Amarognolo, ma salutare
Tutti i suoi nomi
Anche il nome botanico del carciofo, Cynara scolymus , merita qualche attenzione. Il termine che designa il genere, Cynara , secondo Lucio Giusto Moderato Columella , scrittore latino di origini spagnole del primo secolo d.C. e autore the most comprehensive treatise on agriculture of the antiquity, the De re rustica , derives from Cinis , ash, and is linked to the customary use of ashes to make the most fertile soil in which to accommodate the culture of this plant. More poetic explanation linked to the myth: Cynara, a beautiful nymph with hair color ash would fall in love with none other than mighty Jove and his wife, Juno, jealous and mildly irritated by yet her husband's extramarital escapades, he would become a artichoke plant, often a characteristic feature of this color gradient between gray and green. For others, however, from classical greek Kunar avrebbero origine sia il latino cynara sia il greco moderno agcynara e il turco enginar . Scolymus , invece, deriva dal greco e significa appuntito e fa riferimento alla forma non di rado allungata di alcuni tipi di carciofo.
In Spagna il carciofo è alcachofa , derivato sempre da harshùf , ma preceduto e unito all’articolo arabo al . Tutti vocaboli che sottolineano l’antica origine mediterranea del carciofo che quando si diffonde verso il nord Europa diventa artichaut in Francia e artichoke al di là della Manica, probabilmente dal greco-siciliano arcton da cui sarebbe disceso il neo-latino articacton .
Prende origine dal cardo
Famiglia delle Compositae , ignoto allo stato selvatico, il carciofo, grossa pianta erbacea perenne, deriva da progressive selezioni del cardo ( Cardo Cardunculus ) e la botanica lo conosce, appunto, come Cynara scolymus . Si presenta con un fusto eretto, che può raggiungere il metro e anche più d’altezza, con lunghe foglie lanceolate e pendenti e termina con un ‘capolino’, ovvero un’infiorescenza soda, piena e non ancora aperta, che costituisce la parte commestibile. E’ consists of a fleshy receptacle, white and tender green in color from purplish bracts, yellowish at the base, commonly called improperly and leaves, which in some strains may end with a plug. Each year, at the base of the stem and formation of new shoots called 'offshoots' useful for breeding.
As the pig: do not throw anything
A little 'what happens to the pig farm animal in the world, including the artichoke not throw anything away:
his' heads', in fact, cooked or raw, are used in the preparation of appetizers, main courses and side dishes and there are recipes that affect them. Industry conserviera, poi, li utilizza sotto forma di carciofini sott’olio, di cuori di carciofo in salamoia o al naturale, senza dimenticare la produzione di surgelati, disidratati, liofilizzati, oppure li trasforma in creme e purée;
i germogli, imbiancati mantenendoli sotto terra, sono spesso adoperati in cucina per il loro sapore molto simile a quello dei cardi;
le foglie, invece, oltre a risultare utili per l’estrazione dei principi attivi per i liquori, i prodotti farmaceutici, i cosmetici, i dolcificanti ipocalorici, costituiscono un ottimo alimento per il bestiame per il loro basso costo unito a un alto valore nutritivo. La fitoterapia le utilizza per decotti amarissimi al gusto ma capaci di abbassare, and not just the rate of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood;
its roots and its rhizomes are useful in the preparation of infusions to stimulate liver function, diuretic and slightly laxative;
waste from industrial processing of artichoke are used for the extraction of fiber for the production of alcohol, as feed for livestock.
Artichokes Greek, Etruscan, Roman
The entire basin of the Mediterranean, from west to east, from the Canary Islands to the Aegean islands, from Cyprus to Turkey, not to mention North Africa including Ethiopia, would from the cradle to the artichoke, with its culture e al suo uso alimentare. Ne parlano fin dall’ VIII secolo a. C. i testi greci, mentre la presenza di remote e abbondanti popolazioni selvatiche in prossimità degli insediamenti etruschi di Cerveteri hanno permesso di ipotizzare che proprio nel nord del Lazio e proprio a opera degli Etruschi abbia potuto avere origine il carciofo come pianta coltivata. Nella sua Naturalis historia Plinio il Vecchio documenta l’uso commestibile del carciofo, confermato dal De re rustica di Columella che, chiamandolo col nome latino di Cynara , ne conferma l’utilizzo a scopo sia medicinale, sia alimentare. Nel De re coquinaria Marco Gavio Apicio , crapulone e buongustaio age of Seneca, speaks of 'hearts' of Cynara that, apparently, the Romans liked boiled in water or wine. Otherwise, in Nero's Rome, artichokes prepared "fiber, cooking them in water and then beating them with pearl barley, flavored with pepper and tying them with eggs." The compound thus obtained was used "to make them to be grilled sausage topped with pine nuts, wrapped in ' omentum and wet with wine. "
The long march of Cynara scolymus
Reported in Tuscany by the name of 'the fruit of Naples' from 1466 and to Venice in 1493, the artichoke from the beginning it enjoyed for over , so much so that even in the early sixteenth century Ludovico Ariosto stated that "hardness, pins and much more bitterness you find that goodness." But, just in that 'era, our vegetable began to reappear frequently in the treaties of the kitchen, where he also taught as a fine, and the same Caterina de' Medici (1519 - 1589), became Queen of France, he became his admirers and consumer so greedy as to risk a dangerous indigestion. So, on June 19, 1578, noted Pierre de l'Estoile, French chronicler of the time about an incident where he incurred the Queen at a wedding feast: "The Queen Mother ate so much that he felt bad as it had never happened before. Rumor that the illness was due to having eaten too many artichoke hearts ... which was very greedy. "
regard to preferences in the way of eating artichokes, Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592), in his diary Travel in Italy , written in the years 1580 - 1581, notes that
"in Italy give you raw beans, peas, green almonds, artichokes, leaving almost raw."
English, French and Italians introduced the artichoke to the New World from California, where he now concentrates about 80% of the stars and stripes, the Louisiana here in traditional restaurants there Ammannati as a side dish to a plate of oysters or shellfish. A pairing food that say good idea, but that is threatened by the devastating oil spill that poisoned the spring of 2010 the entire Gulf of Mexico.
The triumphal march of this plant did not know even stopping in later centuries, so that the early nineteenth century the great gastronome Grimod La Reynière states: "The artichoke makes great services to the kitchen: you can not hardly help it less, when there is a real disgrace. We must add that it is a very healthy food, nutritious, and stomatal slightly aphrodisiac. "
Serving Venus
Sì, probabilmente al ritorno dell’utilizzo del carciofo sulle nostre tavole giovò la fama afrodisiaca che per lungo tempo lo circondò, derivante con molta probabilità dal suo aspetto fallico. Certo è che tale nomea era già ben radicata nel 1557, se il Mattioli nei suoi Discorsi scrive: “la polpa dei carciofi cotti nel brodo di carne si mangia con pepe nella fine delle mense e con galanga per aumentare i venerei appetiti”. Un anno più tardi anche un’altra autorità in materia di cibo e buona salute, Costanzo Felici da Piobbico concorda attestando che i carciofi:
“servono alla gola e volentieri a quelli che si dilettano de servire madonna Venere”. Una convinzione ribadita anche da Bartolomeo Baldo che nel suo Libro della Natura , 1576, conferma che “Il carciofo ha la virtù di provocare Venere sia nella donna che nell’uomo: la donna la rende più desiderabile, mentre dà una mano all’uomo un po’ ‘pigro’ in queste cose…”
Le donne, beate loro, invece “non sono giammai minacciate da simile sventura, perché tutti i mesi, tutte le stagioni, tutti i tempi sono loro propizi.” A sostenerlo è un’autorità assoluta in materia, quel Pietro di Bourdeille , abate e signore di Brantome che con le sue ‘dame galanti’, o meglio Vies des dames galantes , 1584, inaugurated a literary genre that between the mundane and the scandal that would have been so successful in later centuries and to this day. The superiority of women depends on the fact that women can eat in a way that always supporting the desire: "... although there are some fruits that can bring relief, there are others who terribly hot, and it is these which dame occur more frequently, such as asparagus, artichokes, truffles ... And from what I have heard some great dame fan consumption of pies made with odds and ends of wing nuts and artichoke hearts, truffles and other such delicacies. A belief shared this
dal dottor La Framboisière, medico personale di Luigi XIII di Francia (1601 – 1643), per il quale: “I carciofi scaldano il sangue e spronano in modo naturale al gioco amoroso di Venere…”
Ancora oggi, usato metaforicamente e in senso burlesco, il carciofo – così come il cardo – può indicare il membro virile, oppure l’ano se ci riferiamo al suo cuore nascosto.
Carciofo versus colesterolo
Ampiamente note, fin dall’antichità, le sue virtù salutifere. Ricco di calcio, ferro, sodio, fosforo e potassio e vitamine A, B1, B2, C, PP, tonico e digestivo, grazie alla Cynarina the artichoke for an increase of bile flow and urine output, play an important role choleretic. Hepatoprotector epatostimolante and is of great help in diets aimed at reducing the rate of cholesterol in the blood, the nightmare of our time sedentary and satiated. In short, it stimulates the liver, cleanses the blood, strengthens the heart, dissolves the calculations and also seems to help calm the cough.
Doti therapeutic that had escaped the watchful eye of the influential sixteenth-century physician from Gualdo During Castor (1529 - 1590), who in his The Treasure of Health , a popular compendium of 'healthy eating' and 'star good 'of the Late Renaissance, defines the artichokes "cocktails", ie capable of' open 'the stomach to food, stimulate gastric secretion, and be "grateful to the taste." They cause the urine but smelly, move the wind, and open the Opilio and enhance sexual intercourse; eaten fan ... good breath and body odor rise each boring. "Among the" nuisances "or contraindications, the scholar known Umbrian the Artichoke ... generate melancholic mood. I'm very windy, damaging the head, stomach affect the digestion and slow. "Keep in mind that then" cooked in broth and eaten with salt and pepper at the end of the table, are not even harmful and more grateful to the stomach. "In short, light and shadow, which, half a millennium ago, not arrested, however, the gradual spread of this multi-year plan on the table the entire European continent.
Thus, the treatise appeared in 1586 when the doctor Umbria, already at least a century, the artichoke had won the title of gourmet food worthy of attention studied with interest by Pier Andrea Mattioli, (Siena, 1500 - Trento, 1577), one of the highest authorities of the time in the field of applied botany and medicine physician at the court of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564) and Maximilian II of Habsburg (1527 - 1576), "are seen to 'our times the artichokes in Italy of various kinds of thorny imperoché, tight and open and non-spiny Ritondo, wide, open and closed if they find themselves."
heads of all types
Cultivated since ancient times in many different environments including the Cynara scolymus knows various types of production shapes, sizes and spinescenza of the head. If consumers Sardinia, Liguria, Piedmont and Lombardy prefer to move towards the 'spiny Sardinian', in the Lazio and Campania are the most popular types of 'Romanesco', without spines, and 'Campaign' from larger, while in Tuscany you prefer the traditional 'Violet Toscana', this one from the head without spines. The artichoke is the most widely cultivated in southern Italy is the 'Catanese' or 'Purple of Sicily', now the most popular in our country know that an infinite variety of names ('Gagliardo', 'Niscemese', 'Syracuse', ' of each month ',' Smooth di Sicilia ',' Smooth Sardinian ',' Local Sybaris', 'Early Mola', 'Violet del Salento', 'Brindisi' ... and so on) and is grown especially in the artichoke fields of Puglia, the region currently most interested in the Italian cinaricoltura.
Fans of artichoke
Catherine de 'Medici, Queen of France for her marriage to Henry II, was not the only crowned head to appreciate our prickly vegetable. Before she had liked Henry VIII of England (1491 - 1547) which made him grow in his garden in Newhall and later he will be enthusiastic admirers of Louis XIII, and the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, in the veins of which by Maria de 'Medici (1573 - 1642), respectively, mother and grandmother ran a lot' of Italian blood.
Artichokes and Italy: a pairing always present in the common sense common to this day. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was a greedy eater artichokes and liked them enough to dream about it ... often. Interpreted them as a symbol of Italy and called them "my favorite flowers."
Even Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962), the most famous sex symbol of Hollywood, very likely to appreciate the artichoke. Yes, because in pre-history of his turbulent career, the same year in which bare back some breathtaking photography, 1949, are awarded the title of the Artichoke Queen, queen of the artichoke, obtained at dell'Artichoke Festival, which takes place every year in Castroville, California, in an area with strong Italian presence. Almost foreshadowing the fate of a negative fact, the protective bracts of success, fame, notoriety failed to protect the tender heart of how good an actress as beautiful and sensitive, beautiful in the film-comedy tone with white, and erotic 'bittering'.
Artichokes paintings
Fruit, flowers, books, weapons shells ... These elements are used by Milanese painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593) to create his bizarre heads allegory in which, as it was written, the Artist Lombard "rejects completely the man and holds objects that define it, to replace him" (Sluys).
No wonder regain Cynara scolymus discreet but significant as an ingredient of a couple of pictures dell'abilissimo way: Summer and Vertumnus , the god of change, of the alternation of seasons, flowers and fruits, the husband of Pomona. The less famous
Vincenzo Campi (1536 - 1591), Cremonese painter sensitive to both the naturalism of the school of Brescia, both Flemish influences in his most famous work L'Ortolan, does not disdain to use as decorative as the artichoke and narrative.
An artichoke poetic
bell'elogio The most literary of the artichoke? Certainly we can read in the ODAS elementales of Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, so, drawing on his passionate feeling for nature and a materialist conception of existence, the Chilean poet poetically transfigured Our friendly vegetable managing to find more and better than that for other reasons underlying accents of rare simplicity and intensity:
Ode to the Artichoke
The tender artichoke hearts dressed as a warrior, shaggy
built a small dome,
remained dry under his scales, he
near the plants crazy curled,
became tendrils,
inflorescences affected rhizomes, underground
slept carrot red mustache,
the vine withered its branches from which the wine rooms,
the cabbage began to prove skirts,
oregano to flavor the world, there
and sweet artichoke garden dressed as a warrior, burnished like
hand grenade,
proud, and one day, in serried ranks,
in large wicker baskets, marched
to the market to realize his dream:
the militia. In rows
mai fu martial so as to market
men among the vegetables with white dust coats were the generals of the artichokes,
file compact
voices of command and the detonation of a box that falls, but then comes Mary with
His basket
choose an artichoke, I do not fear, tests, notes
against the light as if it were an egg,
buys,
confuses him in his bag with a pair of shoes, with
a cabbage and a bottle of vinegar until
entering the kitchen,
it plunges into the pot. So
ends in peace the career of armed vegetable called
artichoke, then
squama squama undress for the delight and eating a peaceful
pasta
of its green heart.
Artichokes political
expression meaning the applicant in the cautious language of politicians, "continue the policy of the artichoke" means the realization of strategic objectives through modest but steady progress as a leaf after the other one eats the whole artichoke.
Sembra che la paternità di questa espressione tocchi a Carlo Emanuele III, re di Sardegna (1701 – 1773), che, non riuscendo a impadronirsi dell’agognata Lombardia e di Milano fece di necessità virtù accontentandosi delle molto meno significative Novara e Tortona e del consolidamento dei confini al Ticino. La fertile e operosa pianura lombarda e la città di sant’Ambrogio sarebbero diventate sabaude solo molti anni e molti carciofi più tardi.
Carciofi televisivi
Correva l’anno 1957. Per l’esattezza erano le ore 21,00 del 5 febbraio, quando con Carosello nasceva in Italia la pubblicità televisiva. Allegra, pressing the music that heralded was the reworking of a Neapolitan song by an anonymous author, initials and entr'actes inspired by the Commedia dell'arte, Italian advertising for Shell, L'Oreal, and Singer, for what affects these pages, Cynar: a bitter axis then spread to the bar, on tables and food habits of the Italian dessert. Yes, the artichoke, or rather the liquor extracted from its leaves and roots, participates in this event which was to be dawn in the history of costume and the show of light entertainment: older readers will remember no doubt a very short film (two minutes and 15 seconds), played by that great man and actor who was Ernesto Calindri (1909 - 1999), which invariably ended with the line: "Cynar against the strain of modern life."
stress the word used and abused today was yet to come.
Unforgettable!
Artichokes details
Interpreting the small facts of everyday life, or the great events of national and international news, to obtain combinations of numbers to play the Lotto has always been a popular feature of the costume, distinctly Neapolitans : please read about the illuminating pages, ranging from the realistic inspiration and attention to detail worthy of cultural anthropologist, that the journalist and writer Matilde Serao (Patras, 1856 - Naples, 1927) dedicated to the game of lotto in his famous The Belly of Naples, 1884. And to relate the facts and events of everyday existence, including dreams, with the numbers just consult The Smorfia (deformation of the popular Morpheus, the god of sleep), or Book of Dreams.
There we learn that the artichoke is 58, but if more than one then that number is 44. Beware, though: if our vegetables are fried or roasted, then you should refer to 87, if fried and overlaid with gold at 64, if just barely warmed your number is 15. Qualora, poi, non si parli di carciofi ma solo di carciofoletti selvatici allora ritorna il 64.
L’autore di queste note declina qualsiasi responsabilità circa il valore effettivo di tali indicazioni.
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