BEYOND TRADITION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL CULTURE Here's my speech at the conference
TRADITION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL CULTURE
Castle Ciani Bassetti Roncade
Saturday, March 8, 2008
the food culture of the West, according to the oldest written record , first you see the bread, the primary food for human beings: "You earn your bread by the sweat of thy face" (Gen. 3:19), then, with Noah, comes the wine. The old patriarch, a survivor from the deluge, the ark fell planted a vineyard, made wine and got drunk (Gen. 9, 20-21).
The bread represents the need for men, wine, non-necessity, be billed. As Enzo Bianchi wrote, "The bread used to live, wine to celebrate life. The wine is the excess on need, is the joy and the singing that goes into a meal and, as the psalm says, "Wine maketh glad the heart of man" (114-15) (Places of Infinity, March 2008 ).
From the dawn of our Western history, how many times the Bible reminds us, wine is our life partner and current productions, which characterize our area, and Roncade is one of the wine capital of Treviso, are in close continuity with its ancient history. At the time of the great migrations of the thirteenth century BC, came here from Troy in flames early Venetians, founded, among other cities, Ob-TERG (the future Opitergium) and Altinum, bred horses and planted vines, the progenitor of our Raboso.
Over a thousand years after the Romans arrived, they found that those vines and wine, "Picina nigerrima omnium" and continued to produce, by planting other varieties brought by the farmers legionnaires sent to our centuries these territories. And after two millennia, we are here to remember a story that has seen the birth and dying empires, kingdoms and republics, go warlike barbarian hordes and armies, but the vine and wine remain.
That same wine that has found the best singer in Solomon, as we read in the Song of Songs, there where the lover exclaims: "How beautiful is your love, - my sister, my bride, - the best wine is your love" (Can. 4.10). Solomon did not know what to choose in order to compare the sweet caress of her and found no better than to compare them to wine, the drink most pleasing to him, the drink that cheers the heart.
of its economic value others say, it remains true that wine is the umbilical cord that ties the whole history of Western civilization, even if the greek Alcaeus of Mycenae, six hundred years before Christ, invites you to plant a tree, a tree only: the screw.
And we have the wine and the vine, we have them in abundance, even here in Roncade, we therefore heirs of those values \u200b\u200bthat have shaped the life of the West and what we have wine that made him exclaim to the great poet: the sweet draft that never sated n'avrìa (Purgatorio XXXIII, 138).
Always comes to us from prehistoric another gift of nature and of human intelligence: the cheese. We think, as we remember the Leopards, the herds that grazed thousands of years ago in the vast expanses of Asia, even before ten thousand years ago a group of men were stopped along the banks of the Jordan River in the heart of the Fertile Crescent, a costruisse city \u200b\u200band began to sow grain in starting farming. Before Jericho, therefore, that the shepherds were in constant motion for the immense plains, they learned how to make sheep's milk and goat cheese valuable source of food for the entire tribe. Along with bread, wine and beer, cheese is a food column that has accompanied mankind ever since they learned to domesticate animals, so always. The cheese we still produce it in our countries, even here in Roncade, much better than the past, thanks to new techniques and increased culture of dairymen. And if the cheese that we produce today is that the vaccine, we have to thank the famous Roman soldiers who made the centurions still visible in many parts and, therefore, introduced cattle to work the land. Since then, more than two thousand years, cow's milk cheese continues to be our food, appreciated and enjoyed.
In recent decades we have been given names of more precise than in the past to our cheeses, style, even the strict production regulations, the tender Casatella Montasio the aged. In our province, while missing many dairy country, which arose from the initiative of the late nineteenth century Catholic, there are still very good but some are very important, interesting cheeses they produce, more and more present on the tables at home and even during the main restaurant , in the Veneto region and beyond. There is today a strong revival, a reappropriation of the cheese, with the possibility of choosing the type most welcome. And even if children and young people who go to school could enjoy with our cheese sandwiches as better to eat! But if you must know them and know them, I am sure, would refuse to give in to the lure of television advertising, to enjoy the bread of our ovens and our excellent cheese dairy farms.
But even at home, because, in the Veneto, there is a historical matched, almost an emblem of our traditional food, polenta and formajo, and tradition of Venice and Treviso plain want to, not only to accompany the cheese, white polenta , refined and smooth, which in recent years has regained space both in homes and in restaurants and taverns. The cuisine of fish, characteristic not only of our areas near the lagoon, white polenta requires more delicate and less of the yellow and free-range, thanks to a more careful consideration of the old products of our countryside, to an increased food culture and a new focus on the table corn Biancoperla has opened up new roads, even during the restoration. The Biancoperla here is a corn hybrids cultivated before the irruption of the Americans, is a corn back to the beginning, on his arrival in the Veneto in the early decades of the '500, and I think his first extensive cultivation has taken place right in Treviso, in those lands that the Venetian nobleman Lunardo Emo bought shortly after the 1530 in Fanzolo of Vedelago and I think that right there was born the polenta.
College in the postwar years, the world's peasant and tenant farming, still with ancient memories of pellagra, the polenta was almost overlooked, but now, thanks to the desire of identity and a growing desire for re-appropriation of the history and traditions, polenta White is definitely back in vogue, and here in Roncade has taken some time to cultivate corn Biancoperla, which deserves further typified even better value for our wonderful cuisine of meat and fish. Without
go back to traditional dishes, I like to emphasize here that after years of effort spent on the development and promotion of red chicory Castelfranco variegated and, for some 'time, even for the tenacity of the City of Roncade and a number of lovers, you are looking with increasing interest radicchio Verdon, on which you just talked to Professor Sambo. And, prior to the refined and elegant variegated radicchio, true symbol of our country and that power which for centuries has accompanied our people.
Resume and revive the best of this radicchio and propose it again not only as a healthy and valuable food, but as an expression of high and modern cuisine, in line with the dictates of the Mediterranean diet, is to offer the market a product range and grown according to strict rules, respectful nature, health-conscious consumers, very different from what happens with imported products, which we do not know how they were cultivated and preserved. And with our radicchio dishes can be made of great excellence, worthy of the gastronomic history of our land.
would like to conclude my brief remarks, noting that most products that are the basis of our daily food, are not indigenous, because almost all came from outside, even from afar, they are in fact the result of globalization permanent.
Already we have seen the wine, but we can add most of the vegetables came from near and far East Americas - asparagus, artichokes, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, potatoes - corn comes from the Americas, Asia rice, salt cod from beyond the Arctic Circle, spices from distant islands and mysterious. How would our food today without these products?
Merit of the Venetians was to have been able to absorb slowly, independently, according to their own style and tastes, the products come from outside, turning them into new dishes, very different from those of countries of origin of the goods themselves: think the cod fish which is only Venetian and Venetian.
And in the same spirit we continue to welcome new products, indeed, animals, and new products as we welcomed the cattle of the Romans in the second century before Christ, just recently we have welcomed the buffalo, which has found an ideal habitat in Roncade and then next to cow's milk cheeses, now belong to our tradition, we also have the buffalo mozzarella, which do not bear the DOP of the bell, but in essence is nothing other than that.
If we look we see today in our country that we have quality products, able to enhance our dinner tables, and because an increasing nutrition education leads us to choose quality products, those that we have, wine, biancoperla corn, cheese, radicchio verdon have a future ahead of him have a positive, if we really believe if we produce more and better and promote them with proper marketing.
