Foreword: Lazio’S Gastronomic Roots

Abstract

Th e region of Lazio is a mosaic invented on paper between 1860 and the 1930s. Th e morphology, climate, and landscape of its territory are heterogeneous. Mountains alternate with plains, hills with coastal areas, valleys with lakes. Calcareous soils alternate with volcanic, woods with marshes, and maritime climates with continental. Th e interaction of these varied features, together with demographic dynamics that have more than once remade the ethnic composition of the population, has been felt in the economicproductive sphere as well as the gastronomic, predisposing the guiding principles of development in a fragmentary and heterogeneous sense. With the exception of the Rome metropolitan area, Lazio has always had a markedly rural identity, one in which the authentic “ge ne tic” matrices of its territory can be seen in its agriculture and stock raising. Up to the end of World War II, agriculture, the true backbone of the regional economy, was practiced in a regime of substantial autarky, especially in the mountainous interior. Th e local communities grew grains, fruits and vegetables, vines, and olives, followed, under Arab infl uence and the discovery of the New World, by corn (maize), legumes, and tomatoes. Th e local biodiversity subsequently expanded to include a number of autochthonous foods that can be considered typical of certain localities. Th e list includes the green beans of Arsoli, the chickling vetch of Campodimele, the chestnuts of Vallerano, the pizzutello (pointed) grapes of Tivoli, the broccoli rabe of Anguillara, the wild strawberries of Nemi, and the artichokes and romaine lettuce of Rome. Ever since antiquity, stock raising has symbolized Lazio, and it remains an important source of income for the region, though it employs many fewer people than in the past. Animalrelated activities provide the inhabitants of Lazio with essential sources of nourishment, which the local cuisines have turned into a multiplicity of dishes, such as the abbuoti of the Ciociaria, fl avorful rolls made Foreword: Lazio’s Gastronomic Roots