The Kitchen
The complex historical stories of this region justify from a side the French and Spanish influences of the preparations of the dishes that consumed him to the cafeterias of the rich ones, very fluorescent, a lot of scenografici and often substantial; but they also justify the poor kitchen, that reserved to the people in which vegetables and latticini excel, in which the meat and the fish are almost absent is reserved to the parties.
A region in which the poor men were really poor and the rich ones conducted a life godereccia in the buildings and castles of the noble over that, naturally, to the court of the Kingdom, you/he/she has had in the centuries a separated kitchen for estate without possibility of mutual influences submitted to the imagination of the poor people the first one, to the great cooks the second.
In common only character is the multiplicity of the dishes that I/you/they have been elaborate through the centuries making the kitchen of the Region Campania particularly rich in dishes fruit of inventiveness for that poor and of great abundance for that of the rich ones in this earth.
This last finds space in the texts historical writings in Italy especially in 1400 and in the Renaissance. This way Cristoforo of Messisbugo that also having probably been born in the Flanders in the first decades of the XVI century you/he/she has been active as carver near the court of the Estensis; he had great fame so much to deserve to be created Palatine Count to work of Charles V (January 1533).
In the part of his/her Work devoted to the recipes we find foods of various derivation among which there was room for those any Neapolitan kitchen, first among all the macaronis. In fact he writes: "To make ten dishes of macaronis to the Neapolitan." "It seizes pounds eight of flour flower and the mollena (= crumb) of a big bread boffetto, mogliato (= put to soft, to bath) in rosy water and fresh eggs four and ounces four of zuccaio; and well it mixes every thing together, and ago well your pasta, leading her/it for a piece. Then you will do bare of it more I toast grossette how thin, and the tagliarais in narrow lists and longhette; and you will do what facts are rather. Then you will cook them in fat broth bogliente, and you will prepare them in the dishes or above capons or anadre or other, with zuccaro and cinnamon inside and than above. And for them fish days, you will cook them in the water without butiro, or with fresh butiro, if you will want."
As it regards the historical news on the wines of this zone it is precious the letter of Saints Lancerio (lived in the XVI century) written to the cardinal Guido Ascanio it Strives around the nature and quality of the wines.
Among the quoted ones many originate from the Neapolitan. This way the "Greek of Sum", the "Greek of Posilico (= Posillipo)", the "Greek of Ischia", the "Greek of Tower" etc. Interesting as he/she writes of the "Wine Sucano": "It comes to Rome for back of mules and for burdens. Such wines are for the greatest part red, et it is perfect wine yes for the verno how much for is her/it. Sucano is a distant scaffold from Orvieto two miles, and after the wine Monterano doesn't have peer drink for red wine. Such wines are scented, very beautiful and polputi (= strong, of a lot of substance) more than the they will Climb on, but don't have so much odor. To want to know their perfection, wants to be scented, beautiful and not agrestino. There am very perfect white delli for the verno, with a vein of dessert, but they want to be biting, not fat neither matrosi. Wanting the red for is her/it, he/she is wanted to seize raw, and is of old vineyard, ché the old vineyard has this ownership, that if it makes the agreeable wine it maintains him/it and if it does him/it dry it maintains him/it; the youth ago the contrary one. Of this wine S. S. he/she drank gladly, mottos when it was in Orvieto. The captain Jeronimo Benincasa (= identifiable historical character not; he treats, probably, of an official of Curia, to the epoch of Paul III) it did good provvisione and it made him/it bring et to Rome in trip."
To these they follow "The Mangiaguerra" so called because strong, "The wine of Salerno", the "Wine Saint of St. Severino" and the "Wine Aglianico." A rich production that testifies the fertility of this earth and the ability vinicola of his/her inhabitants.
The Lancerio in to describe these wines also furnishes us news on the reality of the Kingdom in Naples: this way speaking of the wine of Fistigno writes: "It is red and it comes from the Kingdom in Naples, from a place above the mountain of Sum. Such wine he asks Fistignano in comparison to the fate or vine tendril of the grape. In this place they are a great deal vineyards erborate et grape redhead and dessert, and ago the mature wine and dessert and load of color. There am anco of the dry lands and they are good wines. To want to know their perfection wants to be unloaded of color et has wrist (= strength), that is rubber bands (= weak, watery) neither matroso is strong, and above everything has odor. Of such wines S. S. he/she drank gladly and it made him honor. The best wine that does him is of the possession of Mons. Domenico Terracina, but rare it comes to Rome, because the Viceroys want him/it for them, and certain it is good drink."
In the same years Bartholomew Scappi lived that also in his/her Work you/he/she for instance refers to the Neapolitan kitchen when you/he/she furnishes the recipe "to make real cake of pigeons, from' Neapolitan says pizza of mouth of dame" or "to make cake with different subjects, from' Neapolitan says pizza" that however you/he/she doesn't have nothing to do with the famous pizza that in the century XX has had all over the world so much fortune. Him in fact he/she writes: "Have him ounces six of loving her ambrosine monde and quattr'once of pedants married man worlds and three ounces deprived fresh dattoli of the souls and three ounces fresh fig trees, three ounces zibibbo without souls, et every thing crush him in the mortaro, sbruffandole to the times of pink water, of way that comes as pasta; come him with them subjects eight red of raw fresh ova, ounces six of zuccaio, a cinnamon ounce footstep, an ounce and half of mostaccioli Neapolitan musky facts in dust, four ounces pink water; and done what of every thing will be in a composition, have him the tortiera shame with one I skim through of real pasta et the tortiglione skimmed through not about too much big, and put the composition in the tortiera, mixing with four ounces butiro, doing what taller than a finger is not, and without being covered make to be cooked to the oven and serve him warm and cold to approval. In it pizza can be put of every sort seasoned."
On the Six hundred foreshortening The carver to the modern one of the marchigiano Anthony Latini seems to mark the end of the hegemony practiced by the Italian gastronomic literature and to represent, for a dark awareness of the author, her "summa" of the whole preceding literature, from the debuts of the humanistic gastronomy to the essays of the Messisbugo, of the Panunto, of the Escapes, of the Cervio, of the Stephen, not to remember that the greatest of the Renaissance age. It tells him/it the big massive structure of the essay and it attests better it the summary of the matters, in which you/they are found enumerated "the art of well to prepare the banquets", "the most select rules of scalcherai", "the easy and noble way of trinciare", to do roast, boiled, stewed, soups, soups, morselletti, broths, fried, pies, tarts, pizzas, sauces, tastes, vinegars, preserves, "the way to make triumphs", "of well to prepare the tables", "to know the qualitative degrees" of the single foods together with the name of theirs "inventors", as well as a catalog of fruits and wines, to which follows, in the second part, an essay to manufacture the dishes of thin.
Also he makes mention to the Neapolitan kitchen for instance proposing the soup "of leaf to the Neapolitan" for which he dwells in a lot of precise statements. "Although me n'abbia done mention composite flat nelli, is seemed well me to put her/it in the number of the soups, to be this delicious and very in use. You seizes a hen and it starts boiling together with the cow, when this will be half crush, accioché the hen doesn't undo him; and they put you inside salty languages of hog, but you boil, salty meat that has been before to I release, a brawn (= risen of meat set in pressure among two tables), a piece of fillet, a piece of ventresca of hog, ledger bones, annoglio (= or anduglia, from the French andouille, risen of full sausage of bits meat and of shreded bowels), a piece of beaten lard with his/her salt, to proportion; and when they will be the sopradettes cooked robbe, you will put the broth that you will pick up inside a saucepan, still cutting the sopradettes robbe in slices and the hen or capon; holding aside every thing, you will put in the broth a bystander of the sudetta cut robba, and then you will add similarly you full torzi, cocuzze (= pumpkins) and full onions of beaten vitella with red of ova, some crumb of bread softened in the broth, passarina, fussy, to his/her time, grapes of agresta and the pastume (= I mix) that you will have done it will serve for filling all the sopradettes robbe, with the usual spezieries and scented erbette. You can also add you the lettuce or the full scarola; the other meat that will have stayed, the anderai arranging with order inside the saucepan or in another vase, framezzata with fettarelle of full fianchetto, with boiled first zizza (= breast), broken sausage for half; raise her from you his/her skin, thin slices of cascio scratched parmiggiano, fonghi in Genoa, desalinated before and boiled with ledger bones, warning that I/you/he/she am the good broth, that will be a soup of good taste and you/he/she can be done in qualsivoglia conversation (= convivial assembly) that he/she will always succeed savory when the sudettes rules will be observed; and a lot of times I have made to bring these soups in table with the whole saucepan that they succeed of sight and good taste and you/they can be divided in the dishes."
He teaches besides us "to make half barrel of water of footsteps (= grains pass you), so call in Naples." "You will seize sixteen libres of footsteps of grape doraca (= duracina), you will break them with diligence; after you will have broken him you will put them inside a half barrel, holding prepared a boiler of water to the fire and when it boils well you will put her/it in the half barrel, clogging him/it well and rolling him/it more times of under and than above accioché you pass them mixes him; dapoi you will leave him/it alone next to the fire for one day et a night; dapoi you will put him/it to the north wind, in place where doesn't give the sun and after eight or ten days, according to the cold, him puole to begin to drink because you/he/she will have seized the razzente (= the spicy taste). This water is pettorale (= it benefits to the affections of breast) and cordial; you/he/she can freely be drunk without doubt of injury; the winter must be made for them cold times."
With the XVII century the French cuisine practices therefore its predominance on that Italian which he/she is also inferred by the gastronomic lexicon of the great cooks as the Neapolitan Vincent Corrado (1734-1836) that, also revealing a great fidelity to the traditional practice of the Italian cuisine, it doesn't disdain to sometimes use in its work The cook gallant terms French italianizzandoli at the cost to jeopardize its understanding.
In this work we find a great deal of Neapolitan recipes as those of the timballis, of the vegetables, of the fishes and of the hunting with various proposals as for instance to cook the thrushes: "The meat of these birds is of good taste; rather they esteem her/it among the volatile ones the best. Their season begins in the month of October and hard infino in January.
Roasted thrushes. The savory food that delli thrushes you/he/she can be done it will be to do roasts them in various ways; that is bundles online of hog or harnessed with slices of lard or also with presciutto around and leaves of laurel or in end decorated with oil and juice of lemon and then served with sapor of capparini. They still do roasted to the parmigiana, fattened up well of butiro and served with crust of parmegiano.
Imboracciati (= breaded and fried). Bianchiti the thrushes in broth, the ales and feet will be cut, later they flour him, they are gilded in eggs and enwrapped in the bread and scratched parmegiano, they make him fry to serve them around with fried sage.
To the rude one. They cook in istufa the thrushes with good juice of meat, a sense of garlic, leaves of laurel, sage and thyme; served with sauce of presciutto and minced bad lucks.
To the Florentine. Cooked the thrushes in broth of steer with garlic and laurel, him servinos with colì of white beans, are where delli spinaches passed in butirro.
For entremets. They cook the thrushes in wine with laurel, cinnamon and carnations intieri and later him cold servino with sauce of raisin and malvasia."
But we are not able certain to forget the precious preparations offered us by Francis Leonardi in his The modern Apicio, a true gastronomic encyclopedia, methodically distributed in six tomes and preceded by an introduction in which for the first time a history of the Italian cuisine is traced, reconstructed by the epoch of the romanità up to the times of the author, through the moments of its great fortune - during the age of the Renaissance - and through the following involution up to resolve some hegemony practiced by the French gastronomy. The author, "already cook of Your Majesty Caterina II empress of the Russia", show a notable experience of the foreign kitchens, not only in Russia, but also in Poland, Turkey, Germany, England and France, largely documentable in his/her cookbook and in the ample catalog of the foreign wines; but in the same time he starts in evidence his/her own interest recording the gastronomic uses of the various regions and Italian city, so that to furnish us a rich repertoire in subject.
Some Neapolitan kitchen remembers her/it "Soup of every fate of grass to the napolitana", but also the rissoles (= pancakes) and many other dishes to him well known.
Only with the titled work You new economic kitchen of Vincent Agnoletti is begun to consider the poorest kitchen of all the Italian regions and a version of the pizza to the Neapolitan that remembers that that all know: "When you will have formed a pasta as that Easter (= kind of short pastry), but with a pound of lard and a pound of sugar, you will mix you fettine of ham, of cheese horse (= caciocavallo), of ventresca and of provature (= cheeses fresh facts with milk of bufala); then you will form the pizza and you will make her/it cook as the others."
While for the rustic pizza it suggests: "When you will have put the yeast with two flour pounds, after ten hours you will add two pounds, four eggs, sugar's quattr'once, some salt, ten ounces lard, lukewarm water to discretion and fettine of provatura other of it, of ham or of ventresca. Then you make the pizza and when it will be raised do you her to cook and serve her/it as the usual one. This pasta you can also do her/it without any egg."
Other recipe that appears in this work is that of the "zeppole (= crostoli) of semolella (= pasta of semolino) to the napolitana", a sort of fried pancakes in the lard and dusting of sugar.
Today the differentiation among he/she cooks opulent and popular kitchen is almost nonexistent having disappeared many dishes with to evolve some taste and being shortened the distances of taste and economic possibility among the various layers of the population, even if it is not often difficult to reconstruct the derivation of the various preparations.
The Neapolitan kitchen, so solar, fanciful, spectacular, you/he/she has not escaped to the rule to enter the literature: writers as Matilde Serao, Joseph Marotta, Eduardo De Phillip, poets as Savior Of Giacomo have immortalized dishes of it and inventions, protagonists and character. This way, to speak of the Neapolitan (what it reassumes that some whole region) kitchen without quoting these illustrious names is almost impossible; what to say of the "meat sauce" after Marotta has devoted him one of the most memorable chapters of the gold in Naples? Traditional preparation, Sunday or however festive, this sauce that, together with the pizza, it is to the apex of the gastronomy partenopea, it first of all demands endless cooking. "Since the first hours of the morning a tender vapor dismisses him from the terracotta saucepans in which it becomes the onion blonde and it exhales its noble essences the sprig of just cultured basil on the windowsill." This way it begins the poemetto in prose that Don Peppino devotes to the inimitable sauce that will season what is in Naples the true heart of whatever meal: the pasta. Because the result both that that you/he/she must be and not of the common meat with the tomato, the meat sauce never has to be abandoned to himself in some phase of the cooking, because "a neglected meat sauce stops being a meat sauce and rather loses every possibility to become him/it." Select with care the piece of meat - neither thin neither fat - that it is at the base of the recipe, it puts on him/it in the saucepan guarding at first the rosolatura and then smearing the first layer of preserve. Others follow of it "to scientific intervals", they enter therefore in game the fire and the spoon: slow the first one, experienced the second, sensitive to understand the moment in which to intervene. And finally here is the ready smoking tureen on the table and the meat sauce, red and aromatic, that "it pulsates in the macaronis as the blood in the veins."
At the base of it, you/he/she is seen him/it, there is an ingredient that deserves a discourse to itself, the tomato. Vivid, vitaminic, available to unite to thousand other tastes, it comes spontaneous to wonder as it was possible to do to of it less for so many centuries. The use of the tomato is in fact relatively recent: it came in Europe and therefore in Italy from Peru or from Mexico after the discovery of America and for two centuries it was ignored from the food point of view. Be found him/it quoted for the first time in 1743 in a song of carnival, but only among the end of the century XVIII and the beginning of the XIX it became common to a lot of recipes and the cultivation it spread up to become one of the most important of Campania.
To Naples - you/he/she has been said - the tomato is "a half religion"; certainly, the quality is sublime and the frequent use. To Naples the industry conserviera that has brought all over the world the famous ones has risen "bald" and the "assembled" of tomato. Many are then the home methods to preserve him/it, from the tomatoes in bottle, done asunder or past to be always ready to the various uses, to the famous one "preserve" in which the tomato comes stracotto up to become a dark and velvety cream.
Fresh and juicy tomatoes abandon him on the pizza because their taste unites him in stupendous accord to that of the mozzarella and of the anchovies. The pizza, the most famous creation in the whole Neapolitan kitchen, is a more remote invention of the epoch of the tomato, rather it is among the most ancient in absolute. A first type of pizza did him in Roman epoch, and it was a kind of pizza bread of wheat. But the pizza for antonomasia, that is ringing of tomato, sizzling and happy as any other food, it has few more than two hundred years. It became soon popular near the populace, but also near barons and principles: it dominated the receptions of the Borbonis, that were greedy of it, and Ferdinando IV came to make her/it cook in the ovens of Capodimonte, the same of which the precious artistic ceramics went out.
Also the Piedmontese sovereigns they allowed to conquer from this humble southern food: it was for Margherita of Savoia that in 1889 the pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito created the patriotic pizza "tricolor" in which white, red and green were constituted by mozzarella, tomato and basil and that since then it calls note "pizza Margherita." Numerous varieties of pizzas exist: to the four cheeses, to the fruits of sea, to the olives, to the marinara but the presence of the tomato, at least to Naples, it is nearly fixed.
Today, pizza and pizzeria are wherever magic names: to the thick foreign countries they are the insignias of places where it is tried to reconstruct the idea or the illusion, picturesque and oleografica, of distant Italy.
Since everybody likes the pizza, it is economic, he/she fills the stomach and "it resolves" in short a lot of occasions, she easily does also often him in the house. It is good and happy, certain, but it won't be never as that of the big firewood oven, created by the pizzaiolo that, with skilled hand, it flattens the disk of pasta, thinner to the center that to the edges, and with rapid gestures it scatters you the already prepared ingredients and it pours you the oil, then with a big dry hit it puts her/it on the shovel and it makes her/it slip in the oven to the correct heat, turning her/it because all is cooked in way uniform until, with another hit, it takes back her/it with the shovel and it finally sets her/it on the dish of the fortunate one that, even before to eat her/it, you/he/she can taste with the eyes of it all the warm, exuberant beauty. The Neapolitan, if it is a true expert, the fold in four "to book" and if he/she eats her/it with the hands.
Other glories of the Neapolitan kitchen that are kitchen halves earths (pasta, vegetables, latticini) and halves sea (fish, shellfishes, molluscs), are the base dishes of the magnificent vegetables of the sour one they live, as the parmigiana of eggplants or the full peppers. Substantial, true "flat strong", they are numerous and always excellent. Among the recipes of fish, the excel "octopuses to the luciana", so said from the popular neighborhood of Saint Lucy in which you/they were born, cooked with spicy peperoncino and the inevitable tomato. Among the sumptuous merchandise of the ostricaro, character typical of the road and of the "teatrino" Neapolitan, they are the "veracious clams" to deserve the palm: fleshy and perfumed damage place to a delicious soup and they season "macaronis" and "vermicelli."
The variety of the Neapolitan alimentary pastas is such that it would justify a chapter apart. Pasta has not been invented in Naples, but certain here you/he/she has been brought to the maximum degrees of perfection and here, for the precision to Gragnano, to alone few kilometers from the chief town, the way is found to desiccate her/it and to preserve her/it, giving origin so to the industrial production of the Italian food that is. Since the first subject is the hard wheat, very difficult to mix and to work, the Neapolitans are entrusted with the maximum trust to their industrial pastas and they don't hold at all - as in other regions - that the pasta to be good must have done in the house. In reality the pasta in Naples is extraordinary both for the quality and for the perfection of the cooking, that must justly be "to the tooth", and of the seasoning. From the classical one "pummarola" to the simple one "garlic and uoglio" up to the whole review of the juices with accompaniment of vegetables or fruits of sea and to the apotheosis of the meat sauce, southern creativeness gives here a radiant test of itself.
Important presence of the Neapolitan kitchen and bell are the latticinis. Provoloni, scamorze, caciocavalli, ricottas often appear on the table and they enter the preparation of many dishes, but the queen of the cheeses is her/it "mozzarella", the coolness, sweet, tender product to spun pasta of the milk of bufala. The production is assembled especially in the zone of Aversa, Battipaglia, Capua, Eboli, Sessa Aurunca: whoever happens from these parts will find something that will stay engraved in his/her gustatory memory! A variety of mozzarella they are the "burrielli", tid bit type more dessert preserved in terracotta amphoras and absorbed in the milk. Unfortunately the true mozzarella of bufala is by now rare, therefore it is often used bovine milk: the result calls "fiordilatte", less rich in the taste.
It exists then in the Neapolitan gastronomy a series of dishes that you/they go up again to the tradition of court or to that real "school", of French inspiration, that was especially pursued by a group of noble families in the eight hundred. They created so recipes in which French component refined persons and ingredients and customs were typically met Neapolitan. They came out from there very elaborate and spectacular inventions: the landlords entrusted the regal one and the wrapping of their lunches to experienced cooks that became famous. Among their preparations the most famous is the "sartù", a base timballo of full rice of fegatini of chicken, sausages, polpettine of meat, mozzarella, peas and seasoned with meat sauce, or, in the version "in white" with bechamel. Another triumphal timballo is that of macaronis to the meat sauce.
Certainly these elaborate and precious creations remained distant from the simple kitchen of the people, that continued nevertheless to reap successes in the alleys and in the trattorioles on the sea as in the restaurants and in the hotels of luxury. The Neapolitan, scugnizzo or baron, love the same macaronis with her "pummarola 'n cup" or with the clams, even eaten to the open one with the sun that filters from a vine-trellis and the sight of the very famous gulf in the eyes.
The most classical sweets in Naples are those that you/they ate once: ice creams, "babà", spumoni, "sfogliatelle", "set them" and the magnificent one "pastiera", the dessert of the time that goes from the Epiphany to Easter, with the fresh ricotta and the flowers of orange tree, the cinnamon and the candied ones.
The kitchen in Naples is made above all of "external", of show, it is experience to share with someone whom the part of the public does. You give "you fry and he/she eats", the many products of the local rosticceria, to the launchings "pastimes" that you/they are offered in the kiosks or on the stands and that they are consumed in whatever moment of the day (they are fruits of sea, pizzette, tartine, pancakes). Naples shows as always to whom wants to see her/it his millennial, legendary imagination.
