In Eating History: Italy – a brand new show starting this Thursday on SBS – host John Dickie eats some great food. But he’s a brave, and funny, man – as well as exploring the history, and taste, of some of Italy’s favourite foods, he also tries things that make us glad we’re not living in those long-ago eras.
John is a historian – an academic at a London university - but his passion for all things Italian is far from dry. In the first episode of this entertaining six-parter, John sets the mood for what’s to follow. This is a fun romp through the food of Italy, and the role it played in shaping the country we know today. Over the space of six weeks, we see him don a toga, eat pasta with his hands (while discussing an Italian king with similar habits), clamber through claustrophobic underground tunnels, cook and taste some taste-bud challenging recreations of medieval and Renaissance dishes, explore the unpopular side of pizza and attempt bribery with pasta. Of course, there’s also plenty of good food – a grand reminder that thankfully, Italy now eats far better than a Roman gladiator.
One of the world’s earliest performance enhancing drinks was horrible
In Episode 1 – What the Romans Ate - John subjects himself to the diet of the gladiators who far from eating a diet rich in protein like modern athletes, survived their long training hours and battles in the arena on a diet of grain, washed down with a “sports drink” of vinegar and ash. Sounds awful and apparently it tasted that way too. And for John, at least, it doesn’t prove to have any performance-enhancing powers. He downs the concoction (secret ingredient? Burnt fenugreek) and climbs into a boxing ring, but decides the super fuel really doesn’t help at all. We’d suggest that if you need a refreshing drink to fuel any sporting endeavours, it would be safer and taste much better to use this date and lemon number. And we think John would agree that modern-day limoncello wins out over Roman vinegar and ash. Score one for modern Italian tastes. 
Source: the food dept.
…but not the most challenging thing our adventurous host tried
When SBS chatted to John Dickie this week, we asked if that gladiator sports fuel was the worst thing he tried in the making of the show. “It was certainly up there. But I think the hardest was probably plate after plate of spaghetti dripping with pork fat in 40-degree heat in the garden of the Royal Palace at Portici, near Naples.” That would be for the making of episode 4, The Private Life of Pasta. In delving into the history of pasta, he discusses the penchant of one Italian king for eating pasta with his hands – while he, too, eats pasta with his hands.
He also follows pasta’s movement from its likely origins in Sicily to Naples, “Italy’s pasta capital”, where with the help of Micehlin-starred chef Lino Scarralo he recreates a 500-year-old pasta recipe that involves no tomato, no basil, but rather spices and sugar. Lots of sugar. It gets boiled in water for a very long time, cooked in duck fat and then fried in lashings of butter – as John says, “a heart-attack inducing recipe” – and served with duck, dusted with sugar. Surprisingly, despite being intensely sweet, it gets a cautious nod of approval from the pair.
Making like a king: John Dickie attacks a plate of pasta during filming for Eating History: Italy. Source: Eating History: Italy
We also discover that pasta was – and even more surprising, still is – used to try to win political influence and votes (John’s attempt to win votes for a cause of his own is nerdily likeable.) Happily, there are plenty of good stories and tasty kitchen experiments on the pasta front, making for an entertaining episode on how macaroni, spaghetti and all of their curiously shaped cousins came to be such a central, and tasty, part of the Italian menu.
The Romans – gladiators or elite – didn’t have pasta as we know it; yet another reason to be thankful for changes in the Italian diet! How about a classic spaghetti alla puttanesca?
Spaghetti alla puttanesca Source: Alan Benson
Grain upgrade
“You have to remember that gladiators were slaves and prisoners of war — the lowest of the low, in short. (Even though one or two achieved temporary fame.) So they generally ate breads and soups made of cheap grains. Not much variety or taste, in other words,” John explained to SBS. The thinking, he says, was “Why waste money on feeding someone who’s going to end up as a lion’s lunch?” What a good thing it is, then, that the bowl of grains Italy is known for now is so very different – risotto, we love you. (Risotto alla Milanese, anyone?)
Fast food may have been a Roman invention
All those Colosseum-going, fight-watching Romans had to eat something. In episode 1, John cooks up some Roman food with a few modern tweaks and gives it away from a food truck while musing on whether the Romans invented fast food. While his recreations prove popular, it’s the ultimate takeaway that makes us so grateful to the Italians: pizza. One of the big surprises of this series is that pizza was not always beloved by the Italians (more on that in episode 5). And those gladiators - no, no pizza for them.
Source: Two Greedy Italians
Feeling thankful for pasta and pizza
The dour diet of the unfortunate gladiators may have been bland, but Italian food – like the Italians themselves – is quite the opposite. Eating History: Italy is a tasty dash through the Italian character through the lens of food, travelling from tip to top of this ebullient, stylish, food-loving nation. We suggest you whip up a bowl of pasta, or a pizza, and settle in. For the next six weeks, you’re going to have a hankering for Italian classics.
Discover more of Italy's rich culinary heritage in Eating History: Italy, on Thursdays at 8.30pm on SBS and then available on SBS On Demand. Find out more in our episode guide.
