I remember, as a university student, celebrating birthdays with my dearest friends from youth — visiting in turn the best and most important Italian restaurants. Only one rule: to have fun. Actually, a second one — the birthday person did not pay.
This wonderful series of gastronomic experiences accompanied us for years. Others took different career paths, eventually. I realised that food, catering, restaurants, and tourism were inseparable parts of my innate curiosity for knowledge. I have never regretted it.
Now, in fact just a few weeks ago, I have "reopened" Il Senso Del Gusto — my former workshop of gastronomic culture, sensory analysis, love for those who produce and those who transform "raw into cooked". Perhaps without overdoing cooking times, in respect of the sacredness of the raw materials available. From this my Manifesto took shape…
Short cooking times. Balanced, thoughtful, beloved cooking. Eating intelligently — that is, consciously. Respecting and observing the rhythms and products that Nature offers us. The Ethics of production takes us from genuine foods to high-quality foods, in the further pursuit of absolute authenticity.
It is all encapsulated in this phrase. Short cooking times, that enhance rather than disrespect our ingredients. Balanced, thoughtful, and beloved cooking — quick cooking, to avoid the temptation of the nearby supermarket. Low-temperature cooking; sauces, for example, prepared within the pasta cooking time. Eating intelligently — that is, consciously — offering ourselves to our prepared food. Without distractions, dedicating all our love to ourselves.
Respecting and observing the rhythms and products that Nature offers us. Contributing to keeping our proud Producer friends alive — often family units, all scaled appropriately. The value of the product helps maintain the value of the Territory. Supporting the existence of the varietal platform that each product must maintain to prevent a spiral of mass self-destruction. To fight viruses and bacteria, frost and floods, earthquakes and other scourges. Without compromise.
The Ethics of production takes us from genuine foods to high-quality foods, in the further pursuit of absolute authenticity. If I may put it that way. Conscious consumers, active participants. Attentive. Curious. Rightly seeking products not artificially transferred from other places, but expressions of healthy genetic improvement — consistent with the climate cycle, the curves of supply and demand, and various industrial and post-industrial revolutions. Why spend a little less on food and much more on supplements? But why?
Quick cooking, eating intelligently, keeping ourselves at our best. It is a paradigm alien to many of us, willing to do anything not to give up strawberries at Christmas or oranges in midsummer. Since the 1960s we Italians have learned the meaning of the Mediterranean Diet from Professor Ancel Keys, a visionary American — but few of us maintain it, or understand its true essence.
In reality, we are not all the same — due to DNA, social class, habits, lifestyle, the ability to cope with stress, with pollution or environmental contaminants, even with ourselves. Therefore I do not want to suggest that the axiom of eating well applies to everyone. My maternal grandmother lived to 101. She lived alone until she was 95, taking care of herself, shopping, cooking.
Eating mindfully means eating intelligently, with curiosity. Curiosity, I repeat at the first lesson of every course I teach, is a necessary quality for every taster. Equally important is good humour, if possible. Even more so is the ability to discern and differentiate between "I like it or I don't like it" — a value judgment, that is, a personal opinion — and "it is well made, well cooked, well presented." Objective judgment.
About thirty years ago I met Carlin Petrini. He fascinated me to such an extent that he became like a mentor to me during my experience serving the University of Slow Food. I coordinated thematic workshops on raw milk cheeses for them — going, among other places, to Cheddar in Somerset to study the production of the eponymous cheese, or to various Vin Expos in Bordeaux.
And I keep going, against the advancing years. Increasingly certain that it is the right thing.
— Ettore Bellucci