Casa Artusi in Forlimpopoli, a town in Emilia-Romagna, is not the home of Pellegrino Artusi, but it’s arranged as if it were. The author of La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well) would have felt at home at this institution, which opened in his hometown in June 2007. Casa Artusi is the first gastronomic culture center dedicated to home cooking and food culture distribution. In addition to the library, there is also a restaurant that serves a menu composed of recipes from his book.
Casa Artusi Restaurant
What happens at Casa Artusi’s restaurant? Home cooking. Careful though, don’t think of home cooking as being limited to tradition, as Artusi always said, home cooking is the place where the best innovation happens. Andrea Banfi, the restaurant’s chef prepares recipes from La Scienza in Cucina, perfectly incorporating the richness of home cooking into his dishes. The menu is in fact far from being simple or systematic. It’s about a living world composed of people, stories, and tales – the very same ones cited by Artusi and served at his restaurant today. In addition, the entire menu takes Artusi's decalogue into account. His ten guidelines for Italian cuisine are below.
The Decalogue of Artusi's cuisine
1. Respect natural ingredients
Love the beautiful and the good wherever they are and do not tolerate seeing God's grace torn to pieces.
2. Use quality ingredients
Always choose natural raw ingredients of the finest quality because this will make you look good.
3. Use seasonal ingredients
Vegetables should be prepared at the peak of their harvest time when they are inexpensive, but they should be chosen based on good quality and reasonable ripeness. Use only healthy and ripe fruit depending on the season.
4. Keep it simple
My kitchen is inclined towards the simple and delicate, staying as far away as possible from foods that are too complicated and overly composed of various elements, thereby embarrassing the stomach.
5. Be passionate, careful, and precise
If you don't have the pretension to become a restaurant chef, all you need to succeed is passion, a lot of attention to detail, and precision.
6. Practice with patience
Have the patience to give it a try. If at first you don't succeed, do not be dismayed; good will and persistence win.
7. Variety, but respecting the territory and seasonality
Here is how I would make a minestrone: kitchen masters should modify it in their own way and in accordance with their taste, the country, and the vegetables found nearby.
8. If you vary, do it with simplicity and good taste
All dishes can be prepared in various ways according to the creativity of those who make them. When changing them at will, however, never lose sight of the simple, delicate, and pleasant flavors, so it really sits in the good taste of those who prepare them.
9. Enhance the “poor cuisine”
This soup that, for modesty, is given the nickname of a peasant girl, I am convinced will be appreciated by all.
10. Always be wary of all cookbooks (even mine)
Careful of books about this art. Most of them are misleading and incomprehensible, at most, you will be able to draw some useful notions when you know the art better.
A little-known fact
After the publication of the first edition, letters began to arrive from all over Italy with suggestions and advice. Yet it was during the 19th century, a time when it wasn't customary for a woman to write to an unknown man. Consequently, almost all the letters he received were signed by men, in the implicit and silent awareness that, in reality, they were written by the women of the house.