Tiramisu: a convict book rekindles the challenge between Veneto and Friuli

2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 19:13

ENOUGH, we can't take it anymore! And one says he's from Veneto, and the other says he's Friulian, one talks about mugging, the other wants to shoot him, one gets indignant, the other gets angry, one promises legal battles and the other challenges him to singular combat with blows of … tiramisu.

Of tiramisu, yes.

The most loved, most Italian, most national-popular dessert that there is has become, in spite of itself, the stone of scandal, the reason for a war between two populations that for us, Italic inhabitants of the rest of the beautiful country, are practically the same thing, that means Veneto And Friuli, represented in the field respectively by the governor of the Veneto Luca Zaia and, for Friuli, by the authors of the book of discord: “Tiramisù. History, curiosities, interpretations of the most loved Italian dessert (Giunti Editore), that is to say the food critics Clara and Gigi Padovani, a book presented just in these days at the Turin Book Fair.

The question is not insignificant: Tiramisu is the best-known Italian dish abroad, as well as the one capable of spinning barrels of money just by saying its name, bragging it or pretending to be any broth of yellowish cream where fragments float miserably of wet biscuits (a practice also very widespread here in Italy).

Logical that Zaia, as a good and diligent governor, is keen to keep the now prestigious dessert in the riverbed of his Veneto, more precisely at the restaurant " The Beccherie"In Treviso (now closed) to which, until now, the most informed attributed to the paternity, dated 1970, of the invention of our beloved dessert (but perhaps it was the Camin, also in Treviso, right in front of the current hotel Al Fogher).

While the authors of the book believe that Friuli has a broad title to be recognized as the homeland of Tiramisù: the Friulian authorship would in fact be demonstrated, as Zaia's proof, by a receipt: an account whose image is shown in the book as proof of the veracity of as claimed - relating to a dinner at the " Rome hotel" from Tolmezzo, Friuli, made out to the Italian Academy of Cuisine, where you can clearly read, among partridges and mushrooms - just so as not to miss anything - even the entry " pick me up for 2 ”.

And the bill, like any self-respecting receipt, is dated. Dated 1959. Which is before 1970.

For the avoidance of doubt there is also the recipe of Norma Pielli, cook and owner with her husband Beppe of the Albergo Roma in Tolmezzo.

And that's not all: the diabolical authors, thorn in the side of poor Zaia, also pull another piece of evidence out of their hat: a photo, a black and white poster dated 1950 which portrays Mario Cosolo, owner of the restaurant " Al Vetturino"Of Pieris, a village in the province of Gorizia, on which the writing" The Tirime Su created by Mario is worth more than what it costs ”.

And from here we derive a certainty. That Mario's tiramisu cost a lot.

In any case, these are the proofs, these are the sacred texts that would make the tiramisu slide inexorably from the Venetian valleys to the Friuli ones, this is the ongoing controversy. Nobody wants to give up, nobody wants to give anything up, and the two "brother" territories, Veneto and Friuli, intend to hold on to the coveted title of "inventors of Tiramisu", and are ready to defend their reasons, if necessary, even to the sound of stamped papers.

But to us, mere serial consumers of cartloads of tiramisu without existential questions on our minds, honestly, we never gave a damn about the paternity of Tiramisu?

We, who are also a little mischievous, do we not see, in the topic covered by this book, a light, calculated and desired provocative intent, a slight, hidden hope of unleashing the fuss that was then promptly raised?

And you, who are you cheering for? Veneto, Friuli or Bulgaria?

But above all …. Are you really hungry to know the parents of a dessert?