Hello

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans have had as much attention as they deserve, at least until anything changes. So we’re back to normal service here, with a roundup of nibbles I happened to graze upon this past week.

Cheesy

It is very hard to know what to make of the story that the Consorzio del Parmigiano-Reggiano had entered into a “strategic partnership” with the New York Jets, an American football team, but Jaya Saxena, writing at Slate has done her best to make sense of it all. At base, of course, the Consortium is doing what it exists to do, protect the livelihoods of its cheese-making members by trying to show Americans that not all parmesan is Parmigiano-Reggiano.

There are the usual points about the fine hard, salty cheeses made in Wisconsin, originally by Italian immigrants. Maybe those producers should band together to brand and promote their own grana. And there’s the obligatory reference to the fact that in both Wisconsin and Reggio-Emilia the process of making the cheese has changed over the years, something Zachary Nowak explained in an episode of Eat This Podcast in 2015.

Will the Consortium get any boost from the Jets or, indeed, from its more nebulous agreement with the United Talent Agency to promote its celebrity status? That’s a tough one. As Saxena writes:

The problem that Parmigiano-Reggiano faces is one of value; it wants American consumers not just to understand that its product is a specific cheese made in a specific way in a specific place, but to value those specificities above others.

My suspicion is that the people who are willing to pay for the real thing already do so, those who are considering it might give Wisconsin grana a try, and those who currently use the pre-ground stuff in a tub will just keep doing so, Jets or no Jets.

Right

It’s a wonder actually that Parmigiano-Reggiano is teaming up with an American football team when in some quarters that might be seen as insufficiently Italian. Jaya Saxena’s piece does, of course, quote Alberto Grandi, the professor who insists that Italian cuisine does not exist, despite UNESCO’s designation of Italian cuisine — all of it — as part of the world’s “intangible cultural heritage”. The designation, however, is a great comfort and joy to the current government, members of which have long championed a blinkered, isolationist gastronationalism as a way of shoring up their fragile identity.

Andrea Carlo, writing in Politico, summarises the unfortunate undercurrents of the Italian right’s love affair with food, which insists that Italian food be protected from foreign contamination and that its recipes remain pure.

“At the crux of this gastronationalism,” Carlo writes, “lies the willful disregard of two fundamental truths: First, foreign influence has contributed mightily to what Italian cuisine is today; and second, what is considered to be ‘Italian cuisine’ is neither as old nor as set in stone as gastronationalists would like to admit.”

The article then proceeds to give plenty of examples of both the foreign contamination and the recent birth of so many classic Italian dishes. Familiar enough, but also good to be reminded.

Za’atar

Italy is by no means the only country embracing gastronationalism. From JSTOR comes a long article on Origanum syriacum, “best known as the central ingredient in the spice mix that has come to represent Palestinian cuisine worldwide”.

The article showed me how extremely ignorant I am on the subject. See, I thought of za’atar as the spice mix itself, in which the plant za’atar (which may be Origanum syriacum some of the time) is but one ingredient. So I’m going to refrain from further comment, and just say that the piece is well worth your time.

Gourmet

What a treat. When Condé Nast closed Gourmet magazine in 2009, they forgot to protect the trademark. So a group of food writers recently relaunched the title as a worker-owned co-operative that hopes to publish a newsletter at least twice a week. I have not yet signed up — it’s a bit too groovy and local for my taste — but I am heartened that it is not on Substack.

Take care

p.s. I wonder what Meloni et al. would make of the little stunt the Consortium pulled in December 2023. Parmigiano Reggiano Challenges Paneer in an Exclusive Dinner at the Junoon Michelin-starred Restaurant. Could you actually find two cheeses more different in all ways than parmesan and paneer? How about a “Tandoori panzanella”? I'd try one, gastronationalism be damned. I wonder, too, why we don't hear more about the Sikhs who saved Parmigiano-Reggiano.