THE DIVERSE REGIONAL CULTURES

Still today in the Western world rice is viewed as a food that “does you good”, that you give to babies, but certainly not as a “good” food.
Italy wishes to propose rice as a product that from one side guarantees a perfect healthiness, and from the other enters into a rich and quality gastronomy. Rice must be sold, proposed as a component of quality for a gastronomy of quality.
It could therefore he interesting to investigate into the course completed by the cultivation of rice in italy to bear witness to the regions considered, today, most suitable: that is, those that overlook the Great Po Valley; it could be interesting, because in effect little is known, and the knowledge could throw some light on a few of the regional culinary habits as regards the use of this cereal.
But first a premise needs to stated and which can not be repeated too often: flavours, odours and aromas can not be imparted unless they are close together with other flavours, odours and aromas that are already known. It would therefore be illusory to think that a culinary tradition can be known by going back two or three generations. We can know nothing for certain about our (Italian) or other gastronomic traditions, neither for the Mediaeval nor the Renaissance periods, of which there is ample written documentation regarding supplies and ingredients.
Nor can we even document the use of a food in relation to that which we recognize today as its taste. And this is not only for the simple fact of a lower quality natural product, but also for the transference of taste brought about by different preservation, storage and milling techniques, to the extremely different circumstances in which the food came to be used and tasted.
But as regards rice, it is enough the fact that it was without doubt present in the Western World during the Classical era, as a plant that is, while its use a food in the national territory (of Italy) can be dated to the end of the XV century, and in those times, given the scarcity of production, it would undoubtedly have been considered a luxury food, fit for the tables of Princes, and difficult to assimilate or relate to the role that it occupies today, even in the same zone of the Po.

Then, as now, two fundamental conditions must exist before the cultivation of rice can take place: first, the chosen area has to have an abundance of fluvial water capable of flooding and covering the seedlings during their initial growth, thus protecting them from any extreme temperature swings that may occur between day and night; second, the chosen area has to have such climatic, latitudinal and general characteristics as to permit growth. In respect to these two conditions the Po Valley can be considered a suitable, in so far as limited, zone. In fact, north of 46° latitude there is not any significant rice cultivation, not even of the “japonica” variety which is the type grown in Italy.
At one time only Lombardy was considered suitable, being wholly or partially submerged by the rivers that flowed through the valley without any banks or ditches to restrain or guide them.
Piedmont quickly realized the necessity of a canal and hydraulic system, placing the rice fields on more than one level to exploit percolation and, with a system of locks, re-cycling the water that otherwise would not have been sufficient; in Romagna and the Po regions the problem was in some ways the complete opposite as there they had to overcome the difficulty of eliminating
unwanted water.

As to how rice cultivation arrived in Italy there are varying theories. Some hold that the Arabs introduced it into Sicily, while others maintain that it was the Venetians who brought it back from the Orient. Or that it was the Aragonese who, after taking the technique from the Moorish invaders of Spain, initiated it in the Kindom of Naples. This ultimate theory becomes the most interesting because it presumes a cultivation of southern origin in suitably marshy zones, gradually moving northwards with time to establish itself in the zones at the extreme of its cultivability and thenceforth to enlarge.

This thesis, also taken up by Marcel Mauss in his “Teoria della Magia ed altri saggi” regarding the permanence of man around vines and olives. implies an economic push from the South of the “warmer” products to displace the indigenous ones in that these were lacking in “added value”; and the fact of radded value? starts to make it very interesting to recommend the large scale cultivation right. there were naturally the product would not grow, and that is in the most northern zones of its cultivability. If this thesis were true, many things about rice, otherwise unexplainable, could then be understood from the point of view of the history of food and gastronomy as well as from a historical economic point of view. It would finally be understood why rice, although known for ages, had stayed until the end of the XV century a medicinal plant, used only for infusions, simply because it was extremely costly to be considered a food. It would explain the diffusion of cultivation like oil stains in the Po Valley, initiating in the zone of Pavia closest to overflowing of the Po and then going on to invade more distant zones.
But only much later would rice cultivation move from the”wet”, areas to those previously reserved for “dry” crops in areas such as Baraggia, Brughiera and Lomellina, which today is to be onsidered undoubtedly the best zone for quality. lt is not by chance that Barragia is the most northern zone and, on the say so of the experts, the rice from Baraggia is undoubtedly the best, with reduced productivity and the need for crop rotation: that zone is the Champagne of rice, unhappy and hard like all the zones that give difficult and splendid products.
In an analysis of Italian gastronomy it can be noted that, more than any other dish, the “risotto” unifies every locality of the Po valley to the exclusion of almost any other region; it signifies that it is the most used food basic in that it is able to be utilized with vegetables, fats, animal or vegetable protein and in such a way as to render it an extremely balanced dish from the point of view of a balanced diet and, as it is well clear, this is valid more than ever for today.

For its characteristics of cooking the "risotto" becomes the symbol of food, not only for its undoubted capacity to absorb fats and flavours but also for its versatality in usage.

It is significant that tdifficulty to cook? impeded its exportation, as it still impedes it now, even if it has nationalized the eating habits of the middle class Italian: adifficult to cook?, but it should be said that there is not such a real difficulty, that there does not exist such a substantial difference of
approach as that required for the other basics such as potatoes, pasta or  polenta. And it is significant to note that polenta, which requires the continual presence of whoever is cooking to stand and stir it, has had the same fortune as rice, being confined to the colder zones where to stand by the fire proposed some advantages, even if the cultivation had been started, as is supposed for rice, much farther South.
To stay in front of the fire therefore becomes the discrimination between North and South: naturally there is some truth in this analysis, but it is known that such a critical approach has the simple scope of proposing some interpretative outlines, partially true.
lt should also be interesting to note the method of cooking “risotto”, from “all'onda” (wet) to “sgranato” (separate grains), with a lot of condiment to almost dry, which varies according to the zone and it is possible to read an axis east-west that goes for the driest of rice and rich in strong flavours, meat and sauces are significant in Piedmont, fresh vegetables and fish in Veneto.
In the zones furthest from the Po the dish is extremely elaborate, a dish that is where the rice is not the principal ingredient but the binder of a symphony of the most disparate components. Near to the river. however, the dish of the rice-field will be poor and simple. solely flavoured with Parmesan cheese and aromatic herbs.

But the “risotto” is not the only way, even if very significant, of preparing a plate of rice in Italy. If we enlarge on all the other methods of cooking and all the other ways of using our panorama we can notice how the scenery changes in a determined manner.
Refering to the volume by Anna Gosetti della Salda (3). there are 125 rice-based dishes quoted of which 90 are for the four PO Valley regions; the remaining 35 have this configuration: 29 relate to the regions that overlook the Tyrrhenian with the highest points in Sicily and Tuscany and the lowest in Lazio; only 3 relate to the Adriatic coast and all of these are located in the Bourbon zone; 4 from Friuli Venice Giulia and they are dishes based on sea-food components in the Venetian tradition.
It has founded the observation that the less a food is entrenched in the economy of a zone, the more that its use is reserved for marginal and sophisticated recipes; recipes, that is, to be used for ritual and celebratory times in which the food in question is loaded with every of its symbolic or propitiatory value. It is not without significance then that the food becomes a bearer not only of its nutritive capacity or connective tissue of the dish., as much as for its liturgical capacity, guarantor of the temporal expiry of the celebration commanded. In every field this task has been assumed by the “dolce” and it is interesting to note that Sicily, for example, is extremely rich in “dolci” (sweets and desserts) with a rice base even though it does not have many main dishes, and how, on the ot.her hand, the utilization of rice in sweets and desserts becomes less and less as one travels towards the North, reaching the almost nil percentage in the zones of the Po Valley where, among other things, a dessert or sweet is present, it becomes a poor one, a typical example being the “torta di riso”(rice cake).

Desserts, therefore, and exceptionally fine dishes, characterize the use of rice in the regions where the cereal has been concerned in the culture and historical memory, but whose agricultural dimension has never been influenced relative to a real food utilization, such that still today it highlights the ritual aspects; therefore it has only fully caught the aspect of singleness that is immediately transfered in the rite.
The timbale merits a separate note, that while not being undoubtedly a ritual dish, it is without doubt festive for its capacity as a harmonic and geometric form. It is therefore significant that Lazio, which does not have the “risotto” in its customary eating habits, a timbale of chicken liver is a typical rustic festive dish with which everybody rejoices at its presentation, and that justifies the typical ritual of profanation, that is to say the first cut, the breaking of the object statuesquely presented.
There obviously exists also a return phase in the utilization of rice, that where it is used for the stuffing for such things as tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, courgettes. Such dishes, other than being most characteristic of Middle Eastern cooking, are undoubtedly connected with cooking by infusion or boiling. It is significant that boiling is characteristic of other dishes such as “risi e bisi” (rice and peas) which provides for a suspension of abundant starch; the rice is almost a soup and its flavour amalgamates with that of the peas and that it must neither be sauted nor browned; the ideal rice therefore a “pearled” one such as they cultivate in the Po Delta. If, however, a rice is considered for stuffing Calabrian aubergines then one realizes immediately that the grains have to be separate but able to cede a very small amount of starch.
A last consideration remains regarding the most undoubtedly diffused method of cooking: the minestra of rice, with all the variants of rice cooked in broth whatever the approach. It goes without saying that the minestra represents the basic dish of the farming and Mediterranean tradition because none of its components are wasted and because of its ease of cooking and conservation of the finished product; it is also immediately intuitive that this, more than any other dish, corresponds to rtdoes you goods, treating medicinally, both because it is a direct consequence and a rich variant of an infusion, also because the liquid, with its fat content, more readily allows it “to be eaten hot”, and heat. has always been an image associated with therapy.

We shall try to draw some conclusions from observing the map reproduced with this text: it is possible t.o see immediately a legible trend from south to north that in liberating rice from its ritual aspect (tied to sweets and desserts) passes through that healthy one which, for good or bad, persists in all the peninsula and to only exalt itself gastronomically in that zone that has managed to liberate itself from rite, precisely in the Po Valley itself with the triumph of the “risotto”.
In this approximate schematism there does not exist a desire to take a given food and gastronomy back to a simple anthropological aspect; rather that there is the possibility of reading a contemporary commercial aspect of (Italian) agricultural tradition.
If such an analysis is true it signifies one thing only: that no produce can occupy the two incompatible aspects of the food requirement, namely that of doing good and that of being good.
Rice bears evident witness to this. In this long march from the South to the North in order to free itself from its magical value it is pleasing to imagine the urisotto alla milanese? as the symbol of the triumph of pleasure, with its golden yellow, with its precious and expensive saffron, with its vital bone marrow and flavour, as if all the story of a culture were not other than to find the opposite point to that of its departure to balance the exigencies of hunger, of the market, of health, of pleasure.