From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 23 April

It is said the Etruscans taught the Romans; they taught the French; and the French taught the rest of the world how to cook.

 

MY father, Nello, came from Toscana, which, together with Latium and Umbria, is renowned as being the homeland of the Etruscans. They flourished between the eighth and third century BCE. Prior to the Roman conquest, it supported a rich history and culture, much of which was obliterated, or assimilated into that of its conqueror.

Good food has always been part of my life. My father was a wonderful cook. He fried everything in butter. He made the best rigatoni, ever. I know the recipe, but it is never as delicious as his.

He came to Australia in 1926, aged 17. The country was a culinary backwater. Meat was over-cooked, and vegies were boiled until they were a soggy mess. The water, which contained all the important vitamins, was drained away, and the remaining unprepossessing sludge was served-up with chops.

It took time for the Anglo-Saxon tastes to embrace the European cuisine. In the UK, macaroni cheese was the only concession to some of the best cuisine in the world which lay across the English Channel.

Australia was the jewel in the far-flung Empire, and culinarily, things were not much better. In 1952, The Australian Women’s Weekly published their first recipe for spaghetti Bolognese. The ingredients included Worcestershire sauce, and the pasta, floating in sauce, was baked for half an hour before it was served! It is difficult to imagine how it looked on the plate, or more challengingly, how it tasted!

My father never came to terms with spaghetti from a can, on toast, and for breakfast. His incomprehension was further heightened when, for a time, he went to live with my brother and his wife. She was a Ryan from good Irish stock. Like many, she favoured meat and potatoes, and canned spaghetti – sometimes served with a fried egg!

Still, I can hear her censorious tone when my father and I sprinkled parmesan cheese on pasta. “Oh, that cheese. It smells like sick. It puts me off my food!” When it came to cheese she was no epicurean. Her taste ran to Kraft cheddar in the blue box and wrapped in silver foil. Apart from sweet and sour pork, which was created by the contemptuous Chinese for the unsophisticated Western palate, she ate of their food sparingly. Although, she could, if able to peer into the kitchen and it appeared clean, to be tempted by a bowl of number 15 on the local take-away menu – chicken Charmaine! She gagged at the thought of pigs’ trotters and giblets in the soup.

Like many Australians – as opposed to new-Australians who lived on the smell of an oily rag, she had a penchant for tinned sausages and vegetables, and braised steak and onions, served, of course, on toast.

Most of the Europeans in my childhood had vegetable gardens. It was the availability of produce which determined their menu. Pasta piselli was a favourite when peas came into season. The desert climate was ideal and ladened tomato bushes grew in profusion. Every year bucket loads were picked and made into passata, without salt or water, and which lasted for the coming year.

In hindsight, there were few vegetables which did not come from the kitchen garden. It may be a romantic notion, but with rising food costs, one wonders if it might be possible to turn-back time?

Roland can be heard with Brett Macdonald at 10.45am Mondays 3BA and contacted via [email protected].