moon_custafer | Probe with genius into gastric chemistry

Yesterday I made spaghetti carbonara (only with macaroni) for the first time, and considered it a success. Consequently I've been thinking about Italian cookery. Carbonara, at least according to wikipedia, is likely a dish invented in the post-war period. All I know about pre-war Italian cuisine is the weird recipes concocted by the Futurists.

The Italian public was not won over by Marinetti's manifesto regarding cuisine. Immediately following its publication the Italian press broke into uproar. All classes participated in the dispute that ensued. Every time pasta was served in a restaurant or a private house there was heated debate. Doctors were measured in their response, agreeing that habitual consumption of pasta was fattening and recommending a varied diet; but the Duke of Bovino, Mayor of Naples, was firmer in his views: "The angels in Paradise," he told a reporter, "eat nothing but vermicelli al pomodoro [fine spaghetti with tomato sauce]." Marinetti replied that this confirmed his suspicions about the monotony of Paradise.

I actually went to a presentation on Futurist Cooking, many years ago at an art gallery. Afterwards we were served "elastic cakes," which were cream puffs, filled with whipped cream that had been dyed hot pink, and topped with a prune and a piece of black liquorice. At least they were meant to be topped thusly -- the presenter suddenly remembered that she'd forgotten the prunes, which was probably a mercy; the liquorice was already pretty hard to contend with on its own. It occurred to me this afternoon that the emphasis on meat and fats, especially locally sourced, together with the avoidance of pasta, made this a version of the "paleo" diet and that it might be due for a revival, preferably without the Fascist undertones.

Per Cabinet magazine:Marinetti launched his attack against pasta just when Italy, hit hard by the Depression, was struggling to achieve one of Mussolini’s great dreams: autarchy, or the elimination of Italy’s economic dependence on foreign markets. Pasta, quintessentially Italian as it was, depended on expensive imports of wheat. The regime thus launched a campaign in favor of homegrown rice as a better substitute. Rice, we are told, was more virile, more patriotic, and more suitable for fighters and heroes. Rice also had its part in the history of Italian cooking as the great rival of pasta; it came from the Po valley in the industrial North, while pasta, with its hypothetical birthplace in Etruria and its triumph in Naples, was identified with the center, and even more with the agrarian and backward South. This was a battle that could thus be waged on familiar Futurist geopolitical territory.  

Of course, it doesn't seem very consistent as a philosophy -- while the Futurists were were in favour of meats, fats and local Italian-produced foods (except pasta), their recipe book contained things like the aforementioned cakes, which contain flour -- but I suppose that's the result of being an aesthetics-based food movement, as opposed to a nutritional one. Also one of the recipes mentioned in the Wiki entry calls for pineapple, which I think of as an import, but then I'm in Canada. Perhaps Italy was able to grow their own.