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LINKS TO INGREDIENTS & EQUIPMENT**
Italian Chestnut Flour: https://amzn.to/3QdlvNm
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LINKS TO RESEARCH MATERIALS**
Chewing the Fat – https://amzn.to/4bdaoxP
Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy – https://amzn.to/4aVoAuV
Notes from Emiko’s Kitchen – https://emikodavies.substack.com/p/pasta-antifascista-for-july-25
https://emikodavies.substack.com/p/the-history-of-italys-partisans-through
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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @worldagainstjose
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Ricinus: By Alvesgaspar – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9781610
#tastinghistory #ww2 #italy
43 Comments
I was sure you'd done an episode on Zuppa Inglese, but I seem to be mistaken
😞 if you haven't done one, perhaps it is time?
wonder if sugar is added it might help the yeast as well as make it taste better
Hello, Max. I've been watching your channel for quite some time. I'm Brazilian and I found your channel through your feijoada video, which was amazing. I was just wondering if you're planning on expanding to recipes from other countries/continents too. I know that there videos like that already, but I would love to see more recipes from Latin America, Africa, and even Oceania. For example, I'm a teacher here in Brazil and once a class of mine decided to present about the very little and forgotten country of Kiribati, and they brought an amazing recipe (which was also originally vegan, since I'm that too), and it was incredible to discover this country through the information and food my students brought. This is just a suggestion, but I do think people would like to see you going through the recipes and histories (and stories) of these places. All the love from Brazil. ❤
Pasta leads to fewer children? LOL. My Italian great grand parents had 10 kids, and my grandfather had 9 kids. They could have used something that would lead to less children.
You looked like you were trying to chew a paper bag! I’m intrigued by the cake being gluten free, though.
my granddad was in italy during WW2, his ship docked at Cagliari, many years later, my son and his wife got a foreign exchange student from italy. Indeed she was from cagliari! a couple years aftere she returned to italy my son ( who is named after my granddad ) and his wife went to italy to meet said students family. 75 years to the day from my granddad hitting port, my son stood on same dock!
8:00 – That whole spiel about coffee kinda reminds me of the "y'know, it's weird that eggs were ever cheap at all!".
I hope America never has to live through, what so many others had to survive, during times of war. It's not a good time to be hungry, and starvation, especially slow starvation, would be terrible.
🎶 Ciao Bella, Ciao Bella, Ciao Ciao Ciao!!! 🎶
Who that Pokemon tho?
Yellow but I can't quite identify it
That' close to what in Tuscany we call "castagnaccio" (or "baldino" in my hometown Arezzo) but you should really:
– make it far thinner than you did. It should not be taller than somwthing like 1cm
– use an oven tray instead of a cake pan and put a lot of olive oil on the bottom. It will create a nice crust and the final result will be much more flavourful
– put pine nuts and rosemary in the batter as well, none of those has to be ground, just use them whole. Rosemary in particular will completely transform the cake
I would think they could have accessed honey
8:37 is just me showing my wife the latest marketplace find i brought home (it was sitting abandoned in a field)
chugging the math and if you make minimum wage and work 40 hours a week, a fifth of your weekly salary is only 58 dollars. so i guess imagine in your mind a plate of pasta that costs that much and yeah no i would also riot
The anti-coffee propaganda is interesting. It's happening again right now in the EU. Strange.
Today's version has also rosemarine in it.
im so grateful that you still make videos. no matter what it is, you tell the stories from both food and history very well, which i passionately love. literally my comfort youtuber
It is needed to point out that the Second Abyssinian War (the war with Ethiopia) came to be due the italian people still not being happy with the previous "war" (which was basically one defeat as the leaders of the time sent very few troops which resulted in a complete failure), and how France and the UK at the time approved of the invasion but withdrew their support after they saw the international response, this was at a time where people were starting to get weary of Germany rearming itself (it was in fact sending weapons to the Ethiopians) and saw Italy as a potential ally in prehemptively stopping Hitler, effectively the allies forced an alliance between Italy and Germany despite knowing it was against everyone's interests.
I'd also like to point out that plants such as chicory are still eaten by choice here and although certain food regulations make it harder to sell, pig blood is still found in certain recipes such as sanguinaccio, which is mixed with chocolate and chestnuts for some more traditional sweets.
If you have access to palm sugar…that's probably your best option. I have never made a chestnut cake, but I have made chestnut butter and it goes very well with caramel flavors and other nuttiness…such as what you find in palm or coconut sugars.
Max is out here preparing us for the next world conflict. We will be feasting on tulip bulbs and chestnut cakes, and everyone will want to know source. Thank you Max.
How hard you are fighting against saying the recipe sucks is hilarious.
This series is one of your best! Only the Titanic episodes beat it. I hope that one of the next entries is on the Pacific Theatre.
this video is particularly interesting for me as the castagnaccio we do at home is very different: no yeast (nor baking powder), no lemon, water instead of milk, but sprigs of rosemary and pine nuts. It is surely dense (very flat and cracked on top) and a bit gummy, but not dry, and instead of the accompanying liquid it's usually eaten with fresh ricotta. I think the taste of chestnut flour is really good and it's a bit of a "lost" flavour.
The war of course was a very dramatic event, with the home front being literally the front for one and a half year between the armistice and the liberation. A very complex situation where war and civil war kind of merged.
A question for the Italians here: where can I buy the book of Petronilla? Is it out of print? Please tell me it's not!
Really interesting video, especially that Mussolini was forced to side with Hitler because of sanctions over Abyssinia . Their bread reminds me of the British National Loaf, which was made from fortified wholemeal grains & deliberately sold a day old (thus slightly stale) to make it less palatable, which, indeed it most certainly was. Despite being, almost, inedible it was pretty nutritious so was still available until 1956. A spin off, however, was that all British made bread is still fortified with Calcium, thiamine & nitic acid to ward off malnutrition (Ricketts was rife in Britain before the WW2).
My paternal grandomther endured WWII with her family in the Umbrian countryside to avoid cities during the Allies advance from the south.
May have been low-key taken hostages from nazis at a certain point, though luckly no member of the family was hurt.
Have to say the vibes of this recipe brought me back to her tales of that time, of how they struggled while paternal grandfather was in the Appennini mountain range fighting fascistis.
The whole "battle for autarchy/self-sufficiency" is something that my family remember quite well.
The "cicory coffee" thing in particular is something I recall quite well from family tales though, along with the demand of offering wedding bands to get gold for the motherland in exchange for steel bands to represent the bond of married couples.
I believe family still has the steel heirlooms somewhere.
My family (father's side) came to Brasil after de 1st world war, runs from fascist persecution.
My grand uncle (mother's side) fights in Italy with the F.E.B against the Whermacht.
Eat past and drink coffee as acts of antifascism? I could do that!
What a cute recipe!
This video is a good reminder that our ancestors have overcome so much and left these skills behind for us in the hopes we’d never have to use them. Unfortunately, I think we in the US are closer to this than we think.
Thank you for sharing Max ❤
Great ! Soon you'll make videos with recipes for surviving the 3rd WW 🙃
All you say in this video my grandmothers and parents (who were in their early teens during the war) told me an amount of times, when I was a child. As a Tuscan, chestnut flour is used pretty much in our traditional dishes, also before war because, as you say, in large areas people were very poor. Nowadays, chestnut flour is rather expensive and chestnut bread (which is delicious) is not so easy to find.
The Fascists trying to put a good face on pane unico reminded me of this line from Judge Dredd : Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment, and it's okay for you.
Max facecard is always 10 10 10
I really loved this episode, even more so as someone who grew up and is still living in one of the territories on the (former) Gothic Line, growing up with lots of stories about life during the war, many of which directly touched my own family in tragic ways… it's a shame that the more we move on, the more these testymonies feels cold and distant, exposing us all to the dangers of tyranny and oppression… Viva la Memoria
Mmmm fascism cake lol
A lot of pre roman Iberian bread was made out of chestnut flour, but they added honey, dried fruits or even bacon and lard to it, super dense and tasty, accompanied by a soup or a mug of beer it was in itself a whole meal.
Thank you for finally making a cake I can have. I can’t wait to make this 😊
None of my fellow Italian complimented your flawless way of reading Italian names, so I'll do it 😀
Do you think you could do historical recipes that substitute eggs?
You watch with these tarriffs how Trump will blame working Americans for "not buying American"… instead of recognising the actual economic impacts of his policy.
That recipe came from somebody with connections to the Fleischmann family.
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up