Why Italy?

In Britain we know Parma ham mainly through prosciutto, but in Parma itself they will tell you that the greatest of their products is culatello, pig’s rump. Culatello is only made from the animal’s right leg, which it curls under itself as it sits: the left leg, which is used for standing, builds up muscle and is thus not as tender. The rumps are marinaded in salt and spices, then sown inside a pig’s bladder and aged for 18 months in the humid air of the river basin. Half spoil before they reach maturity, but those that survive are so delicate and creamy, the meat can be spread with a knife, like jam.

This is a place that takes food seriously. “In Parma,” the local saying goes, “you eat twice, first when you have your meal and then when you talk about it.” The mother lode of this gastronomic pride is undoubtedly the local cheese. Just 737 farmers are entitled to make the nutty-flavoured, slightly gritty cheese that we call parmesan and which they call Parmigiano Reggiano.

The farmers are forbidden to feed the cows silage or any other fermented feed, and the 150 gallons of milk that makes up each cheese has to come from at least 30 different animals. Parma’s football team attribute their success to the slices they eat before each game for protein.

But you cannot linger too long, like the lotus-eater, in Parma, because the next town on the Via Emilia is Modena. You leave behind valleys filled with the sweet smell of hams curing in lofts left open to the wind, and catch instead the occasional elusive tang of something even more precious: aceto balsamico di Modena, balsamic vinegar hidden in farmhouse attics and aged for a minimum of 12 years. Eighty per cent is rejected as not being up to scratch; the rest is stamped “ tradizionale” and is considerably more expensive than heroin. (The stuff you buy in your local deli as “genuine” balsamic vinegar almost certainly isn’t.) The locals like to eat it sprinkled on ice cream — like eating caviar with chips.

And then there is Bologna. It is unfortunate that the world thinks “Bolognese” is a sauce for spaghetti. It isn’t, of course. In Italy, Bologna is known as la grassa, the fat, and “alla Bolognese”, far from being a sauce, is a euphemism for every kind of oral pleasure. This is the capital city of cuisine. From sausages filled with pork liver and pistachio to local vegetables such as asparagus from Altedo, everything here is good. The local pasta is tortellini — but the word tortellini is almost never used: each village and suburb has its own variation, called anolini, balanzoni, cappelletti and so on. It is served with a broth made from capons, which have a stronger flavour than hens: of the tortellini and capon broth in the Hosteria Giusti in Modena, one reviewer wrote: “It made my head ring with heavenly choirs.”

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Every town seems to have its own speciality. As you make your way along the Via Emilia, you will encounter formaggio di fossa, a cheese matured in straw-lined pits around Ravennate; spongata di Busseto, pastry made with honey and nuts in Busseto; ciliegia di Vignola, cherries of Vignola; spalla cotta di San Secondo, a charcuterie unique to San Secondo; the chestnuts of Castel del Rio; the sweet onions of Medicina; and the famous salami of Ferrara, fed to bridegrooms to improve their potency. Finally, when you reach the Adriatic, you will eat some of the finest seafood in the world, such as cannochie, a cross between crayfish and lobster, which are plucked from a grill and eaten col bacio, with a kiss — guzzled directly with the lips, leaving you with a glistening moustache of oil as you lick from the hot, charred shell the last of the peppery breadcrumbs in which it has been coated.

It is generally accepted that the food of Emilia-Romagna is the best in Italy. Yet just 30 miles south, in Le Marche, they champion a completely different style of cooking, based on the dairy products of the mountains. Likewise, Neapolitans will tell you that the black soil left behind by the eruptions of Vesuvius gives an incomparable mineral flavour to the soft vegetables, such as tomatoes and courgettes, which they use in their cuisine; while in Rome, they extol the virtues of the quinto quarto, the fifth quarter of the animal — the offal left behind after the cardinals and noblemen had taken what they wanted.

This is campanilismo, an untranslatable word that means, literally, “loyalty to your own bell tower”, and which has its roots deep in the national psyche. When Queen Victoria was on the throne of Great Britain, Italy was not yet a country. Even today, a few mountain-top towns Garibaldi never got round to, such as tiny San Marino, claim to be republics. Old people across the south still refer to Italians as foreigners, and some of the rural dialects of Calabria have more in common with ancient Latin than with anything spoken on state TV.

Another Italian buzz word for this veneration of local tastes is tipico. Again, “typical” is not an adequate translation, any more than the French “terroir” can be translated as “location”. For a product or dish to be tipico it must be an integral part not only of the landscape but also the identity and pride of local people. A white truffle is not just a sensuous, almost feral flavouring for certain dishes of Piedmont, it is part of the autumnal, game- based cuisine of the region. It belongs in the same woods in which the game is hunted, and is one of the reasons why those woods have survived unchanged for so long.

The Italians have always believed in tipico, but only now are they waking up to its potential. In Emilia-Romagna alone there are more than 40 products with DOP or IGP protection, meaning that they cannot be produced anywhere else. (Britain, by way of contrast, has just one fresh DOP product, the Jersey Royal potato.) These products are even becoming tourist destinations in their own right. It began with the creation of 350 citta del vino — literally, cities of wine. This was followed by cities of oil, cities of truffles, cities of honey and so on — although as yet only 11 towns have been brave enough to designate themselves citta delle lumarche, cities of snails.

There is something delightful in the idea of the Grand Tourist being replaced by the gastro-tourist, more intent on sampling a millefiori honey made only from wild lime and cherry blossom, like that of Montelupone in Le Marche, than on cramming into the Sistine chapel; or who would rather nibble a piece of salami from Colonnata, matured in troughs of white Carrara marble, than struggle through yet another renaissance art gallery. Yet, in truth, the two are more similar than they first appear.

To appreciate the regional flavours of Italy is to appreciate the culture and the context of a country. When you know that the cuisine of Tuscany is powerful, plain and suspicious of artifice, you realise why Michelangelo was the grumpy individualist he was. When you have eaten the delicate, graceful sauces of Urbino, you are halfway to understanding the draughtsmanship of Raphael, while the strikingly plebeian realism of Caravaggio can only be fully appreciated after a meal of gutsy offal in a humble Roman trattoria.

And when you have driven down the N9, stopping off to enjoy a meal of tagliatelle con rigaglie, pasta with giblets, or luccio in lattuga, pike in lettuce, washed down with a glass or two of Pignoletto wine, you understand why, when the barbarians invaded, this was where the Romans chose to stand and defend their empire. Even today, who would willingly give up Bologna?

Anthony Capella’s second novel, The Wedding Officer, is published by TimeWarner in April (£10.99)