Italia__-_November_2016

DISCOVER ITALIA!

VIEWPOINT

A solitary market stall in Pomposa, near Ferrara, selling pumpkins of all shapes and sizes in

late October of last year. It doesn’t get more Italian – and yet, of course, it’s not Italian at all...

Like maize – another crop that is grown very extensively here

in the Po Valley – and tomatoes – which we all associate so

closely with Italian food – the humble pumpkin actually originated

in North America (Mexico, probably), and was unheard of on this

side of the Atlantic until the Age of Exploration.

American folklore is full of stories of Pilgrim Fathers being

given pumpkins by the native peoples they met in their new

home, and using them in imaginative ways to stave off starvation

in the early days of their settlement, but nothing they did –

or are said to have done – even compares to the inventiveness

of the Italians in the kitchen.

The fruit here will all have gone into a range of imaginative

recipes, sweet and savoury: soups, breads, cakes, risottos, pastas,

tarts, cannoli... Abundant, nutritious, and very easy to store, they

will have found their way onto dining tables from October until

well into the New Year. Like maize and the tomato, the pumpkin,

particularly here in the Po Valley, and also further north, in the

Veneto, has become as Italian as, well, polenta and tomato sauce.

Pumpkin ravioli is a popular and trendy recipe at the moment,

(especially one that utilises the secret ingredient of amaretti

biscuits to add a subtle crunch and bitter-sweetness to the flesh

of the pumpkin. Go on, try it.)

16 ITALIA! November 2016

Photograph by Jon Palmer

IT144.Viewpoint.sg5.indd 16 28/09/2016 15:32pm