THE GASTRONOMY OF THE ROMAN HILLS

The ancient Latin tribes that populated what is now the Latium Region - dotted today with the towns of the Alban Hills - handed down to us, together with their primitive culture, some of Italy’s tastiest and most imaginative recipes. At first their cookery was based on mutton and cheese, the products of the flocks. Later, when they settled down and started farming, they added vegetables, cereal grains, olive oil and wine. These ingredients were happily combined in the nascent Latin cuisine, from which the modern Mediterranean Diet draws its inspiration. It’s a diet that’s still followed today in both the fanciest restaurants and the most modest eateries that flourish in the Alban Hills. Stories about these places dedicated to the pleasures of the table abound in chronicles written in the distant past or more recently, when it had become fashionable for Roman families to spend their Sundays out in the country, driving up to the Hills in their carriages or packed in on the double-decker Stefer tram (known as the “Imperial”). Goethe, for instance, vacationing in Castel Gandolfo at the Jesuit Villa in the late 18th century, enamored unrequited by the beautiful Maddalena Riggi, would drown his ardor in food and good wine, joined by his friends Angelica Kauffmann, the Austrian painter Anton von Maron and the etcher Giovanni Volpato. Among the many 18th- and 19th-century artists, scholars and writers who spent time at Carlo Torlonia’s villa “Delizia Carolina” in Castel Gandolfo were Winckelmann, Gregorovius, Piranesi, Byron, Stendhal and the Congo explorer Pietro Savorgnan di Brazzà, for whom Brazzaville was named. On a fine autumn day in 1831, Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, the great Roman-dialect poet, traveled up to Castel Gandolfo with his friend “Rimonno” to partake of the good food and the sparkling wine. He described the outing in a sonnet titled Er viaggiatore; in one stanza, he declared that “chi nun vede sta parte de monno / non sa nemmanco ppe cosa è nato” (anyone who hasn’t seen this part of the world has no idea why he was born). The 19th-century writer and statesman Massimo D’Azeglio, guest of the Albenzi family in the same town, would go off to nearby Marino, Albano, Ariccia and Genzano to hunt for the best taverns. The famous comic stage and screen actor Ettore Petrolini, who flourished in the years before World War II, preferred the famous inn Al Grottino Marroni to his own lovely Villa Cleofe, likewise in Castel Gandolfo. When Flavia, the meek owner, saw him coming, her hair would turn white. Though Petrolini adored her for her legendary cuisine, he did not spare her from his diabolical practical jokes. Castel Gandolfo is also the town where the popes built their summer palace, and we’d love to have a peek at the “holy kitchens.” The poet Belli did so in his day, and devoted two of his biting sonnets to them: La cucina der Papa and La cantina der Papa. The sumptuous feasts of the Renaissance popes fueled popular legends as well as Belli’s satirical rhymes, but today the pope’s table is much more modest than one might think. The nuns who do his cooking simply follow the strict instruction of the Vatican’s nutrition specialist. The cuisine of the monasteries and convents is much less spartan. Putting aside at last their medieval fasts, the monks and nuns have started to follow with some success the suggestions of St. Benedict, the wise prior who advised his friars, for the sake of a healthy and holy life, to adopt a monastic rule on “the measure of food” (it called for a pitcher of wine on the table). As a result, from Sister Germana’s excellent recipes to the Guide to the “cooking religious houses,” it’s one delicious meal after the other. But let’s have a look at the recipes that delight weekday commuters from these hills on Sundays. Tired of paper-bag lunches brought from home to work, or of frozen and precooked meals in the company cafeteria, they look forward to the Sunday banquet. Many would be willing to skip the classical antipasto and dig right into the heaping first course, but are waylaid by tasty appetizers: bruschetta (toasted bread with various spreads), morsels of fried fish and vegetables, cold cuts and cheeses. Next comes stracciatella soup (seconds are not in order), then the classical fettuccine with chicken giblets. After the weekday abstinence, though, some people do not disdain alternatives such as penne all’arrabbiata, spaghetti dressed with garlic, olive oil and chili pepper, or with Roman pecorino cheese and pepper, bucatini all’amatriciana or alla carbonara, linguine with tuna sauce, rigatoni with veal or lamb intestines, or with the sauce from an oxtail ragout, pasta with ricotta. To sate appetites so long repressed, other first courses are likewise welcomed: minestrone, pasta-and-bean soup, pasta with potatoes, chickpeas or lentils, pasta with broccoli and skate-fish, quadrucci and peas, potato gnocchi, polenta with spareribs, risotto (if any is left over, it will be recycled to make supplì, fried rice balls). A few years ago, spelt and vegetable soup - the Latin tribes’ old standard - came back in fashion. For entrees, a good start will be a Romanstyle platter of fried codfish, zucchini blossoms, brains and artichokes. Next will come one or another of these dishes: tiny eels and peas, Roman-style tripe, veal sweetbreads, oxtail ragout, grilled or cacciatora lamb, lamb chops, lamb giblets with artichokes, chicken with bell peppers, grilled fegatelli (chunks of pork liver wrapped in belly fat and bay leaves). As to side dishes: new potatoes, mixed salad greens, chicory tips with anchovies, cardoons, artichokes alla romana or Jewish-style, eggplant with mushrooms, beans with pork rind, fava beans with pork cheek, peas with prosciutto, lentils with cotechino (at New Year’s). For dessert: castagnaccio (chestnut pudding), mostaccioli (hard cookies made with grape must, raisins and candied fruit), maritozzi (the original recipe for this pastry anticipated the Milanese panettone), pies, buns, sweet fava beans and tozzetti cookies. For the wines, the locals usually follow Horace’s advice; he recommended Alban wine, which he thought equal to the precious Falerno. But today people can choose from a whole series of DOC wines made in the Roman Hills district: Cesanese, Colli Albani e Lanuvini, Frascati, Marino, Montecompatri, Velletri, Zagarolo, and other specialties from nearby Aprilia, such as Merlot, Sangiovese and Trebbiano. Naturally without slighting the fine wines of other regions.