The Po Valley and Its Rice and Dairy Plains

The Po rises in the Cottian Alps near Monviso in Piedmont and runs eastward for some 650 kilometres to the Adriatic, gathering the waters of the Alpine and Apennine tributaries on the way. Across Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia and the Veneto it has laid down the broadest and most fertile plain in Italy, and Waverley Root, in The Food of Italy, treats the cooking of this northern region as the product of that plain: a cuisine of butter, rice, maize and cream, set against the olive oil and dried pasta of the peninsula to the south.

The first thing the Po Valley decides is the cooking fat. Root observes that the north cooks largely in butter, where the centre and south cook in olive oil, and the reason lies in the land. Level, well-watered meadows carry cattle in numbers the hills of the peninsula cannot sustain, and the dairy economy that follows gives the plain its butter, its cream and its great cheeses. Among these are Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano, both made from cow's milk (Bos taurus) and both matured for long periods, and Gorgonzola, Taleggio and Bel Paese, which belong to the Lombard and Piedmontese side of the valley. The second thing the plain decides is the staple grain. Rice (Oryza sativa) is grown in flooded fields, and the water that the Po and its tributaries supply, directed through canals, makes the cultivation possible in a country not otherwise associated with it. Root places the principal rice country in Piedmont and Lombardy, in the provinces around Vercelli, Novara and Pavia, and notes that the grain is eaten there in place of pasta. The risotto of Milan, coloured with saffron, and the many risotti of the Veneto, with peas, seafood or vegetables, are the dishes through which the plain's rice reaches the table. Maize completes the picture. Polenta, boiled from ground maize (Zea mays), is the daily bread of the upland and the plain alike in the north, and Root links it with the Veneto and Lombardy in particular. Where the soil is poor or the household modest, polenta and rice stand in for wheat, and the pasta of the south is a lesser presence. The result is a cuisine in which starch is cooked slowly in liquid and finished with butter and cheese, and in which the technique follows from what the fields produce. The plain also feeds the pig, and with it the charcuterie of Emilia. Whey left from cheesemaking is a by-product that the dairies can give to pigs, and this association of cheese and pork is a feature of the Emilian economy that Root recognises in the products of Parma and Modena. Prosciutto, culatello, salame and mortadella belong to the same system as the cheese, and the pasta of Emilia, made with egg and rolled by hand, is dressed with the butter and Parmigiano that the same farms provide. The river itself is a final element. Its waters carry fish, and its fogs and humid summers shape the climate in which rice and fodder thrive. The plain is bounded by the Alps to the north and west and by the Apennines to the south, and the cooking of its cities, from Turin to Bologna, rests on one agricultural system that the Po has made possible. To understand the dishes of the north is therefore to begin with the water, the meadow and the paddy, and only then with the kitchen.

The table of the Po Valley is one of richness held in balance: the sweetness of butter and cream, the saline depth of long-matured cheese, and the mild, starchy body of rice and polenta. Risotto should be creamy yet retain a firm grain at the centre, and polenta is eaten soft from the pot or cooled and cut, often with a braise, a cheese or a sausage. Wines and acidity from the surrounding hills are the natural counterweight to this richness.