South Tyrol Cuisine | Festival del Gusto | Alpine Mediterranean Cuisine

South Tyrol's Tasty Meld

Italy’s South Tyrolean region mixes French and German Alpine and Mediterranean cuisines.

By Ruth Tobias | Friday, 01 July 2011 | 06:08

Mediterranean meets the Alps in Tyrolean cooking

"We are not Italian; we are not Austrian. We are South Tyrolean." In one form or another, in one language or another, the sentiment was so oft-expressed during the inaugural South Tyrol Gourmet Festival, held in Bolzano (also known as Bolzen), Italy, from June 2 to 6, that it came to be heard as a rallying cry. Far be it from an outsider like me, then, to counter that "both/and" made at least as much sense as "neither/nor." The point -- that the northernmost province of Italy known, alternately, as Alto Adige and Südtirol is more than the sum of its historical parts -- was incontrovertible.

Due to successive annexations by the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and finally, unification with Italy under Mussolini, Südtirol has experienced far more than its share of sociopolitical instability over the centuries. Today, however, peaceful coexistence between, and even hybridization of, Austrian and Italian culture is its hallmark -- as evidenced perhaps nowhere so clearly as Bolzano, the centrally situated, bilingual provincial capital. Picture yourself traversing a bustling cobblestone street on which two sidewalk cafes sit side by side. Passing the first, you glimpse table after table lined with foaming beer mugs and platters piled high with pretzels -- which magically transform, as you approach the second, into flutes of prosecco and bite-size pizzas. That split second in which you straddle the line between the bierkeller and the enoteca, in a nutshell, is the Südtirol.

For the cuisine at large -- described to me, in yet another variation on the theme, as Alpine-Mediterranean -- the implications of that metaphor are myriad. Clearly, South Tyrolean agriculture is foundationally Alpine, its cookery traditionally Austrian -- emphasizing heavily those products that, since 2005, have enjoyed protected governmental status via an appellation-based seal of quality. Among the most significant, as showcased at the Festival del Gusto:

Speck

Both lightly smoked and air-cured according to its PGI (protected geographical indication, similar to DOC appellation for wines) status, this ubiquitous ham, perhaps more than any other product, marks the middle ground between Germanic and Italian food ways as represented by heavily smoked and spiced schwarzwälder schinken (Black Forest ham) on the one hand and salted, air-dried prosciutto on the other. Nary a meal goes by without it.

Dairy

The almost florally sweet, buttery, fresh milk of mountain cows yields some of the most exquisite cheeses I've ever tasted, from Graukäse (gray cheese) -- grainy and pungent, made from skimmed, soured cow's milk -- to Stelvio D.O.P., like an extra-creamy Swiss. Sadly, limited production on one hand and the United States Food and Drug Administration's aging requirements on the other mean that they're hard to come by in the States (though a precious few, including excellent Lagrein -- washed with the distinctive namesake wine -- are available through Di Palo's Fine Foods. Graukase cheese is reflective of Alpine-Mediterranean meld

Apples

One of the European Union's largest apple exporters, Südtirol also showcases its orchard fruit in pastries that reveal its Austrian heritage: strudel, dumplings, cakes like Scheiterhaufen, the chunky pancakes known as Schmarren. Unfiltered juice is a given, but the custom of apple wine and hard ciders was squelched in the era of Mussolini, who passed alcohol-percentage laws that effectively banned their production (in keeping with his overall Italianization program). Only today are they returning to the market. S'POM, for instance, a light, tart apfelsekt (sparkling wine), made its debut at Vinitaly this year, and talks of export to the U.S. are underway.

Breads

Darker, heartier and more varied: This is the land of brot rather than pane. Typical seasonings include fennel and caraway seed. Perhaps more surprisingly, cumin -- otherwise little used in Italy outside of Sicily, is also prevalent, as is brotklee or trigonella, which translates alternately as blue fenugreek and white clover. Most common to the daily table are chewy brown vinschger paarl, made with both rye and wheat flour. And above all, you'll find schüttelbrot ("shaken bread"), bumpy-textured, dense cracker-like rounds that are to speck what baguettes are to butter: a soul mate.

But if the above are central to the cuisine of present-day Alto Adige, they in no way tell the whole story, which, as noted above, is one of cultural overlap. The claim that South Tyrolean cuisine is heavier than that of much of Italy yet lighter than that of much of Austria holds true. (Of course, similar claims can be made for all of Italy's northern provinces, from Piedmont on the French and Swiss borders to Switzerland-adjacent Lombardy to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which neighbors Austria as well as Slovenia.)

Consider, as an example, the types of stuffed pasta I encountered. If ravioli and knödel (potato or bread-based dumplings) represent either end of the Italian-Austrian spectrum, they are often prepared in ways that blur the line. The former may be filled with Graukäse or sprinkled with schüttelbrot crumbs, for instance, the latter ladled with sugo di pomodoro. In between are specialties like tirtlan, deep-fried ravioli stuffed with spinach, potatoes or sauerkraut -- whose dough is also used to make krapfen, spread with marmalade or poppy-seed filling. Further revealing are the repertoires of envelope-pushing chefs like Anna Matscher of Michelin-starred Zum Löwen (and Hangar-7's bad boy Roland Trettl), who pulled off the respective likes of horseradish dumplings in chilled beet consommé and eel with dried pear, foie gras and speck jus.

When the likes of such dishes will make their way stateside remains to be seen, but it's a good sign that the cuisines of Alto Adige's aforementioned neighbors -- especially Piedmont and Friuli -- have been gaining in recognition for some time. The menus at such renowned eateries as San Francisco's SPQR, Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder, and dell'anima in New York, for instance, are rife with words like blutnudlen, zlikrofi and tajarin. Surely it's only a matter of time before I'm reunited with my tirtlan.

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Speck on display at the Festival del Gusto Alto Adige. Credit: Ruth Tobias.

Ruth Tobias is a Denver-based food and beverage writer. Since beginning her career in Boston, she has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Sommelier Journal, Mutineer, Denver Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, Zagat Survey, Culinate and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America.

Photos, from top:

Spinach-stuff tirtlan.

Graukäse cheese.

Credits: Ruth Tobias