, especially on the Apollonian impulse of Arcangelo Corelli, rose to an ideal to be imitated and pursued and provided the model that would become imperative: the concerto in the "Italian Taste". Its salient characteristics are clarified by a careful reading, critical and etymological, of the titles of some of Antonio Vivaldi's printed collections who, with "L'Estro Armonico" and "Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Invenzione", emphasizes the continuous wandering ("La Stravaganza" in search of new formal balances and whimsical instrumental solutions in compliance with the grammatical assumption given by the harmonic laws.

The new ideal – the result, among other things, of the shocking discovery of the rhythmic function of harmony and of that combination of "playability" and "singability" that determines the ontological advantage of instrumental perfection – spreads throughout Europe through the circulation of a large number of manuscripts and publications (mostly from the frenetic publishing center of Amsterdam) or through direct contact with Italian musicians or with local virtuosos who have studied in Italy.

Even today there is confusion even under the sky of taste. Let's make it clearer, starting first of all with its meaning...

Whenwe talk about the taste of a food, we immediately think of the de gustibus of the Romans. It is a common and widespread opinion that taste is subjective, not measurable. Yet, a food either has taste or it doesn't, tertium non datur. If I eat a potato or a piece of meat, there is a great chance that when the bite has disappeared from my mouth, there will not be much left in my palate, in short, the taste is not there or is very short. I could almost measure it, counting those few seconds it manages to engage my taste buds.

So why do we keep saying it's subjective?

There is confusion even under the sky of taste! Let's start with the lemma: taste.

In Italian and so in French (gout), in Spanish (gusto), in German (geschmack) and in some ways also in English (taste) even to a lesser extent, taste is one of the senses but also has other meanings: pleasure, satisfaction, desire, way of feeling, appreciating, sensitivity to something, complex of trends.

So, already on the meaning of the word there is room to range. But things are not clear even if we refer to the sense of taste. It is now accepted by everyone that there are five basic tastes: sour, bitter, sweet, salty and umami.

I would add that in recent years many are trying to identify other basic tastes even if, for now, we are only talking about "perceptions", such as: astringent, oxidized, metallic, kokumi, carbohydrates, calcium, etc.

After all, it was almost time, if we think that umami was defined and ascertained back in 1917. But let's stick to the 5 basic flavors. When you do a tasting, to measure the intensity of the taste, you use a scale and, for each of these, a value is expressed.

Now, if we think about smell, we are used to thinking that the more a food smells, the higher its quality level. If a truffle has an intense and harmonious smell, it will be of an excellent level; The scorzone, which gives just a few hints, does not drive us crazy. If a cheese has an intense smell, it makes our mouths water, if it only sends back that hint of milk, to console ourselves we say that it is delicate. And the same rule applies to taste. Also in our

In this case, the sensory analysis commission uses a scale of values. Let's now assume that a product gets the top score for all of these flavors. That is, that it must be very acidic, very sweet, very salty and very bitter and

that the hint of umami is intense. I do not think that this food is recommended. One could say that

There is a close and positive relationship between defects and taste: the more a food tastes, the more it is to be avoided. And the same could be said for the inverse, if the values are at the minimum.

What will a food taste like if it is not sweet, not salty, not bitter, not sour?

And then, for many words, when you want to indicate the opposite, you just add a prefix. In the case of odor, a food without odor will be odorless. And in the case of taste?

What do we write: tasteless? Disgust?

But disgust we should use it if there is an excess of taste, not if it is not perceptible.

It is usually said tasteless, but then why not use the word flavor to indicate taste?

Everything would be simpler. A food that has a lot of flavor, has a personality, has a high level of quality.

On the contrary, if it has no taste, it will mean that it comes from highly intensive, low-quality systems.

But let's get back to the taste.

If we can't "read" a food, grasp its level of taste, we won't even know what factors can influence it.

Let's try to give some examples.

A restaurateur would like to offer his customers a meat that certainly has a taste. His distributor makes him taste 4-5 samples from different areas of the country or from abroad.

There is one in particular that he likes, it has a long taste, if he knows how to identify it.

Here, he says to the interlocutor, I want a meat that always has this level of taste.

On the contrary, since he knows a meat producer in the area, he asks how this level of quality can be obtained, what production system should be adopted.

A legitimate question because, if you know the motivations and molecules responsible for that taste, you will also know what factors intervened.

Let's think about wine. Anyone and almost everywhere and with any grape variety can achieve the desired quality level of wine, because there are many people around, many oenologists who know this job well and who know how to obtain the wine that the producer wants.

You can produce a good Sangiovese or Cabernet anywhere in the world, if we know how to do it and have the right capital.

On the other hand, for meat, but the same applies to pasta, for bread, for all other raw materials, this method is not applicable and is not known. Experts would tell us that a lot depends on the breed or varieties.

In the case of meat, they say that there are breeds that naturally develop widespread marbling and, because of this, meat has more flavor, sorry, taste. As if the fat smelled and taste.

In the case of meat, they say that there are breeds that naturally develop widespread marbling and, because of this, meat has more flavor, sorry, taste. As if the fat smelled and tasted.

Therefore, it is perfectly useless to ask for information from those who produce or sell that raw material.

The only solution we have available is to learn to decipher taste and to understand what it tells us. In a nutshell, if an animal product, meat or milk, has an intense taste, it will mean that the animal has eaten on pasture and if any vegetable has a taste, has a personality, it will mean that the production system is not intensive, that there has been no excess in weeding, fungicides and fertilizers.

Finally, when we want to understand, even before buying, what the expected quality level will be, we do not ask, as is usual: is meat, or milk or rice good? Let's just say: did your animals graze, or what was the yield per hectare of rice, wheat, legumes? Then you will see that there will be no surprises.