The Cabinet of Curiosities | Issue 02
Bari's midnight snacks, Bologna's real tortellini & Gorgonzola "Manicomio"
Welcome back to The Cabinet of Curiosities my fellow food lovers! To refresh your memory, cabinets of curiosities, or wunderkammers, were small collections of extraordinary objects created during the Renaissance. This is our very own Cabinet of Curiosities, dedicated to all the wonders and peculiarities of Italian food culture.
In this monthly newsletter, you can expect to find 3 pieces by alternating La Panza Piena contributors. Voices and people that you’ll meet gradually, through their narrations, stories on forgotten recipes, hidden gems, deep-dives into unique products and distinctive global perspectives on Italian food culture.
I’m so pleased to introduce you to three more contributors, whose stories are so fascinating and diverse. Your feedback from the first issue of The Cabinet of Curiosities was greatly motivating, so keep it coming! Beyond being filled to the brim with knowledge, each newsletter is full of tips on where to eat, shop or drink, so we’ve made a map for you to save and keep track of all the precious information.
- Carlotta Panza, founder of La Panza Piena
Bari’s Midnight Cornetterie
by Benedetta Mangini: twenty-something, lover of all cuisines - yet Italian foodie at heart
Can you imagine a better way to end a night out than a trip to a pastry shop?
Back in my teenage years of crazy outings in Bari, Puglia, I would often spend entire evenings in some sketchy bars or pubs that served alcohol to my underage self and friends. By midnight I would be bored and tipsy, craving something sweet. After grabbing my friends, I would announce “let’s go get a cornetto!”. With that, the tipsy fellowship would embark on the car-less search for one of Bari’s beloved meeting spots: a night-time pastry shop.
As we tended to hang out in Bari’s outskirts, our go-to cornetteria was Di Stasi, an iconic destination for the barese night outers since the 1970s. Tens of us would squash in front of the shop’s window which encased a great deal of crunchy aragostine, buttery cornetti, cream-filled krapfen and sugary mezzetonde. After having selected my preferred pastry, I would hand the baker a few coins - cornetti probably still cost less than €1 - and dig into the soft dough, spilling warm Chantilly cream and powdered sugar everywhere.
Other times, a friend from the neighbourhood of San Pasquale would object to the cornetteria choice and make us walk to his favourite one, Fanelli. After a long and perilous journey, we would reach the shop and savour the countless pastries on display with glistening eyes. The kind pasticciere knew my friend’s preference by heart, and would hand him a chocolate croissant the very moment he walked through the door. I would go for the pistachio one instead. Here too, I would end up spilling half of the ganache on the floor.
Those warm and succulent pastries marked the perfect ending to our long nights out. Their powdered sugar had magic properties that would restore tipsy teenagers to presentable conditions before the feared home-coming to angry parents, and wish us goodnight under the blue 2AM sky in suburban Bari.
A guide to midnight cornetti shopping:
Cornetteria Di Stasi - I recommend their scrumptious brioche which can be filled with a variety of spreads, or the buttery chocolate croissants.
Pasticceria Fanelli - I love their croissants, however if you’re feeling fancy go for the cream or chocolate krapfen - be sure to arrive with some dessert space in your stomach, or a partner to share it with!
According to my friends from other neighborhoods, you should try:
Cornetteria Voglia di Dolce - Cornetteria Da Zio Mimmo - Cornettaro Il Baffone
Discovering Bologna's real tortellini
by Wanda Frosi: cheese lover (even better with a glass of wine) & gelato enthusiast
“Not a single child gets lost in the center of Bologna”, sang Lucio Dalla. Yet if I told you that there are excellent discoveries to be made outside the city-center, would you accept getting lost?
Outside the walls of the Grassa, the Fat, as Italians refer to Bologna, one of those old-fashioned osterie fuori porta - osterie outside the door - as they are located far from the center, still exists. Its atmosphere will make you regret every Sunday when, for some useless reason that you can't remember, you skipped lunch at your grandmother's house. All right, it depends on what type of grandmother you had, yet I’m sure everyone who grew up in Italy has figured out which good old cliché I’m referring to.
Trattoria da Vito ticks all the homey and rustic setting boxes: checkered tablecloths, a single glass for both wine and water and a retro cashier desk scattered with papers and a calculator, no POS in sight. The walls are covered with old photographs of great Italian songwriters, from Lucio Dalla to Francesco Guccini (his home is just down the street), all depicted singing and dancing next to the classic flask of house red wine, an intrinsic element of every trattoria in the region.
The menu diligently follows local traditions and is written in pen on a blackboard: nothing is missing from the authentic Bolognese cuisine repertoire. Tortellini, rigorously in capon broth, are a must, as are the turtlén served in cream. Don’t forget: their cousins from Modena are cooked in chicken broth. The tortellini are perfect, traditionally closed around a little finger - so that they resemble Venus’ navel - as an ancient legend states. Portions are obviously generous, the broths rich and umami, and pasta cooked to perfection.
Ordering the cotoletta alla Bolognese as secondo is mandatory: the opulent and flavour-packed dish whose original recipe lies protected within the city’s Chamber of Commerce. It consists of veal rump cooked in butter and covered with prosciutto and plenty of Parmigiano cream. To this day, it remains one of the great classics of home cooking in Emilia, with every family preparing its own version. As my Bolognese dinner partner stated: "this is good, but my mother's is even better!"
Giolito’s Gorgonzola Manicomio
by Sophie Echeverry: curious and hungry Colombian polyglot passionate about tasting & cooking world foods
The first time my palate encountered Giolito’s Manicomio cheese was during a tour and 16-cheese-tasting visit to the small affineurs in Bra, Piemonte. Iconic name, for an iconic product. Each bite of cheese literally makes you go crazy for more. Its creamy texture, a result of mixing mascarpone with chunks of blue umami goodness gorgonzola, makes it the perfect spread for warm bread with a drizzle of honey (don’t tell Giolito I said the last part).
The cheese’s magic lies within the knowledge of the Giolito family, who have been running the business for the past 103 years. Their experience in maturing, combined with their passion for the artisanal production of unique cheeses and their desire to share the significance of cheese culture is what attracts people from all over the globe. Although most of their cheese is from Piedmont - as they valorize sourcing local raw materials - they do offer exceptional products from neighboring countries.
Working exclusively with small producers who make cheese from raw milk is of primary importance to the Giolito family, whose goal is to age the best quality cheese. The second phase is to season and mature the cheese in perfect conditions, as to obtain the best quality products on the market. Their belief is that cheese is a living organism in constant evolution. One of their cellars has classical music playing at all times (how amazing is that!).
Cheese has always played a significant role in my culture and diet, yet I had never perceived it in such a glorified way, as I now know it should be. Cheese is the bio-product of ecosystems, all unique and funky in their own way. Standardizing production to the point of industrializing the results cancels the wonders fermentation of raw milk can create thanks to its environment, journey and story.