Foodie Cinema | Emilia-Romagna: Before the Revolution, Anolini

Anolini, Bertolucci and Parma: an indissoluble bond

The film tells the story of Fabrizio, a student torn between his bourgeois background and his attraction to Communism. While engaged to Clelia, he falls in love with his aunt Gina who comes from Milan to see her family, although later will decide to follow convention and marry Clelia whom he does not love. The three main characters have the same names as those in Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma. Scenes for the film were shot in various locations in Parma: piazza Garibaldi, piazza del Duomo, Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the Gothic Baptistery, the Teatro Regio beloved by Giuseppe Verdi and Arturo Toscanini; while the scene with the camera ottica was shot in the Rocca San Vitale at Fontanellato.
Before the Revolution is multi-faceted: it is a protest film, the portrait of a generation and the story of director's city Parma. For the Parmigiani, inhabitants of the city, a traditional holiday dish is anolini. Bertolucci sets the following scene at an Easter lunch, entrusting to Adriana Asti (Gina) words that deeply encapsulate the city’s spirit:
Mother: "These anolini are better than the ones at Christmas, I’m sure it’s because of the stew!”
Gina: "One always eats too much in Parma, first you eat then you talk about what you’ve eaten. A double task. It’s like eating twice.”

The enogastronomic history of anolini

Bertolucci adored anolini, to him these were not simply a dish, a recipe, but rather the passport to “being Parmigiano” and also to modernity, to taste, culinary elegance and, why not, to revolution too.
Anolini appear in the manuscripts of the Cronica by Salimbene de Adam, 1284, and would reach the tables of Kings and Popes in the 1500s. The dish was a favourite of Stendhal while Ligabue would trade his paintings for a plate, Giuseppe Verdi was crazy about them and it was said of Duchess Maria Luigia of Parma and Piacenza that “the duchess curtseys only to the king anolino”.
Despite ancient roots, anolini is an example of modernity that today would make Ferran Adrià and his molecular kitchen pale; for the stuffing is not meat but essence of meat and its flavours, the reduced jus of lean beef shank is extracted after approximately ten hours of cooking and is then mixed into a combination of parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, egg and nutmeg, enclosed in a casket of puff pastry. A precious casket that King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, a grand gourmet, enjoyed making himself and we should recognize his dynasty for having contributed, like few others, to the key recipes of the so-called Mediterranean diet.
These anecdotes would be enough alone to consecrate Parma as one of the world’s capitals of taste. In truth, in the diatribe between the Parmigiani (inhabitants of the city) and Parmensi (inhabitants of the countryside), the long road of flavours unfolds along the via Emilia, one of the most important Roman consular roads, where Luchino Visconti set his masterpiece Ossessione (Obsession). The most famous of Italian cheeses, the base for the anolini stuffing, is His Majesty Parmigiano Reggiano, created and aged here, along with Parma ham and another delicacy from the cured meat section: culatello di Zibello.

Anolini betwixt cappelletti and tortellini

Like film, food feeds on conflict to keep its history evolving. Anolini found their first sworn enemy at home: cappelletti, a stuffed pasta created in the 1500s in Ferrara, which recalls the noble ancestor of all stuffed pastas, the tortellino. The anolino is actually unique as a stuffed pasta, with no meat inside but only its extract: the flavour of the stew which is combined with parmesan, breadcrumbs, egg and a touch of nutmeg. The cappelletto is the simplest of the family, the least elegant, with a stuffing made of beef, ham, parmesan, egg and breadcrumbs. It was created first in Ferrara as mentioned above but it became extremely popular both in the countryside around Parma and in Romagna from the 1500s, its stuffing recalling the precursor of all tortelli, the tortellino from Bologna.
Calling the tortellino Bolognese (from Bologna) is no easy matter, given that a diatribe has raged for centuries about the paternity of the invention, attributable to both Bologna and Modena. A solution was found in about 1700 with the attribution of the magical dish to Castelfranco Emilia, a village on the via Emilia halfway between Modena and Bologna, albeit in the province of Modena. Giuseppe Ceri, an intellectual from Bologna in the mid-1800s, invented a story about the birth of the tortellino: Mars, Bacchus and Venus are all staying in a hostelry in Castelfranco Emilia. Mars and Bacchus awake and leave early and on waking Venus finds that she is unexpectedly alone and begins to ring her bell. As the proprietor of the hostelry walks in, he sees Venus naked and is struck by the goddess’ belly button and thereby “learnt the art of making the tortellino”.
There are reports of the tortellino from the 1100s in the writings of monks. It was said that it was first created empty and what would later become the stuffing was originally its sauce. The stuffing for tortellini has changed over the centuries. It was originally composed of mortadella, ham, beef marrow, parmesan, egg and nutmeg. Later the Confraternity of the Tortellino would register a recipe at Bologna’s Chamber of Commerce featuring a stuffing of pork loin braised in butter, parmesan, egg, ham, mortadella and nutmeg. Faced with the choice of learned Bologna and elegant Parma, Bernardo Bertolucci has no doubts, preferring a plate of anolini in broth, before the revolution.

Anolini alla parmigiana

We want to dedicate Pellegrino Artusi’s recipe to Bertolucci because with his book Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well this recipe joins the most accessible of cuisines, no longer a food for the elite alone.
«A woman from Parma, whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting, wrote me from Milan where she lives with her husband, as follows: “I take the liberty of sending you a recipe for a dish which in Parma, the beloved city of my birth, is a tradition at family holiday gatherings. Indeed, I do not believe there is a single household where the traditional “anolini” are not made at Christmas and Easter time”. I declare myself indebted to this woman, because, having put her soup to the test, the result delighted not only myself but all my guests.
To serve for four to five people
500 grams of lean, boneless beef loin; 20 grams of lardoon; 50 grams of butter; ¼ of a medium-sized onion, chopped.
Lard the piece of meat with the lardoon, tie it and season with salt, pepper and spices. Then place it on the fire to brown in an earthenware bowl or other saucepan with butter and the roughly diced onion. When the meat has browned, add two ladlefuls of broth and then cover with several sheets of paper held firmly in place by a soup plate containing some red wine. As to why wine and not water, I cannot explain it, and neither could the lady. Now let the meat boil gently for eight or nine hours, to obtain some four or five spoonfuls of flavourful, concentrated sauce which you will then strain, pressing firmly against the mesh. Set it aside for use the next day.
Make the filling for the anolini with: 100 grams of grated day-out bread, lightly toasted; 50 grams of grated Parmesan cheese; a dash of nutmeg; 1 egg; the meat sure you prepared the previous day.
Blend this all together into a smooth mixture. Then make a dough with flour and three eggs, keeping it fairly soft. Roll it out and cut it into scalloped disks. Fill the disks with the stuffing, then fold them in half to obtain small half-moon shapes.
These amounts should yield about 100 anolini. They are good in broth or with a sauce like tortellini although they are lighter on the stomach than the latter. You can eat the leftover meat as stew by itself or with a side dish of vegetables».

Before the Revolution: recipe for a homemade trailer for anolini

This game is for anyone who wants to make a homemade trailer for Before the Revolution and anolini. We’re providing the time codes to some clips from the film. Any edit program will work for this.

• Use the film title Before the Revolution
• attach from 02m.55s to 03m.48s
• attach from 41m.45s to 42m.09s
• add the title card “written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci"
• enjoy it in company, and if you haven’t yet seen the film, watch it!