Articles by: A.b.

Italy’s cuisine is vast and multifarious. Sometimes driving a few miles even in the same region can bring your tasting buds to experience an array of flavors completely different from what you have just left behind. Moreover, food is inextricably intertwined with other aspects of Italian life, such as love, family, and friends. With such a complex universe to take in, perspective students of Italian cuisine need a well-rounded training, not just tutorials of techniques. The Total Immersion experience designed by Tuscan Chef Cesare Casella, Dean of Italian Studies at The International Culinary Center in Soho, is intended to do just that.

Dorothy Cann Hamilton in 2007, the same woman who twenty years earlier had created The French Culinary Institute, launched the The Italian Culinary Academy. With a similar visionary intuition she thought it was time to give birth to an Academy that celebrated Italian culture and food. To direct the prestigious institution she called Casella who knew that at the sister-school, the French Culinary Institute, the title of Dean had been given to master Chefs Jacques Torres, Jacque Pepins, Alain Sailhac. “I realized what an amazing opportunity I had, “ he confessed. The Tuscan Chef was given carte blanche and after two years of planning, he inaugurated this special piece of Italy in the heart of Soho.
 

Totally immersed in Italian culture, learning to speak and comprehend the language, students enrolled in the intense course have available the campus in New York City and a prestigious cooking school in Parma, Italy. “We don’t simply teach techniques: our students study history, geography, and culture,” said a proud Casella. Ten weeks of intensive cooking classes are spent in the States. Afterwards the students move to the bel paese for nine weeks at ALMA, the International School of Italian Cuisine led by Gualtiero Marchesi. Before returning to the U.S. for final exams and graduation, they spend nine more weeks in a specific region getting a real-life experience in a restaurant.

“Of course in 28 weeks you can’t learn everything,” added Casella, “but once graduated our students will certainly understand the difference between authentic ingredients and imitations.” “The course in Parma is meant, in fact, to prepare students who will then come back to the United States,” explained the Tuscan Chef. “This is an investment for us,” says the Executive Director of the North American branch of the Italian Trade Commission, Aniello Musella. “We are expecting these students to become the future Michael White or Mario Batali.”  The President of the Italian Trade Commission, in fact, believes that the hope is that future generations of Chefs are being created at the The Italian Culinary Academy. 

And for this reason, this year, Italian Trade Commission  donated two Scholarships worth a total of $40,000 to two valuable students enrolled in The Italian Culinary Experience in 2010. Cameron Bryant and Terri Mouzon were the selected recipients. During a dinner at the Italian Culinary Academy, Bryant, a native of Mississipi, spoke about his experience working at La salumeria as the trigger for his passion for Italian products and influencing his desire to seek an Italian culinary education at The Italian Culinary Academy. A New Jersey native, Mouzon had always sought inspiration from Italian culinary television personalities and from a lifelong love of Italian cuisine. Both award recipients look forward to opening their own Italian-influenced restaurants in the future. Deputy Consul Laura Aghilarre who attended the award ceremony, stressed how with this scholarship comes great responsibility because “the recipients are now ambassadors and witnesses of Italian cuture."

The reception featured a menu which included authentic Italian ingredients, prepared by the students of The Italian Culinary Academy.

The topic doesn't need any introduction, Prince William and Kate Middleton were bonded in Holy Matrimony this morning in Westminster Abbey and are now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Traditional TV was the most popular channel for following the event, but it is undeniable that the first royal wedding of the social network era was hot stuff on Facebook and Twitter.
 

It was mentioned 67 times a second on Twitter and 74 times a second on Facebook. More than a million people posted status updates about the wedding on the latter. Numbers don't lie, the wedding chatter surpassed that for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.  Furthermore, despite the time difference, almost two million Americans were part of the social-network discussion.
 

However on Facebook, reactions to the event were as heterogenous as the people populating it. Diana Hlaic, 35, from Rome, office clerk with a past in event planning, was following a streaming live video broadcast on the internet while cross-commenting with girlfriends on Facebook both in Italy and the United States. “I watched it because I was fond of Princess Diana, an unparalleled kind and compassionate Royal Family member; I wanted to see her reflected in her son's eyes,” she admitted. She continued explaining how conversely she has a limited interest for the algid Queen Elizabeth. “To see her witnessing -probably in horror- her grandson marrying a commoner, galvanized my sense of satisfaction on multiple levels.”
 

Andrea Lodovichetti, 35, filmmaker from Fano, was not as enthusiastic. “I don’t want to know about the color of the bride’s underwear in a 6 hours live broadcast. Not now.  It is question of respect.” He spoke of what he believes should be topics of media attention: Libya, the North African unrest, the nuclear crisis, and if you are in Italy pressing domestic questions such as increasing unemployment rate, tax evasion, and the unsteady government. “There is no doubt that it was an historic event and I respect that somebody felt really excited about it, but I can't accept that every media outlet focused all day on the British Royal Family.” “By the way: I didn’t like Kate’s wedding gown,” he didn't miss to mention.
 
Massimiliano Meoni, 39, stylist and blogger from Pistoia, said he felt the $68 million price tag for the event was "inappropriate" in a moment of local and global economical austerity. "Moreover," he noted "not far from all this parade of silly hats and impeccable uniforms, there are people who are suffering, who are in situation of political unrest, who are literally being bombed; this level of frivolousness is unacceptable."

But for Florentine Olivia Lentucci,  now an adopted Newyorker, 30, advertising manager in a culinary magazine, this morning ceremony was not such a nefarious affair. “I followed the wedding because I wanted to give energy to a positive event. Media seems to have a passion for disasters and tragedies, it felt truly nice to witness an uplifting story.” “Maybe I am too romantic,” she smiled. “And yes, the dress was glorious!”

The 150th anniversary of Italy’s unification is approaching quickly and the celebratory events throughout the United States are plentiful.  Among the events organized under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Italy is the show The Heirs of Canaletto: Fabio Mauroner and Emanuele Brugnoli in Venice, 1905-1940.  The exhibit, wanted by the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute, opens to the public on March 10 at the Embassy of Italy in Washington and will remain on display until April 18.  The show takes place in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition Canaletto and His Rivals at the National Gallery of Art (February 20 through May 30) and is also part of La Dolce DC, the citywide celebration of Italian culture.

The thirty-five prints by Fabio Mauroner (Udine, 1884-Venice, 1948) and Emanuele Brugnoli (Bologna, 1859-Venice, 1944), which depict the city of Venice, come from private collectors and reinforce the idea that Venetian view painting tradition has been long and prolific. The first great Venetian vedutista was Luca Carlevarijs in the 17th century (Udine, 1663-1730 Venice), who realized the importance of immortalizing the grandeur of the lagoon city on canvas.  The apogee of vedutismo, however, comes in the following century with Giovanni Antonio Canal, better knows as Canaletto. However both Mauroner and Brugnoli, who were not of Venetian birth but moved there and devoted most of their careers to celebrate La Serenissima, confirm the endurance of the Venetian view painting tradition.

Fabio Mauroner was born in Udine in 1884 and moved to Venice in 1905. He depicted the religious feasts, the regattas, but also the Venice he had come to know as a resident, the calles, the back alleys, the hidden courtyards that foreigners often overlooked.  Mauroner first encountered etching in an exhibition of the Irishman Edward M. Synge in Rome in 1904. Subsequently, Mauroner shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani in Venice, where he also studied printmaking with Synge. Over the next thirty years, Mauroner executed approximately one hundred and thirty prints before retiring from etching to become a scholar of Venetian Renaissance and Baroque art. Mauroner was aware of the great eighteenth-century tradition of Venetian vedute, seen in the works of Canaletto, Guardi, Marieschi and others.

Some of Mauroner’s prints represent a continuation of their approach, depicting major monuments of Venetian history, including views of Piazza San Marco, the Piazzetta, the Ducal Palace and the magnificent facades along the Grand Canal. Other prints are closer to the approach of James McNeill Whistler and Ernest David Roth, capturing characteristic aspects of more intimate and typical Venetian cityscapes. In contrast, however, Fabio Mauroner also chose to represent events and activities that were quintessentially Venetian, including benedictions in the Basilica of San Marco, shopping in the Rialto, regattas on the Grand Canal, and religious processions over the votive bridges annually erected on important feast days.

One of Mauroner’s close friends in Venice was Emanuele Brugnoli, an instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, and the founder of its school of etching. Brugnoli was born in Bologna in 1859, moved to Venice in 1880, and began teaching at the Academy in 1912. Brugnoli was similar to Mauroner in representing the experience of Venetian life in his era, but he offered a more panoramic view of the energy of the populace in the squares and on the canals. His large scale images, Campo Santa Margherita (1920) and Campo Santa Maria Formosa teem with the everyday activities of working class Venetians.

Mauroner and Brugnoli differed from foreign artists, such as the distinguished American expatriate etchers Whistler, Roth, and John Taylor Arms who visited the city to record Venice as a series of picturesque views but were indifferent to the day-to-day lives of the Venetians. In Mauroner and Brugnoli’s work, images of the working class squares of Campo Santa Margarita, Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio, and Campo San Giovanni in Bragora spring to life as outposts of Venetian daily experience, whether at the fish and flea markets or the puppet shows during Carnevale.

Today Mauroner and Brugnoli are well known in Italy but not in America, however their production displays a dedication to craft equal to that of their better known foreign counterparts while representing a uniquely local approach to Venetian imagery.  This exhibition is a unique opportunity for the American public to see their work.  This is the first show devoted to Mauroner in the United States in over seventy years, and the first to include the works of Brugnoli in Washington.  

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The show, organized by the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute was  also made possible by the Dickinson College  (Carlisle, Pennsylvania), which allowed the etchings by Fabio Mauroner and Emanuele Brugnoli to be exhibited at the Embassy of Italy. Curator of the exhibit, and author of the brochure, is Dr. Eric Denker.  Tom Whitmore and Franco and Maria Ferrari collaborated on the research efforts.

To view this exhibition, which is by appointment only, please email [email protected].

Date: March 1o, 2011 - Monday, April 18, 2011

Time: 10am - 12pm and 2pm - 4pm /Mon - Fri

Venue: Auditorium of the Embassy of Italy, 3000 Whitehaven Street NW, Washington, DC 20008

Midtown, Ristorante Luna Piena, l'Ente Nazionale per il Turismo porta a New York gli esperti della Dieta Mediterranea. Ed è il Direttore dell' ENIT Nord'America, Riccardo Strano, a parlarci della Dieta Mediterranea in chiave turistico-gastronomica. “Non è solo un regime alimentare sano ma può essere alla base di un viaggiare nuovo, intelligente, alla ricerca di quei prodotti tipici spesso difficilmente esportabili”.
 

Un appuntamento importante questo organizzato a New York, sopratutto dopo che il 16 Novembre la Dieta Mediterranea è entrata a far parte dei Patrimoni Immateriali dell'Umanità dell'UNESCO. “Si tratta di un progetto coordinato di intervento sugli Stati Uniti, finanziato dal Ministero dell'Agricoltura e da Federsanità Anci”, ci dice Guglielmo Trovato dell'Istituto di Medicina Interna e Terapia Medica dell'Università di Catania, “serve a valorizzare la ricerca che già esiste e ad informare sugli studi in corso sia italiani che americani”.
 
E gli Stati Uniti hanno parecchio a che fare con il modello nutrizionale ispirato alle tradizioni alimentari dei paesi Europei del bacino del mediterraneo. All'origine del nome dieta mediterranea ci sono, infatti, ricercatori stelle e strisce. Già nel 1948 uno studio della Rockefeller Foundation stabilì che le abitudini alimentari di alcuni paese dell'Europa Mediterranea erano efficaci per prevenire le malattie cardiovascolari. Gli studi individuavano una correlazione positiva tra dieta mediterranea e minore incidenza di alcune patologie croniche. “Una dieta equilibrata uno stile di vita salutare vuol dire meno diabete, meno obesità e meno malattie neurodegenerative, insomma una qualità della vita sostanzialmente migliore” continua Enzo Chilelli, Direttore Generale di Federsanità Anci.
 
E sicuramente un ruolo chiave nel portare alla ribalta la dieta mediterranea l'hanno giocata gli immigrati italo-americani negli Stati Uniti che hanno tentato di portare le loro abitudini alimentari nel nuovo mondo. Vito Teti ne Il colore del cibo: geografia, mito e realtà dell'alimentazione mediterranea scrive che “negli anni Cinquanta da un precedente rifiuto e disprezzo per l'alimentazione degli emigrati considerata carente ed insufficiente si passa ad un apprezzamento della cucina italiana”. Un mutamento di considerazione che è profondamente collegato, spiega Teti, ad un più generale miglioramento dell'immagine degli Italo-Americani in America.
 
Ma cosa significa dieta Mediterranea esattamente? Significa prodotti prevalentemente di origine vegetale, poca carne rossa, un po' di carne bianca, un po' più di pesce, pochi latticini, e poco buon vino “Qualità degli alimenti certificata da una normativa affidabile, qualità di conservazione, produzione e commercializzazione” spiega Guglielmo Trovato. La normativa Europea in particolare quella Italiana sull' agroalimetare è quanto di più elevato ci sia rispetto alla filiera del prodotto, ci dice Chilelli.
 
Dieta Mediterranea quindi come paradigma alimentare, culturale e turistico. A conferma di ciò la serata è proseguita con un excursus enogastronomico attraverso i prodotti ed i piatti tipici della penisola. Dagli scialatielli con le fave, alle orecchiette con cime di rapa, passando per i petti di pollo palermitani, la sogliola eoliana, tutto annaffiato da Prosecco di Zagara di Mandarino Aglianico del Vulture, e Chardonnay di Puglia.