Parma is quiet at night. The man sitting opposite me is paranoid someone will overhear our conversation. “They hate me here,” he explains in a hushed voice. He checks behind him, but the only other person in the osteria is a waitress who has had nothing to do since serving us our osso buco bottoncini. The aroma of roasted bone marrow wafts up from the table. Amy Winehouse’s cover of “Valerie” plays on a faraway radio.
“Can I badmouth them?” he asks. I tell him he can. After all, he hasn’t been invited here to expose corporate fraud. He has come to tell me the truth about parmesan cheese.
There’s a dark side to Italy’s often ludicrous attitude towards culinary purity. In 2019, the archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi, suggested adding some pork-free “welcome tortellini” to the menu at the city’s San Petronio feast. It was intended as a gesture of inclusion, inviting Muslim citizens to participate in the celebrations of the city’s patron saint. Far-right League party leader Matteo Salvini wasn’t on board. “They’re trying to erase our history, our culture,” he said.
https://www.tumblr.com/anneemay/712987153080205312/dude-literally-received-death-threats-from-italian
(sorry if this is the wrong com for this)
I went off hard here already in reply but wanna do it again in the comments. Food and history are both super interesting and food history is a great material basis to examine history by, cause it'd fucking food. Pretentious food guys being all trad as an excuse for their half passed underdeveloped meals has fucked you all over too long. This Simple And Traditional crap is a marketing gimmick to sell you on cost cutting measures as a form of refinement. Fusion cooking is fun, tastes great and it's the 21st fucking century, we can ship any food anywhere
fuck yeah put pineapple in yer nan's recipe
If pineapple tastes good in it, do it. I'm speaking more from a professional background than a home cooking on. Shit gets really annoying when you're using being traditional to make worse meals and cut costs.