Kitchen Gardeners International: Interview with food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins
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KGI: In the intro to your book, you describe the essence of Southern Italian cuisine as the simplicity of “natural ingredients” made using “straightforward, uncomplicated techniques.” What are a few of the ingredients and flavors that define the region for you and what makes them different from their counterparts available elsewhere?
NHJ: The natural ingredients I'm thinking of are the products of Southern Italian fields and gardens, the vegetables and fruits especially, that have such extraordinary depths of flavor, quite unlike those available elsewhere in the world. I put this down primarily to geography--also climate to a certain extent. Mild rainy winters and hot dry summers seem to be ideal for vegetable gardening. But the volcanic geography of much of the south--I think especially of the areas around Etna in Sicily and Vesuvius in Campania, but also, lesser known, the Monte Vulture in Basilicata. In Campania they call the soil arapilla and it means specifically soil that evolves from volcanic ash. In some places it goes down as much as three meters and it is peculiarly rich in minerals. That to me is one source of the flavor of tomatoes from the slopes of Vesuvius or the great array of citrus from around Etna, not to mention the wine grapes from all three regions. Puglia's geography is not volcanic but it represents another advantage--a porous limestone karst that soaks up rainwater and acts as a giant sponge beneath the fields of Puglia, where a large portion of Europe's organic vegetables are raised. Obviously everywhere in the world there are unique combinations of geography and climate that lead to the production of certain vegetables, but I think there are few places where such high quality is so consistent around the year and across the board as it is in the south of Italy.
KGI: What other items are essential to the Southern Italian pantry?
NHJ: The other key ingredient that helps so much is olive oil, and I'm speaking strictly of extra-virgin olive oil which, like most Southern Italian cooks, I use for both cooking and garnishing--drizzling is the food writerly term. I realize it's expensive but it's no more expensive than a nice bottle of wine and it goes SO MUCH farther. Mind you, I don't use fancy estate-bottled oils for sauteing anymore than I use a fine Chateauneuf du Pape for wine sauces. But there are plenty of well-priced extra-virgin olive oils available in markets, many of them, admittedly, not from Italy. I'd look for a good Greek or Spanish or Tunisian oil for a general all-purpose cooking oil and save a lushly flavored oil from the south (Puglia makes some wonderful oils and so does Sicily) for garnishing salads or steamed vegetables or spooning over a grilled steak.
KGI: What other advice or techniques do you share with people looking to cook and eat more like the Italians?
NHJ: Spend more time shopping for and, if possible, growing your ingredients and less time in the kitchen. That's the Italian, indeed the Mediterranean, way. With fine, naturally ripened ingredients, you don't need much in the way of technique--slice a tomato, peel a peach, drop some beans into boiling water, add a little piece of grilled meat or fish, and you're done with the cooking and you have a fine meal in front of you.
KGI: Tell us a bit about the state of gardening in your part of Tuscany.
NHJ: Most of the people in my village are subsistence farmers and they really rely on their vegetable gardens, their orte (from which we get the word horticulture), to see them through the year. What surprises me, however, is that they are able to keep vegetables growing pretty much right the year around. And that suggests to me that there's a lot more we could be doing here in this country to extend the season for fresh crops. I remember that Eliot Coleman said that the amount of light plants get is probably more important than the temperature of the air, and that as long as you can keep the ground from freezing, there are loads of things that could be grown through the winter with minimal energy inputs. Florence, after all, is on the same latitude as Portland, Maine, incredible as that may seem--just look at a globe or an atlas and you'll see that Florence, Italy, and Portland, Maine, get the same amount of light right the year round.
KGI: So, Tuscany and Maine have similar amounts of light. Does that mean that gardeners there are working with the same planting calendar as their Maine counterparts?
NHJ: In Tuscany, the first things that go in the ground, right around Christmas, are garlic and fava beans, what we used to call broad beans. And then there's a spell during which nothing much gets planted and nothing much grows. But the cabbage family vegetables are mostly still standing in the garden. One of the most important greens is what's called in Italian cavolo nero, black cabbage, but is actually a particularly delicious and attractive type of kale. You sometimes see it sold here as lacinato kale or Tuscan kale but I think most of our farmers don't realize that its flavor, like that of many brassicas, is actually improved by a light frost. It's not a crop to harvest in August, as so many people do, but rather in November--just like your Brussels sprouts that are so much sweeter for a touch of frost. And then, by March, they're planting potatoes, always when the March moon is dark. And then, as the sun strengthens and the wheat starts to green, all the usual vegetables start to go in.
KGI: We, of course, want to hear more about tomatoes which for many people are synonymous with Italian cuisine.
NHJ: Like many rural families throughout Italy, my neighbors really rely on tomatoes to brighten up the winter diet. They put up hundreds of jars and bottles of tomato products every late summer when the crop is ready. It's a three-day affair and everyone pitches in. The tomatoes are canned whole, or they're turned into a thick sauce called la pomarola that might be flavored with fresh basil or a bit of garlic but is basically just a reduced puree of tomatoes. It's hard to imagine what life must have been like, what the table must have been like, in these remote communities before tomatoes became a part of everyone's garden. Dried beans, garlic and onions, squashes, pumpkins, and potatoes, can be wholesome but day after day it's kind of a diet of unmitigated stodge without tomatoes.
KGI: How have things changed in your village in the years you’ve lived there?
NHJ: There was a time when, dining at my neighbor's house, you didn't expect to eat anything they hadn't raised themselves, including the chickens, rabbits, ducks, and pigs--they made their own prosciutto and sausages. Nowadays, that has changed a lot, partly because of television and advertising, partly because Maura, the young wife who's more and more in charge, works in town three days a week and has access to and money to pay for store-bought fare. Sometimes she even serves fish, which would have been absolutely unheard of when her mother-in-law was running the kitchen. And French fries--once when I was over there for Sunday lunch, she was serving the little girls frozen French fries that she had thawed and then fried again (pretty good, too, with that double frying). She served them with what she called salsa all'americana which was your basic ketchup. The little girls loved the whole experience and I, of course, being a purist and a puritan, was appalled. I'm fascinated, though, by this family. It has been a revealing and rewarding experience to have observed them, and enjoyed gardening and cooking and dining with them, over 35 odd years. To me they seem to have gone straight from the 18th century to the 21st century without so much as batting an eye, taking everything in their stride and relishing it all.
Featured recipes from Cucina del Sole:
Pugliese pepper relish
Macaroni from the Island of Ischia
Southern Italian mountain minestrone
Photos of Palermo's farmer's market by Gabrilu
Posted by KGI on September 20, 2007 11:35 AM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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