With the monregalese melamine pastes I have a long relationship of affection: I have been buying them for forty years every time I go to my little house near Mondovì. Today, in addition to being recognized as Pat (traditional agri-food product), they are a Slow Food Presidium and there is a consortium that safeguards them. It is about buttery cookies, mostly shaped like a donut or stick whose name derives from "melia", a dialect term that indicates corn.
Born probably from the need to mix wheat flour, too expensive, with that of corn cartoon (in particular the eight-row, typical of the area), have spread in the valleys of Cuneo until the Canavese and Biella to get to doors of the Piedmontese capital. It is no coincidence that at Sant'Ambrogio di Torino a festival has celebrated her for 11 years. Only 16 km from here, however, the story takes a different turn. Pianezza, in the Turin hinterland, is the homeland of the blue-eyed boy (another name that defined some species of corn), melt paste dolcetto rediscovered by Gian Paolo Spaliviero, pianezzese and lover of local history.
His research, which became a book (Il mistero dei melicotti di Pianezza, editions of Graffio), started with the reading of an old issue of the Italian Touring Club magazine of 3 March 1920: melicotti are cited as a specialty of Pianezza, which suggests that they were already famous before the world war of '15 -'18 and had popular circulation, thanks to the improvement of road communications in 1884, to the city of Turin. After the '30s the little girls have mysteriously disappeared, so much so that only the exit of the book brings them back into the open and a festival for 7 years celebrates them. Spaliviero's research had the goal of understanding the reason for the disappearance but also to show that the more rustic and hard-headed boyfriends are the progenitors of other cornmeal pastes.
The documents did not lead to a certain conclusion and therefore it is difficult to understand if the meligottas or the melt paste of the Monregalese were born before, whether they are cousins or one descends from the other. Perhaps they are only children of that invisible thread that unites needs: prepare with cheap flour and perhaps with honey instead of sugar, they were energetic and could be cooked using the heat of the oven lit for bread. Because they disappeared from Pianezza but we do not know. The solution is not "elementary", my dear Watson.
On Sale & Pepe di Marzo you can also find:
CHICKEN AND SPICES an ethnic touch for a daily dish
PIZZA AND PIZZAIOLE the masterpiece made in Italy seen to the feminine
FRITTELLE indispensable Carnival ritual
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