Life is a combination of pasta and magic

Totò in the movie “Fear and Sand” (1948) asked: “Regarding politics, what about eating a little something?!?”. The Prince de Curtis replied four years later with the great binge of spaghetti in the movie Poverty and Nobility: even in the ears, in the coat’s pockets, dancing on the table. So, which sauce can season the Italian food of movies if not the one that made the village of Amatrice famous in the world? The protagonist of this country dish is the “guanciale”, a Traditional Food Product and the original version is the white one. The spaghetti that Alberto Sordi eats back from holidays in the movie “Where are you going on holiday?”(1978) is unforgettable too as well as the “Spaghetti a mezzanotte” (1981) starring Lino Banfi, with his Fleming invasions of all sorts of pasta starting with the “maccheroni”. The maccheroni alla chitarra are superb, it’s eggs made pasta coming from Abruzzo, it’s worked by using an ancient tool called “chitarra”, a sort of rectangular beech wooden frame that contains very thin strips of brass at a distance of 2 millimetres from one another.

Nourishing pasta, cherishing chickpeas

Fellini used to say: “Life is a combination of pasta and magic”. But pasta is not only made of shapes and dressing: the raw material is crucial mainly the whole wheat. Why not choose the old, nourishing, three-coloured variety like the “Senatore Cappelli”? It goes back to 1920, it’s featured by high quality nutrients and its original cultivation area is Sardinia. The recipe of the “Ciciri e tria” comes from Puglia and it was brought by the Arabic people that used to reign in this area, it’s the version from Salento of the pasta with the chick peas. The most famous movie version is the one of the movie “Big Deal on Madonna Street“ (I soliti ignoti) a movie from 1958 where the unlucky thieves who are the protagonists of the masterpiece by Mario Monicelli, instead of reaching the treasure of the Monte della Pietà (the pawnshop), come out of an anonymous kitchen and take comfort by eating this popular dish. According to the tradition, it sounds being a sort of tagliatella that is partially boiled and fried then is mixed up with the stewed chick peas. Don’t leave Puglia and let’s taste another special version of the trio Italy-food-movies.

The beauty and the beast

Can you remember the beautiful Julia Roberts eating pizza at the timeless restaurants of Rome in the movie “Eat, pray, love” (2010)? If she was in the Gargano area she would eat the “pizza a Vamp” that means cooked with the “vampa” (heat) of the wood oven. It’s a sort of focaccia-bread that was already known in the year 1500, it has a long shape, that’s why its local name is Paposcia meaning slipper and it’s dressed with the oil produced by the massive olive trees of Vico del Gargano, an amazing village set between the sky, the forest and the sea that is nicknamed “the village of ancient love”. If we mention the pizza we can’t miss the tomatoes. Actually the cherry tomatoes! They have a peculiar feature, they are cold outside while they are like a “fireball of 18thousand degrees inside!!!” (Il secondo tragico Fantozzi, 1976). How hot could the Winter cherry tomatoes from Tuscany be? Bunches of smooth long-shaped orange cherry tomatoes that are hung in ventilated rooms and they keep their freshness until Christmas, sometimes until February… “You don’t want to spit it here, do you? Fantozzi: go out!!!”

Big mozzarella cheese and thin paté

Then it’s the mozzarella’s turn. Which is the most famous of the screen? According to us it’s the one that travels on a coach and makes the water in Brunos’ mouth, the little boy protagonist of Bicycle Thieves (1948) before another child who can afford it. Do you know the mozzarella cheese from the Sila mountains? It’s a local limited production from Calabria which is related to the Summer cattle driving along the dry meadows from the Ionian coastline towards the mountains. It’s fat, pasty and more nourishing, it’s wrapped in the rush stems and in the bracken. And finally we just have to start our Grande bouffe (1973). The paté de fois gras stands out among the dishes that were made by Ugo Tognazzi for the movie where he’s the protagonist together with Mastroianni, Noiret e Piccoli. Its production is luckily forbidden in Italy: the “gavage” that is the agonizing geese force-feeding has been forbidden by the law for around twelve years. There is a similar Italian product that is the goose liver paté (it isn’t fat!) coming from Lomellina, an area near Pavia where the geese have been bred since the Middle Ages when a big Jewish community used to live there and they didn’t eat the pork meat.