Italian Food Lovers

One of the best Christmas presents Academia Barilla received this Season has been an article from the leading economy magazine The Economist, who dedicated a page of its paper magazine (as well as a web page) to the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library in Parma, Italy, defining BIGAB’s mission as Food for thought
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The Economist tells how “a pasta-maker gets a taste for books“, describing the Gastronomic Library’s collection of over 8,500 cookery books in more than ten languages, and nearly 5,000 menus and scores of old prints showing food in various phases of preparation.

The Economist’s journalist quotes BIGAB’s Director Giancarlo Gonizzi and the Dewey decimal system he adopted to classify the collection, besides the cultural activities scheduled at BIGAB with students (from Parma’s university, but also US visiting students) and with Parma’s city authorities. The article mentions that the library has begun digitizing its contents and plans to make them available online. Read more…

Before we all forget the Thanksgiving weekend and the nice warm time we had with our families and friends, we want to share something else we found at BIGAB, the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library in Parma, Italy.

With more than 8,000 titles of gastronomy art, italian and international food culture, and everything cuisine, BIGAB is also proud to treasure culinary and recipe books, hand-written volumes and rare gastronomy treats, some of them dating back to the 16th century.

At the beginning of last year Academia Barilla and BIGAB acquired an historic and rare menus collection we already blogged about, and thanks to our BIGAB friends we managed to select two special historic menus from the collection that are in tune with the Season: Historic Thanksgiving Menus from the US Embassy in Rome’s official Thanksgiving dinners in 1927 and 1929.

The US Embassy in Rome booked for the events a very exclusive locations in Rome such as the Hotel Excelsior, in the heart of Via Veneto that, with the cinema industry boom 30 years later, would have become the heart of the Roman Dolce Vita.

A special VIP dinner followed by a gala dance, as in the Thanksgiving 1927 event, and of course plenty of gourmet food, American gourmet reinterpreted by the Italian Chefs at the Excelsior.

This last picture, from the Thanksgiving 1929 menu, doesn’t really show how precious the invitation is - the US flag crossing a missing flag (the Italian flag, that unfortunately has been lost before BIGAB’s acquisition) is a real little flag with the actual pole and flag fabric!

Also the menu is balanced and, of course, gourmet American: Ox tail, Cheese Straws and Tomato Soup, followed by Turbot Washington, and Stuffed Turkey with a side of Cranberry Sauce, Excelsior Potatoes, Texas Salad, and Asparagus Chantilly. Roosevelt Mandarines, the traditional Pumpkin Pie and Fruits closed the gala dinner and, we are sure, opened the gala dance as in the previous Thanksgiving event!

Now that we posted this last Thanksgiving post we can look forward and start getting in the Christmas mood!

Our readership knows that Academia Barilla established, back in 2005, a unique Gastronomic Library in Parma, Italy, that we often reference for cookbooks, recipes, and other Italian culinary culture highlights.

The Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library, annexed to the Academia Barilla Culinary School, is unique in its kind, and definitely is the most complete collection in the world of knowledge, history and resources for everything gastronomy.

The Library, also nicknamed BIGAB (acronym of the Italian BIblioteca Gastronomica Academia Barilla), counts today more than 8,000 titles and some of them are unique items, such as handwritten cookbooks or historic menus, or some books that date back to the 15th century.

All the books are indexed and included in the Italian Public Library system, and are retrievable online. But to be able to examine BIGAB’s item one has to pay a visit to the Library in Parma, which is always a very pleasant thing to do, specially after the recent remodeling and rearrangement of the Library space, which is now more comfy then ever.

Many visitors every year book their visits or just drop in during Library hours, and some of them come from abroad to perform some very specific culinary research, specially when involving historic aspects of the food culture, or very specific “long tail” niches of culinary culture.

In order to properly index the huge amount of books, menus, objects and other gastronomic treasures, BIGAB’s Curator Dott. Giancarlo Gonizzi and his team created a very unique indexing method, which is based on the general Library index code that ranges 1-9 for topics from the more general (0) to the more specific (9).

As explained by Dott. Gonizzi, the BIGAB team developed a parallel indexing mode where library items are also indexed with a separate code still ranging 0-9, but on a scale of exclusively culinary and gastronomic topics.

Just to recap the excellent explanation from Dott. Gonizzi of how the indexing system works, under the 0 code are indexed more general culinary items`such as standard cookbooks, while code 1 will index all historic recipes and cuisine books, 2 is the code to retrieve all the culinary books about ingredients only, while 3 is all about Italian regional cuisine.

Code 4 is for the international cuisine, and 5 is the code to index all books dedicated to professional Chef techniques, from food conservation to cooking and preparation. Code 6 defines all books and library items dedicated to thematic cuisines such as, for example, cooking for communities, cooking for singles, the VIP cookbooks, or the cuisine of love, the session we have been browsing a lot for our Valentine’s Day recipes, or our series of aphrodisiac recipes for last year’s Valentine Day.

The code list goes of course to 9, and will talk more in the future about it - just for you to know, the indexing method is absolutely amazing; on a search for a book on “Asburgic Cuisine in Trentino” requested by a visitor, it took less then 1 minute to spot the exact location of the rare cookbook and handle the copy to the visitor for her consultation (I personally witnessed this at my latest visit to BIGAB).

Dott. Giancarlo Gonizzi is pictured here above during a video interview at the Gastronomic Library, that we’ll publish here soon. For those who are curious, the sculpture next to him is the Guggenheim Award, offered to Academia Barilla at the end of last year by the Italian Foreign Trade Board (ICE - Istituto per il Commercio Estero) for being the Italian industrial company who invested more in culture not only in terms of sponsorships, but mostly on developing cultural activities in support of the business activity (BIGAB, of course), and for promoting Italian culture abroad.

BIGAB is not just a Library - on my latest visit last week for an interview to Dott. Gonizzi (that we’ll publish here soon), I discovered the full schedule of cultural and educational events BIGAB is involved with. Last week, the day after my visit, a meeting with approx. 80 Nutrition Science students from the University of Parma was scheduled at Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library. The focus of the meeting was introducing BIGAB’s Library system, and all the tools the students will be able to access for their research, thanks to a convention between Academia Barilla and the University of Parma.

A few cultural events are in BIGAB’s program for the first half of this year, such as Gusti d’Autore (Tastes of Author), an event scheduled on April 7-9, 2008, that includes literature and poetry readings about cooking, as well as food-related cinema screenings, all in conjunction with other special cultural events organized by the City of Parma. We’ll talk soon in details about Gusti d’Autore.

On May 6, 2008, BIGAB will be again under the cultural spotlights for the Premio Academia Barilla (Academia Barilla Award), a prize awarded by Academia Barilla to the best short movies about food and cooking. The event is organized by Academia Barilla in parallel with the leading Italian food expo CIBUS - you can be sure we will be blogging a lot more in details about it.

Other plans? We can give here a little anticipation about a Museum of Tomato, and a Museum of pasta just outside Parma… but we prefer to give you full updates about it as soon as we get more details. As always, stay tuned with Italian Food Lovers.

This month Academia Barilla committed to provide you with a full Christmas Gourmet menu and, after the Chicken Galantine (appetizer) and the Herbs Tortelli (entree), it is now time for our Christmas main course: Cotechino in Galera.

A typical Modena recipe, the Cotechino in Galera (its English translation would be Pig Hoof in Jail) is a meat roll made of beef and ham, wrapped inside a pig hoof, and cooked halfway in meat broth and red wine, usually Lambrusco. Here are ingredients and preparation steps.

COTECHINO IN GALERA
(a traditional Modena recipe)

INGREDIENTS

- 1 cotechino/ pig hoof approx. 13 oz
- 1 slice of veal (1/4″ height and about 11 oz weight)
- two slices of ham cut rather thick
- half onion
- 3 tablespoons oil
- broth and lambrusco to cover the meat roll

PREPARATION

Boil the cotechino (pig hoof) until it’s cooked halfway; let it cool, and then carefully remove the skin.

Lay the slice of veal and cover it with two thick slices of ham.

Place the cotechino in the middle and wrap it up firmly in the meat slice; stitch it with white thread.

In an earthenware, terracotta pot with high edges, brown the finely chopped half onion with three tablespoons of oil.

As it browns, add the meat roll, cover the meat roll with half the meat broth and half of the Lambrusco, just about to slightly cover the meat roll, not above. Cook slowly; keep covered for about 1 hour.

Remove the meat, cut the twine and slice the roll. Let the sauce thicken and the pour it over the cotechino and serve.

For the cotechino to boil and cook properly, it’s advisable to punch two or three points with the prong of a fork. Then wrap it in a wet canvas, binding the edges and place in cold water. In this way, simmer slowly; complete cooking time will take 1 1/2 to 2 hours, depending on the seasoning.

WINE PAIRING TIPS

Serve this robust main course with a robust red wine such as Lambrusco Ariola or Barbera Chiarlo.

The Academia Barilla Christmas Recipes Series gets to its second appointment. After sharing with you last week the recipe of Chicken Galantine with Pistachio Nuts as a Christmas appetizer, it is now time to start thinking of the entree for your Christmas meal: Herbs Tortelli, from the culinary tradition of Parma.

HERBS TORTELLI
(serves 10)

INGREDIENTS

- 2.2 lb dough for making tortelli
- 2 1/2 cups fresh ricotta
- 1.55 lb of Swiss Chard
- 2 cups Academia Barilla Parmigiano Reggiano
- nutmeg to taste
- 2 cups unsalted butter
- 1 egg
- salt and pepper to taste

DOUGH INGREDIENTS

- 10 cups “00″ flour (double zero)
- 10 Eggs

DOUGH PREPARATION
Place the flour on a marble surface or over a cutting board in a mound and make a well in the center.

Break the eggs into the well, add a pinch of salt and mix with a fork and incorporate the flour into the egg mixture a little at a time.

Knead until the dough becomes smooth and uniform. Let the dough rest wrapped in a film for about 30 minutes before using it.

PREPARATION

Stem first, then clean, wash and cook the herbs in salty water.

Drain, squash and finely mince the herbs. Mix herbs with the ricotta, salt, pepper, nutmeg and egg to prepare the tortelli stuffing.

Pull pasta with a special pasta machine obtaining the squares that will be filled with the stuffing.

Distribute the ravioli stuffing on the pasta, cover with another layer, then cut with a ravioli (or cookie) stamp.

Cook tortelli in salted water and season with butter and Parmigiano Reggiano.

WINE PAIRING TIPS

Serve the Herb tortelli with a chilled Sauvignon Ariola for great pairing.

Stay with us for the rest of the Christmas Recipes Series. Next week we will propose a recipe for the main course, Cotechino in galera, before closing the Christmas Series with a delicious dessert, English soup with Vanilla ice cream.