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Jun. 26, 2012

Truffle Hunting and the History of What We Eat

Trinity University student takes an interdisciplinary look at food while studying in Italy

CITTÀ DI CASTELLO, ITALY - Walking across a field on his land, farmer Matteo Bartolini called out to his dog, "Sole, dov'è il tartufo (Sun, where's the truffle)?"  

Picking their way carefully over the uneven ground, Trinity University student Anne Roselli, a senior from Plano, Texas, and her fellow Umbra Institute students followed Bartolini - and the truffle-hunting Sole - as the farmer showed the class around the woods and meadows of his farm, nestled in the Tiber River Valley in northern Umbria.

As Sole sniffed out truffle after truffle, Bartolini demonstrated how he used a medieval-looking shovel to carefully dig the fungus from the ground.

"We think of truffles as elite food," said Bartolini, as he scrubbed a truffle with a toothbrush after the tour. "But it was the hungry farmer who first tried the food on his pasta centuries ago."

Thirty-six-year-old Bartolini is not only a truffle hunter and farmer but one of Italy's representatives to the European Union agricultural committee in Brussels. Umbra Institute Professor Zach Nowak deemed Bartolini's tour ideal for the course he is teaching through the Umbra Institute's Food Studies Program (FSP) this summer.

"The field trip was a great opportunity to reinforce themes we've talked about in the classroom: foraging for wild foods as an integral part of the Italian diet, as well as the rural economy," Nowak said after the class enjoyed a four-course meal made complete with pork cutlets and a rich pasta dish, both cooked with the same truffles they had dug from the ground earlier that day. "It was also simply fun for students to learn about the truffle, which composer Rossellini called 'the Mozart of mushrooms.'"

Nowak's course, "The History and Politics of Food in Italy," fulfills the Umbra FSP's goal to encourage students to realize that although we eat three times a day, we rarely consider the basic questions of how or what we put in our mouths. Where does the food come from? Is it important that it be "local" or "organic?" What do the labels really mean?  These questions are fundamental to life in our globalized world, Nowak explained.

"Our class has been one of the best experiences of my life," said Roselli, who is studying at the Umbra Institute this summer. "My views on food have certainly evolved since taking the class. My Italian heritage had me thinking that we had a very traditional way of cooking and eating but perhaps this is more of a recent development. I have had access to a kitchen for the first time since being in college and that along with the excellent Italian food has been a food experience I will never forget."

Roselli added that Nowack made the course memorable through his "obvious passion for food history" as well as for "Led Zeppelin and fonts."

For more information about the Umbra Institute or its Food Studies Program, contact the coordinator of the program, Professor Zachary Nowak (znowak@umbra.org).  There is also a short overview of the Program on YouTube.