I didn’t want to be a chef; just a cook. And my experiences in Italy had taught me why. For millennia, people have known how to make their food. They have understood animals and what to do with them, have cooked with the seasons and had a farmer’s knowledge of the way the planet works. They have preserved traditions of preparing food, handed down through generations, and have come to know them as expressions of their families. People don’t have this kind of knowledge today, even though it seems as fundamental as the earth, and, it’s true, those who do have it tend to be professionals — like chefs. But I didn’t want this knowledge in order to be a professional; just to be more human. — Bill Buford from his book, “Heat”
I just finished my third reading of Bill Buford’s big yellow book, and I have to recommend it to anyone reading this blog.
Of course, for any foodie, it’s a treat to eavesdrop on the kitchen of a famous restaurant such as Mario Batali’s Babbo Ristorante in New York.
But more important for those interested in Appalachian foodways, Buford’s book calls to mind the way our home cooking is similar to all other peasant cooking traditions. And furthermore, how Appalachian cooking is so very similar to that of Tuscany and northern Italy.
(It’s perplexing to me that I didn’t get that impression at all from another of my favorite American-in-Italy food memoirs, Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun
Tuscans are called bean-eaters because they adore the cannellini bean served with garlic, sage and olive oil, maybe a little prosciutto (Italian ham). Appalachians have the old standby pinto beans, still sold in 25-pound sacks in many grocery stores, cooked with smoked ham hock or a lump of cured side meat or bacon and served with chopped raw onions on top and cornbread on the side.
Tuscans live in the rugged hills and have a history of subsisting by raising cows and pigs. Appalachians have that same history. Tuscans cure their pork, as do the Appalachians. One makes prosciutto, the other country ham. Most Appalachian homeplaces used to have apple trees. Nearly every Tuscan villa has olives.
And, both love their corn — Tuscans crave polenta; Appalachians live on cornpone. The only differences are in the way the corn is ground and cooked.
Although this is probably stretching the comparison a bit, maybe fresh, handmade pasta is also akin dumplings — especially the “slick runners” American hillbillies make by rolling and cutting dough into thick strips, and then stirring them into chicken stew. Most people know this as chicken and dumplings.
The polenta section of Heat is particularly interesting to me, as Buford is a fellow Southerner (Louisiana) upon whom the similarities of southern American and northern Italian cooking are not lost.
“A southerner’s love of corn meal … comes close to rivaling a northern Italian’s (the American South is one of the only other places with a large-scale outbreak of pellagra) … Polenta, I finally understood, was cornbread without the baking powder.”
Pellagra is a disease that showed up in the American south and in northern Italy and can still be found in developing countries such as Africa were people still sometimes have little to eat besides corn mush. The disease comes from eating too much corn, which results in niacin deficiency. Carried to an extreme, corn-eating can actually kill you. That’s why, as Buford points out, the Native Americans who developed corn as a crop and also subsisted on it, made sure they ate a lot of beans. Beans are full of niacin.
From Heat, I learned to make polenta, a close cousin of cornpone. The secret: You must whisk vigorously and continuously for the first 15 to 20 minutes (your arm will be sore the next day). Most people don’t do this and get lumpy polenta, then give up and eat the awful instant or even refrigerated tubes of mass-produced goo sold in most grocery stores.
The only part of Heat I recommend skipping is Buford’s odd search for the first recorded instance of eggs being used to make fresh pasta. As Buford notes in the text, even Italians — who care deeply about everything to do with their food and its history — DON’T CARE who put the first egg into fresh pasta. Buford, while obsessed with this question, never articulates a reason why we should care, either, despite actually finding what may be the first known reference to the practice.
Buford does teach you to make a nice fresh pasta, though. And that’s a great trick for any cook to know.
Good recipes for slick runners can be found in Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, And Recipes
Tags: Appalachian, Bill Buford, cornbread, cornpone, Heat, polenta, Tuscany
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