Olympic Food - How Can a Great Cuisine turn out so Bad?
Saturday February 25, 2006
Lots of rumblings about the food served to athletes here in Torino. Many
dislike eating in the athletes village. I feel their pain.
How can a city and region have such a celebrated cuisine that somehow manages to fall flat when served to thousands of athletes?
The
answer is simple. Italian cuisine is based on using fresh, local
ingredients given minimal manipulation in the kitchen. It's grandma's cooking. Lots of care
must be taken with timing; pasta must be cooked
for exactly the right time or it will
be hard to the teeth or mushy and unpalatable.
Take scallopine. You smash a thin cut of veal until it's as thin as you can make it, then season it and slap it in a very hot pan with a little oil or butter. You give it maybe thirty seconds a side, then deglaze the pan with vino bianco or Marsala. Basta! It's done--a rich, succulent two minute meal. And it's as good as the ingredients you've used to make it.
So why can't the preparation of these simple dishes be scaled to the extent necessary to feed 2500 athletes? One answer (you can see it in the picture): the dreaded steam table.
Each evening in the media village, the most amazing smells trickle up from the kitchen to my room. But the food on that steam table one floor below me doesn't come close to replicating the sensory experience I get while showering before dinner. When Italian food sits on a barely warm puddle of water, it disintegrates into a sort of simple, morbid mush. Some say it even becomes dangerous; they never seem get the steam going on the table. In any case, I pass on it, even though the alternatives are more expensive.
Some foods aren't made so much worse by steam tables. Some of the best ribs I've ever eaten have sat on a steam table for a while. But the Italian foods that might fit the steam table experience, say a nice bolito misto with a few veal tongues floating around in the broth, would probably be enough to turn off those athletes with narrow culinary experiences.
It's a shame athletes aren't getting the true Italian experience. On the other hand, I'm glad the Italians haven't entirely embraced the idea of the dreaded steam table and already cut scallopine marinating in their own bacteria within tightly wrapped supermarket Styrofoam trays. I love it when I order Saltimbocca and hear the whap-whap of the veal being smashed in the kitchen while I'm digging into a plate of agnolotti del plin. Fresh and simple; food jumping to the beat of a different drummer.
----------------
Around the Olympic Table: Mancuso's gold recipe - late TV, junk food | Slowing down in tasty Turin | Athletes on food at village: It bites
Need Restaurant Recommendations in Turin? Italy for Visitors guide Martha Bakerjian is keeping track of all the recommendations that we're getting from the locals: Extraordinary Restaurants in Turin, Italy
How can a city and region have such a celebrated cuisine that somehow manages to fall flat when served to thousands of athletes?
The
answer is simple. Italian cuisine is based on using fresh, local
ingredients given minimal manipulation in the kitchen. It's grandma's cooking. Lots of care
must be taken with timing; pasta must be cooked
for exactly the right time or it will
be hard to the teeth or mushy and unpalatable. Take scallopine. You smash a thin cut of veal until it's as thin as you can make it, then season it and slap it in a very hot pan with a little oil or butter. You give it maybe thirty seconds a side, then deglaze the pan with vino bianco or Marsala. Basta! It's done--a rich, succulent two minute meal. And it's as good as the ingredients you've used to make it.
So why can't the preparation of these simple dishes be scaled to the extent necessary to feed 2500 athletes? One answer (you can see it in the picture): the dreaded steam table.
Each evening in the media village, the most amazing smells trickle up from the kitchen to my room. But the food on that steam table one floor below me doesn't come close to replicating the sensory experience I get while showering before dinner. When Italian food sits on a barely warm puddle of water, it disintegrates into a sort of simple, morbid mush. Some say it even becomes dangerous; they never seem get the steam going on the table. In any case, I pass on it, even though the alternatives are more expensive.
Some foods aren't made so much worse by steam tables. Some of the best ribs I've ever eaten have sat on a steam table for a while. But the Italian foods that might fit the steam table experience, say a nice bolito misto with a few veal tongues floating around in the broth, would probably be enough to turn off those athletes with narrow culinary experiences.
It's a shame athletes aren't getting the true Italian experience. On the other hand, I'm glad the Italians haven't entirely embraced the idea of the dreaded steam table and already cut scallopine marinating in their own bacteria within tightly wrapped supermarket Styrofoam trays. I love it when I order Saltimbocca and hear the whap-whap of the veal being smashed in the kitchen while I'm digging into a plate of agnolotti del plin. Fresh and simple; food jumping to the beat of a different drummer.
----------------
Around the Olympic Table: Mancuso's gold recipe - late TV, junk food | Slowing down in tasty Turin | Athletes on food at village: It bites
Need Restaurant Recommendations in Turin? Italy for Visitors guide Martha Bakerjian is keeping track of all the recommendations that we're getting from the locals: Extraordinary Restaurants in Turin, Italy
Comments
Good to hear that someone finally undertstand the “secret” of Italian cuisine! Yes, it’s true- it’s just all about fresh, local ingredients, simple and /or minimal manipulation, and precision on timings. And you know what - that’s true about ANY good cuisine, whatever the origin. It’s all that simple.
This can be a good excuse to make a very last suggestion for a good restaurant in Torino - and I’m going for an economy, budget place. But a good one!
Just 200 yards away from the Palavela, in Via Nizza 333 (easy to remember), you find the Trattoria Vecchio Lingotto. It’s easy to mistake it from outside as an bar as many other (albeit a very clean one!), but it’s really a small restaurant, and one that has catered people working in the area (like me!) for more than 20 year. It’s really justs that - a quiet place for people to eat something good while pausing for lunch, or if you were out of office a bit late to eat home. But oh boy, how good it is! REAL Italian family fare, a mix between piemontese and southern cuisine. The secret is the one James explained above - the owner (and cook) buy his ingredients in some of the best places you may find around Torino, and keep the whole thing simple and honest (with a bit of personal touch and some secret he’s very jelous of!). Good for your stomach and for your wallet - it’s a surprisingly cheap place, given the quality. we’re not speaking the Cambio or the Smarrita here, but at that price, you’ll have some difficulty to find something as good.
I worked for three years in the area, and I wouldn’t have dare to eat anywhere else (and still get there sometime if times allow). Give it a try if you pass in the area!
Thanks, Luca.
I’ll comment on “And you know what - that’s true about ANY good cuisine, whatever the origin. It’s all that simple.”
I think Classical French cuisine is gloriously fussy and complex. Flavors and textures are manipulated to the extreme. Dishes take a long time to prepare, which is why I don’t do it much.
But with Italian cuisine the fussiness is all about extracting the original flavors to the max. I visited the University of Gastonomic Sciences last spring, and learned how to make agnolotti. The chefs there taught us to chop the meats finely with knives, because the heat of a grinder toughens the meat and alters its flavor. Fussy, it seems to me, but not a fussiness used to mask or increase the complexity of the original flavor, but to make sure the flavor extracted represents 100% of the potential of the ingredients.
Kind of like performance and Olympic Athletes…
james
It’s an old debate. I’ve friends who’re serious on stating that France is the only country with a real “cuisine” - the rest of the world is just preparing food to different degrees. They may have a point here, but (call me parochial if you want), while I’ve a lot of admiration for the alchemy-like complication of some French dish, in mere term of eating pleasure I would never trade the mere variety and simple nuances of our food tradition with their.
A case to the point, even if a bit extreme. If you’ll ever go in Palermo, try to go at the Trattoria Capricci di Sicilia (in Piazza Don Sturzo). It’s another of those unpretentious places where they prepare suprisingly great food. One of their “best pieces” is pasta (the short variety, like ditali or penne), potatoes and parsley. Just that - it’s a dish of the “poor” local tradition. And it’s absolutely stunning., believe me, totally addictive.
The people at the university was right about meat for agnolotti being chopped with knives and not with grinders. The same goes for the pasta - if you take the time to learn prepare it by hands (ie not using a pasta machine) the difference will be immediately evident even to a non-specialist…
Thus said, all the above is valid only if you’re using good ingredients (great meat, good flour etc). Remember - 70% of the result comes from the material you’re using, and only the rest from the preparation details.
What a shame to read ‘al dente, it ain’t', but, in fairness, it’s a huge challenge to feed any large group of people, and keep it fresh and , well, not a rubber chicken, as anyone who has ever been to a big dinner can attest to.
But it is a shame that many can’t get ‘off campus’ to sample the local cuisine, which, by the many posts here, just sounds unbelievable.
You’re killing us, James!
Mange, mange….
Quite interesting hints about having dinner….. what about ice cream? Check out this place: Gelateria Siculo (via S. Quintino 31). It is a tiny place, no seats inside, just a place to pick up an ice cream and eat it while having a chat outside, but what an ice-cream it is….. Give it a try, to my experience you’re not going to find a better one in Torino.
Ciao
Stefano