SC - Socca and food migration

[ana l. valdes]

The recipe to make faina is exactly the same, master Adamantius! I asked
the ppl I know who are versed in Italian food and they say "The faina or
socca is a typical Ligurian dish, served often in Genua and Nizza" (the
old name of Nice).
In Argentina and Uruguay is always eaten with pizzaslices. Some local
speciality is also the addition of grated cheese, very tasty.
You are right about the continent considered as "open continent". In
Uruguay, par example, we have 20.000 descendants of Swisses, who fled
the religious persecutions at the end of the 19th-century. They were all
partisans of the Valdensis church and they emigrated to Uruguay with all
their families and relatives. They live until today in a special part of
the countryside, called Colonia, and they make cheeses and milk dairy.
They speak still their dialects and all their houses are build as
chalets in the Alps. The only difference is in Uruguay the highest
mountain is 300 meter high.
You can eat raclette and fondue in this part of the country, as usual as
faina and pizza in other parts.
Its 10.000 russian descendants too, and they still live together,
speaking russian and making bortsch and smetana.
In a country with only 3 millions inhabitants, all these minorities are
really colouring the country.
Ana
PS: without counting the tenthousand germans we got, but the "good
germans", who fled from Prussia 1848, when Bismarck applied his
"ironlaws", and they fled to South America to avoid be called to the war
against the french. The most of them stayed in Montevideo, who was the
best harbor, where the boats from Europe come.
They were socialdemocrats, anarkists and the first communists. They
created all our trade unions and they are the explanation why Uruguay
was neutral and Ally-friendly during the Second War, when Brasil and
Argentina and Paraguay opened their countries to all nazis fleeing from
Europe.

Philip & Susan Troy skrev:
> 
> "ana l. valdes" wrote:
> >
> > I really welcome the discussion and the possibility of learning more
> > about the "travels" of the food.
> > By the way, when I was in Nice for first time, last year, I ate some
> > wonderful local speciality, it was called "socca" and was done with
> > chickpeasflour and oliveoil.
> 
> I'm deeply interested in food migration also; there are foods commonly
> eaten in New York State that just perplex me. For example there's an
> entire sub-cuisine of seafood dishes that is very common all across the
> state, and most of the state has no oceanfront. It occurred to me to
> wonder just why you can get raw oysters on the half-shell in half the
> bars and restaurants in, say, Binghamton, New York. I think it's the
> result of railroad expansion and the use of refrigerated cars in the
> nineteenth century that has led to some interesting culinary
> cross-pollination.
> 
> I used to work in a Provencale restaurant in New York, and we served
> both socca and panisse fairly often. We probably took great liberties
> with the traditional socca, though: we made them as thin pancakes, which
> we wrapped around ratatouille, and while I've heard of socca being made
> in this way (i.e. as a thin pancake), I've also heard of it being baked
> and/or broiled [grilled], something like a baked polenta dish.
> 
> Here's a  socca recipe [MODERN, but the dish is probably quite old], for
> those that are interested...from Mirielle Johnston's "Cuisine of the Sun":
> 
> "For 6 people:
> 
> 2/3 cup chickpea flour
> 3 Tbs olive oil
> 1/2 tsp salt
> 1 cup water
> freshly ground black pepper
> 
> Mix the flour, oil, salt, and water, in a bowl. Stir well and let stand
> for one hour (at room temperature or refrigerated).
> 
> Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Oil a round, shallow pan and pour on the
> batter -- it should be very thin, about 1/8 inch thick. Put the pan
> under a moderate broiler as close to the flame as possible. After five
> minutes, sprinkle a little olive oil on the top and broil for 5 to 10
> more minutes until it is crisp and golden, with the consistency of a
> thich crepe or pancake. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black
> pepper. With a spatula, slide it onto a serving plate and cut it into
> 2x2-inch wedges. Serve on small plates with forks or on paper napkins --
> a bit messy, but so delicious."
> 
> I note that this recipe instructs us to preheat the oven to 400 degrees
> F., and then says to use the broiler. Possibly this is a difference in
> design between the standard British "cooker" (I believe Ms. Johnston is
> British) and the typical American range/oven/broiler arrangement
> commonly known as a stove. These usually have a setting where you light
> the broiler, and it doesn't much matter what the oven temperature is set
> at; it'll just be at full blast, more or less.
> 
> > I was amazed, because I knew this local speciality to be an Rio de la
> > Plata, only made in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. We call it "fainá", and
> > I wondered why had this speciality from Nice travel all the way to the
> > South of South America.
> > Some friend told me it was the same dish, eaten in Liguria, the North of
> > Italy, called in Italy "faina" in a local dialect and called in Nice
> > "socca", dialect too.
> > Nice was until the last century part of Italy and many people emigrated
> > from Nice to Buenos Aires and Montevideo when the city was given to
> > France. They didnt want be part of France and they took the way of
> > exile.
> 
> Wow! I've never heard of faina until now. It's especially interesting to
> see an Italian dish of this kind (perhaps not exactly "mainstream"
> Italian cuisine) in South America, but I gather, for one reason or
> another, that a lot of Italians ended up there at various times, to the
> point that many Argentines and Uruguayans have as much Italian ancestry
> as they do Spanish. I think South America was just considered an open
> continent for exiles to find a home in, what with Franco and  Mussolini
> doing what they did earlier in the 20th century. Oddly enough, I was in
> an Argentine restaurant this past Saturday, and I was curious to note
> that the menu contained about 30% Italian dishes, and nobody thought
> this was odd. On the other hand, considering all the Chinese that
> actually escaped the new Communist regime to Cuba and Brazil in 1949
> (imagine their surprise when Castro showed up!) this isn't so odd after
> all. But, again, it resulted in another interesting hybrid cuisine
> (Chinese restaurants that serve bread on the table as soon as you walk
> in, routinely serve cafe con leche, etc.) It's not just that they serve
> foods from both types of cuisine, although that's true. There's a
> distinctive difference in both cooking style and presentation, probably
> because of isolation from the mainstream culture that inspired it.
> 
> Adamantius
> --
> Phil & Susan Troy
> 
> troy at asan.com
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