Rachel Roddy’s recipe for cornmeal and butter biscuits | A kitchen in Rome

Shaped like a moustache – or a smile! – these delicate confections speak to Italy’s longstanding history with polenta

A book that I hope gets translated into English is Alberto Grandi and Daniele Soffiati’s La cucina Italiana non esiste – bugie e falsi miti sui prodotti e i piatti cosiddetti tipici (Italian cuisine does not exist – lies and false myths about products and dishes considered typical). The title is as provocative as the book is fascinating in the way it dismantles the legendary origins and marketing of “typical” products and “traditional” dishes to reveal engrossing histories, often more recent and inextricably bound to exchange and migration (Grandi is a professor of food history and economics at the University of Parma). In fact, far from taking anything away, the book makes a rigorous and constructive contribution to a bigger, more interesting global conversation about the past, present and future of food. It is also very funny.

I mention this having picked up the book to re-read the chapter on polenta. Grandi reminds us that it is a category of food (rather than a specific one), with polenta being a cooked mixture (the ancients called it puls, which is Latin for “a mush”) made from something ground into flour and water. Historically, polentas were made from barley, oats, rye, millet and buckwheat, until the second part of the 18th century, when cornmeal cooked into polenta became a principle source of nutrition for many in the north and central regions of what is now Italy.