Piedmont – A Food Lover’s Italian Odyssey
From Turin to Bra, Alba and the neighbouring wine valleys, Ishay Govender enjoys a taste of Slow Food’s home and the birthplace of so many iconic foods from bread sticks to Nutella. For Food & Home, March 2019.
City of Mystery, Divinity & Confection
During my second week in Piedmont in northwest Italy, I begin to agree with my friend Carolina Giraldo Nohra, as we huddle over a plate of small brioche filled withcrème pâtissière,a glorious regional sweet treat for breakfast. The exterior of the buildings in Turin (Piedmont’s capital city and Italy’s very first capital), sometimes belie their ornate, jubilant interiors though the elegant porticos and numerous palaces point to its royal past. “Turino isn’t straightforward,” Carolina says. “It invites you to discover it. It’s filled with secrets and an air of mystery. I wouldn’t call it a classic Italian city for the typical tourist”. Take one of the city’s most valuable and renowned artefacts, the controversial Shroud of Turin at the city’s main cathedral – an ancient cloth said to have an imprint of Jesus after he was crucified – it’s rarely available for public viewing.
Turin is flanked by Alpine Mountains dotted with ski resorts, the verdant hills of the Langhe and the fertile Po valley with the River Po running through it. Its proximity to France and historical connection with the Duchy of Savoy means that the language, food and customs of Piedmont are distinct from the rest of Italy. In 1986, the Slow Food movement under the stewardship of Carlo Petrini (who is still the president of the international office) was born nearby in Bra, which advocates for biodiversity, food sovereignty and equality. “Good, clean and fair” being its motto. When Carolina and I meet, Slow Food’s Terra Madra, the largest gathering of farmers, activists, cooks and others involved in the food industry, is underway. It occurs every two years in Turin, at Lingotto, the site of the former Fiat car factory, which demonstrates a different side to the city – industrial, gritty. Close by is Eataly Turino, a large burnt sienna building showcasing the best regional produce, wine and ingredients.
Carolina, a PhD candidate from Colombia specialising in systemic design who’s lived in the city for the past six years, points out the Baroque details of elaborate high ceilings at Caffé Platti with its gilded, twirly cornices and polished furniture, glints of marble and cosy padded booths. Heavy silverware, wait staff in pressed white shirts and a clientele of coiffed ladies and gents complete the picture – we could well be in the late 19thCentury when café culture saw the likes of writers Alexandre Dumas and Cesare Pavese and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche frequent tables like these. The front of the café resembles a wooden jewel box; dark wood panels offset by mirrors are filled with exquisite pastries and treats wrapped the delicate gold foils and filigree doilies. The city is famous for these old coffee shops (See Side Box for suggestions; in fact you can pick up a map at the tourism office and visit several); shops whose interiors have changed little since the late 1800s and that specialise in tramezzini, a layered chocolate and coffee drink called bicerin and chocolate truffles like the Piedmontese signature ingot-shaped gianduiotti filled with ground hazelnuts and cacao paste.
Life Before Nutella
Under Carolina’s guidance, I pair the brioche with small glasses of dark chocolate, thick and smooth. After all, Piedmont is well-known for many extravagant comestibles: hazelnuts and the famous hazelnut chocolate spread loved around the world (Nutella and its precursor, gianduja, originate here), and the white truffles of Alba which I get to taste first-hand. Add to the list Barolo and Nebbiolo wines [Book a tour with the Wine Bank – details in side box], Lavaza coffee, vermouth, crescent-shaped, egg-rich meat-filled pasta called agnlotti, semi-soft Fontina cheese and very concept of aperitivo – snacks served with a pre-dinner drink at that golden hour between 7 – 9 PM, introduced by vermouth’s Turinese inventor Antonio Benedetto Carpano.
But before aperitivo, there’s a day to fill with more chocolate. At a tasting at Guido Gobino, one of the leading, though newer (it dates to the 60s) chocolatiers, tour guide Cristina Aimonetto talks me through the evolution of the region’s chocolate confection and explains how the use of hazelnuts from nearby Langhe was done out of necessity. One theory is that during the Napoleonic wars, the British trade embargoes throttled the supply of cacao from Mesoamerica. At the start of the 1800s, Turin was widely regarded as the chocolate-making city in Europe. In a pinch, the chocolatiers of Turin ground hazelnuts and mixed it with sugar and cacao, creating a ganache-like confection. By 1865, Turin’s tricorn-shaped gianduja candies, crafted after a masked puppet and invented by Caffarel (they’re still in business), came onto the market. Almost 100 years later during World War II, food rations led to a very limited cacao supply again and local Pietro Ferrero created Nutella’s prototype – a thick loaf-shaped paste called Giandujot. Still, it wasn’t affordable for most. In 1951 the first spreadable form of Nutella, called La Supercrema was created and it was punted as an everyday treat. Ferrero’s son, Michele added palm oil in 1961 and it became scalable for the mass market, taking breakfast tables by storm.
Earlier that week, at a deli called Local in the city of Bra about 43 kilometres from Turin, which is run by the University of Gastronomic Sciences’ students who serve organic produce grown in its gardens and products selected for their Slow Food ethos, I’m shown bottles of small-batch gianduja. They contain almost 50 per cent hazelnuts (Nutella contains a paltry 13 per cent!) and I’m told that a jar “will change your life!” I acquiesce and buy two, because who can argue with those stats?
Market Life, Black Rice and White Truffles
Extreme chocolate tasting calls for long walks and as we head out before noon to the sprawling central market, Mercato Porta Palazzo, Cristina reminds me why she dotes on Turin: “Walking in the city centre you feel the quiet and calm character of the town, a little bit old fashion maybe, but still with the allure of a royal capital.” The Slow Food endorsed section of the market can’t compete with the commercial part outdoors, but is sizable. Farmers display hefty pomegranates, purple figs, okra, sunshine-yellow zucchini flowers and hazelnuts –making me long for a kitchen and time to prepare Piedmontese specialities. At lunch, grissini – crisp, long breadsticks – never fail to appear. Cristina explains that they were invented here at the end of the 17th Century by a baker, Antonio Brunero, who attempted to make an easy-to-digest bread for the young Duke Vittorio Amedeo who had digestive ailments. It’s said to have worked. While the anglotti del plin is excellent at lunch, it’s the rice grown along the swampy reaches of the River Po that draws my attention. Small white grains for risotto and the nutty, low G.I. red and black rice varietals, especially.
It’s in Alba (60 km from Turin), known for some of the world’s most coveted truffles, and particularly the white ones that are harvested for a short time at the end of September, that I try the black rice at La Piola. It’s the sister restaurant to three-star Michelin Piazza Duomo next door, so it’s a wonder that we get a square-facing table without a reservation on a Saturday. Shavings of truffle adorn simple egg-yellow pastas. My rice dish is layered with oven-roasted peppers and topped with Parmigianino cheese. Later, with Luca Aloi, a farmer and truffle hunter and his young German Shorthaired Pointer, Tia we go on a simulated truffle hunt in a forest of looming oak and chestnut trees, 45 minutes out in the countryside. Tia, at three months shows talent beyond her years and is rewarded with pieces of truffle and tummy rubs. She snoozes in the back of the jalopy, as we tread over dirt roads to a cabin high up in the woods where Luca’s wife, Claudia Vigna has prepared us a merenda sinoira–afternoon snacks with truffle-laden cream, butter and honey. She brings out plates of buttery tagliatelle and just-scrambled eggs over which Luca shaves a fistful of truffle; they pour homemade red wine from a two-litre bottle. Tia snoozes under the table and for one blissful afternoon, Piedmont reveals itself as what surely must be the ultimate food and wine lover’s destination.
………
BEFORE YOU GO:
South Africans require a visa to visit Italy:
www.it-za.capago.eu; www.italia.it/en/discover-italy/piedmont
Book Slow Food-approved food and wine culture tours in Piedmont: www.tourdivini.it/en/and with The Wine Bank (Banca Del Vino)
+39-017-245-8418; bancadelvino.it
EAT HERE
Caffè Platti
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 72, Turin, +39-011-454-6151; platti.it
Caffè Al Bicerin
Piazza della Consolata 5, Turin, +39-011-436-9325; bicerin.it
Lavazza
Via San Tommaso 10, Turin +39 011 534201; lavazza.it
Baratti & Milano
Piazza Castello 27/29, Turin, +39-011-440-7138; barattiemilano.it
Caffetteria Beccuti
Via Micca Pietro 10, Turin, +39-011-562-1704 ;facebook.com/BeccutiTorrefazioneCaffetteria
Guido Grobino
Via Cagliari 15, Turin, +39-011-247-6245; guidogobino.it
Eataly Torino Lingotto
Via Nizza 330, Turin, +39-011-1950-6801; eataly.net/it_it/negozi/torino-lingotto
Local Bottega
Via Cavour 45, Bra, +39-017-205-4012; bottegalocal.org
La Piola
Piazza Risorgimento, 4, Alba; +39 0173 442800; www.lapiola-alba.it
………………………………………………………………………
Leave A Comment