L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2019 www.italoamericano.org L'Italo-Americano 2 E veryone of us is a piece of history. Perhaps, we aren't always aware of it, but that's the truth. Sometimes, we bear witness to events the relevance of which will be understood only by our children. Saying: "I was there, too, I've seen it with my own eyes" doesn't only mean we were part of a specific context, but also that we can offer to others the emotions it caused in us. That's why there's always a piece of us, when we tell about something that hap- pened in a specific moment. Sometimes we are the lead actors, sometimes we sit in the audience, but it doesn't really matter if we can add something ours to the tale. And being able to do it is fun- Tell me what you eat, I'll tell you who you are From the director damental. Now, let's go to the kitchen and let's take a frying pan. Let's add the first ingredients for a classical soffritto and then, let's work on that pasta sauce, as every good Italian would. Or, let's check the pantry and pick a bunch of ingredients to be creative and bring out the star- red chef who is in us. If the fridge is empty and we have little choice, then let's use our creativity and fill our bellies with the old art of making do with what we have. Those humble frozen veg can really save the day and so can that leftover rice, with a couple of eggs added in. Of course, we can eat even if we have zero ingredients and zero creativity: in the end, there is plenty to choose from in the café around the corner or at the nearest fast food joint. We can always add a dash of mayo and a bit of lettuce to make it better. And that's it, here's the point. Even when we eat, that is, when we do one of the most natural things possible, when we satisfy one of Humankind's most basic needs, we always add something "ours." It can be a pinch of chili in the pasta sauce, or some finely chopped celery and carrot before the tomato (and imagine the choice here! Fresh tomatoes or passata? Whole and canned or chopped and flavo- red?); it can be some Worcester or barbecue sauce on grilled meat, or fried onions and cheese into that sandwich. Whether we make up a whole recipe on our own, or we simply add — or remove — something from a ready to eat dish, we always personalize what we eat, somehow. This example is useful to make us understand that, every time we follow a recipe, there are great chances it has been changed, corrected and revised to match our per- sonal taste. Just like it happens when we witness something and then we talk about it. Everyone is bound to give of it a different version. Everyone is bound to have seen something different from their neighbor, because some of us tend to notice colors and others sounds, some emotions, others words. And so, if we are a thousand at a concert and all of us tells about it, that concert will look and sound the same, but very dif- ferent at the same time. That's why you need a recipe book in the kitchen. When we men- tion ingredients, we provide a dish's basic model and a standard pro- cedure to obtain it: we give to everyone the opportunity to reproduce a specific meal. Later, we will be able to add our own personal touch. And there is more: having a standard to follow allows us not to loose contact with the original. A recipe reminds us, then, the importance of keeping alive the ties with our origins, because that's how we can experience the real flavor of tradition, of a place, of a time, but also because that's how we can interact with tastes and textures different from what we are used to. But if we do it all in reverse, that is, if we look at what we eat and study what's in our plate, we'll find out that every meal speaks about us. If we follow the traditional recipe to a T, then we are tradi- tionalists; if we add parmigiano to fish because "that's how grandma used to make it and that's how I like it," we'll remain faithful to tra- dition, but only to that of our family, because we'd be going against the canons of food pairings. And if we completely overturn it by squeezing ketchup on spaghetti, we may not become a chef nor be that revolutionaries, but we'll certainly show we're open to new fla- vors. If we reinterpret a recipe, every variation will tell a story. If we love fusion cuisine, maybe that's because two different culinary tradi- tions merged in our family; if ingredients apparently distant from one another like oregano and ginger, soy sauce and guacamole cohabit on our table, maybe it's because we traveled a lot and we brought back home flavors and scents we learnt to use in a different corner of the world. The only thing that counts, at this stage, is to remember that tra- dition and freedom to make it personal can live with one another and that, in any case, both will produce something far from being cliché: because they tell so much about us, about our experiences, about our family and social milieu, about our way of thinking and even about how much we like to experiment. Simone Schiavinato, Director NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS

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