If like us, you are among the many fans of The Bear, have already been to Turin, are planning your next trip and are a foodie you might have recognized Carm's Turin inspo!
If you haven't watched it yet: do yourselves a favor and watch it, especially if you love eating, high level cuisine, dedication, Chicago and Turin! As you will see, these two cities have more in common than bulls.
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| agnolotti from Piedmont filled with extra lean Fassone beef |
Just imagine our pride and joy in hearing Carm say AG-NOLOTI and seeing he was actually serving our delicious and beautiful (agnolotti del) plins or pinched tiny ravioli traditionally filled with extra lean Fassone beef, a native breed from Piedmont.
Nothing screams Turin more than agnolotti and the style they are served: generally just high quality Alpine butter - similar to The Bear or our local gravy. Agnolotti encapsulate all our cultural history and culinary tradition in one single bite.
In theory, both plins and regular agnolotti (pron. 'anioloT-Ti with a long T like Turin) are made with the same pasta sheet used to make our protein-packed local fresh long pasta: tajarin or tagliolini - basically yellow flat spaghetti made with 40 egg yolks, flour and no water! Call it a royal dish, after all Turin has been the capital of the Savoy kingdom since 998.
Chefs, cooks, nonnas and mums used to make this rich pasta dough on very special occasions and they would roll it medium thin to allow you to enjoy some texture when eating tajarin but also hold the beef filling of our agnolotti - regional squared ravioli.
In the plin case, the teaspoon of beef filling is rolled inside the pasta sheet and pinched at the sides, almost like a candy. It is a masterpiece of culinary elegance and versatility in miniature, as small pasta shapes are suitable for both sauces and broth! Needless to add that agnolotti, the squared ones also come in a smaller size to be enrich a broth.
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| Carm's plins served at The Bear S3E3, they did use those 40 egg yolks! |
If you have already visited Italy, have you ever noticed how Italian restaurant menus virtually never list chicken? Definitely, this is the case here in Piedmont where poultry and white meat are historically considered 'poor proteins' and in the last few decades also the lowest quality meat due to what the animals are fed.
Speaking of meat and beef in the specific, Turin and Piedmont natives grow up eating our locally bred beef, often grass fed too and they take for granted that all over Italy this is the kind of beef people buy, cook and eat. However, this is not the case at all! And when traveling around the boot, visitors are surprised to find specific 'Piedmont butcher' shops selling 'our meat' like a valuable imported good. In a way it is really a nutritionally special meat as it is virtually cholesterol free, and just like our royal agnoltti, there is an historical reason behind our Piedmont beef breeding practices.
In fact, beyond every business you always have historical, social and economical reasons and it is no secret that the Jews were persecuted in many of the Italian little kingdoms but in Piedmont, where they have been living since at least the 1200s.
To maximize their meat sales, the Piedmont breeders and butchers focused on our native Fassone beef instead of other farm animals and this is how this beef has become a synonym of the Piedmont cuisine. Its high quality allows it to be eaten raw too, either as tritata or tartare version: hand chopped, or all'albese - Alba style - marinated in evoo and lemon juice, after being sliced as thin as a communion wafer, meaning see-through / almost shaved thickness.
Judging by how Carm relies on our very own Piedmont delicacies to save the restaurant day, The Bear culinary consultant must really have Piedmont, Turin and our local cuisine at heart because in season 5, it is yet another of our aristocratic, yet now common dishes that saves the day at The Bear.
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| lamb tonnato of S5E7 presented as 'albacore ajoli' |
At the peak of a day begun as a major failure, Carm finds some tuna cans in the pantry and just like that, the first thing he can think of is our vitel tonné or roasted veal garnished with our very own Piedmont tuna mayo! Nowhere else in Italy, you'll see anything like this, amici.
Portions had been smaller and smaller, lamb was the only meat left and voila! Holding all those tuna cans, Carm proposes to Syd our magic word: tonnato. She approves and readily modifies the menu with 'albacore ajoli' where everyone knows that albacore is tuna and sort of recognizes the mayo form of ajoli.
Yet, all Turinese and Piedmontese can still hear Carm's voice in our ears saying 'tonnato' with an American T and single N - and trust me, nobody cares about his pronunciation because all of us together with our territory and over 1000 years of history just feel the joy of finally being represented like polenta, focaccia, risotto, braciola and cavatelli!
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| The Bear S3E3 |
Representation matters, amici, and within The Bear menu... you'll find different other Italian dishes, but nothing as geographically distinctive as our "agno and tonnato". Even only because most of the other Italian dishes served can be found everywhere... but not ours!
Foodies, pasta lovers, carnivores, healthy eaters and Italian cuisine aficionados everywhere: take inspiration from The Bear, hop over to Turin and Piedmont and savor our culinary traditions. You won't regret it and our royal food and wine scene won't disappoint!
📧 email Lucia: turinepi@gmail.com
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Turin will amaze you!