L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE LAURA GOBBI T his is a day when you are not ashamed to s mell like garlic: you're, in fact, almost proud of it. This is the day when you are allowed to go to w ork w ithout feeling embarrassed of your smell, dous- ing yours elf in perfume and swallowing tons of mints or cov- ering your mouth with one hand before talking to someone. The day when you sit in a small sem- inar room without opening up the window, and kiss your part- ner passionately without think- ing about how you smell. This is the "day after" the most outrageous weekend in his- tory, when people celebrate Her Majesty Bagna Cauda, a sauce made with garlic - a lot of garlic - and anchovies . This year, "Bagna Cauda Day" took place from the 24 th to the 26 th of November in its home town of Asti, where it was conceived by Leonardo Tessiore and realized thanks to the resourcefulness of Sergio Miravalle and a group of proud volunteers from the Asso- ciazione Astigiani. Their aim was, since the beginning, to val- orize this traditional Piedmon- tese dish, giving it back its digni- ty and, most important of it all, to make acceptable -even cool - walking around smelling like "ajl" (garlic in P iedmontes e dialect). The feas t, w hich reached its 5 th edition this year, has become popular outside of Asti, too, branching out in the surrounding Monferrato area, the whole of Piemonte, Lombardia and even abroad, in N ew Zealand, Japan, Germany, Tas- mania, Australia and Tonga, offering a seat to 16.000 eager and hungry guests. However, I'm pretty sure space was made at those tables for even more people. But Bagna Cauda mania is truly unstoppable: so it happened that, with the program of this year's edition already drafted, Barolo chef Matteo Morra, along with Sonia Speroni, decided to pack olive oil, garlic, anchovies and fly to Boston to prepare Bagna Cauda for about 30 peo- ple. P iemonte is more than Langhe and truffles, it is also Monferrato and Roero, Bagna Cauda, agnolotti gobbi and much, much more, alw ays matched by amazing wines com- ing from a land that, thanks to its beauty, became part of the UNESCO World Heritage list. Bagna Cauda is a typical dish of Basso Piemonte, the area of the region bordering with Lig- uria. Along the so called Via del Sale, the salt route, Piedmontese wine was exchanged for Liguri- an anchovies, saracche and olive oil. "On the fire, on the stoves of our grandmothers... there was always a pan ready for it. You'd clean s ome garlic and add a handful of anchovies and the olive oil. And if there wasn't olive oil, you'd use walnut's," explains Fiammetta Musso, one of the event organizers. "It was breakfast, lunch and dinner and it was called 'the poor man's sauce.'" In Piemonte, every family has its own recipe for it. My mother, for instance, boils the garlic in milk, removing its heart, adds the anchovies letting them stew until they dissolve and then the olive oil. However, more than one version of the recipe exists, as the Bagna Cauda Day vade mecum states: there are versions come Dio comanda, that is, mir- roring tradition, and more extreme ones, like an heretic Bagna Cauda with dissolved gar- lic, and a totally godless one, without it. Personally, I distrust anybody eating a Bagna Cauda without garlic. If an aerial picture of Piemonte had been taken during the weekend of the event, I am pretty sure, a lingering layer of healthy gases would have been detected. Alas, it may have even w orked as a cleans ing filter because, as my grandmother would say, garlic "disinfects and cleanses the blood." Beside gar- lic's beneficial properties - and w ithout forgetting thos e of Bagna Cauda - the event was characterized, this year as always, by a sense of conviviali- ty and a contagious good mood. Indeed, Bagna Cauda is a social dish: a table, a good glass of wine - a Freisa or a young Bar- bera would be a perfect match - pleasant company and the game can start, passing around plates filled with raw and cooked sea- sonal vegetables. Peppers, savoy cabbage, pota- toes, pumpkin, onions, spring onions, turnips: everything can be "puciato," dunked into this s auce even if, according to some, the best you can do is using the cardo gobbo di Nizza Monferrato, a variety of chard bent and covered w ith s oil, which grows white, tender and sweet. Bagna Cauda's connois- seurs, however, emerge when the finishing line is in sight, when in the "fujot," the still hot pan where the sauce is made, only a layer of anchovies and oil remains, and an egg is thrown into it to get all that goodness out: a triumphant delicacy. The event's format is the same everywhere, from Miche- lin starred restaurants to local trattorie: it offers every Bagna Cauda lover a large cotton nap- kin, this year created by Luigi Piccatto, the Bagna Cauda vade mecum, a booklet filled with the history and the recipes for this extraordinary dish, and a sur- vival kit for the pos t Bagna Cauda hangover, with "Kiss me Now" toothpaste, magnesia, grappa, chocolate and sweets. Because, you see, the main ingredients of Bagna Cauda day are irony and fun, and this is why, also this year, midnight witnessed the most extreme of all challenges, the Barbera kiss. Promoted by the Consorzio della Barbera d'Asti, the Barbera kiss is exchanged between willing Bagna Cauda lovers in Asti's Piazza San Secondo and other squares, as well as in all partici- pating restaurants. Now, that is a kiss that truly shows one's love for their partner. Bruno Lauzi, s inger and songwriter, once said that "Pied- montese are like Brazilians, just they carry fog within." Finally, the false myth about the people of Piemonte being introverted and grumpy has been debunked. And we know that, for at least one weekend a year, Dracula's better keep indoors: with all thes e Bagna Cauda lovers around town, he could really be in serious danger. Bagna Cauda Day, where everything is allowed Bagna Cauda is garlic and anchovies based sauce typical of southern Piedmont Bagna Cauda is a convivial dish, made to share while having a good time. Photo: Giulio Morra

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