Eric Dregni, a Minnesota author, has released his book on Italian cuisine and culture in paperback. In our discussion, we delve into his experiences in Italy and the inspiration behind his book, “Never Trust a Thin Cook.” This book goes beyond just pasta; it explores how cultural influences intertwine with aspects of sexual morality and sexism. ~~~ Vinterfest, a celebration of winter lasting a month, takes place on the Northern Plains. This festival aims to offer educational, recreational, and cultural heritage activities across central North Dakota for public enjoyment. Joining our discussion are Lacey Heid, Project Manager at the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation, and Claudia Berg from Sons of Norway. ~~~ Winter holds a special place in certain Indigenous traditions, often associated with storytelling. We’ll discuss an exhibit at the Heritage Center in Bismarck titled “On the Edge of the Wind: Native Storytellers & the Land,” which focuses on this theme.
Interview highlights: (full transcript below)
On the contrast between American and Italian eating habits:
…this obsession with food, it’s really hard to understate it because it’s all about getting the best meal all the time. And it really is like there, when they hear that we Americans, we eat in our cars, they’re like, no, they don’t believe me that when I say that, or that, you know, drive through restaurants and different things, they’re like, no, it’s all about sitting down at the table, finding out where your food is from. I mean, all the slow food movement, of course, began in Italy. … And that’s sort of the essence of Italian cooking is you keep it simple, right? You don’t need all these fancy, you know, the French cooking tends to be a little more intricate and all of that. Italian cooking is just good ingredients and you do it to the best of those ingredients’ abilities.
On how menus highlight regional cuisine:
Everybody knows what spaghetti is throughout Italy and at home people will cook it. But in Modena, it’s all about tagliatelle…made with fresh egg pasta and usually served with ragu, which is like a meat sauce, not the stuff you get in the jar.
In Modena, we live[d] right above a butcher and they had pesto there. … And so I bring it home to our apartment and I open it up and it’s all white on the inside.
I’m like, Oh my God, what happened to this? I bring it back and they’re like, Oh no, this is pesto Modena, not pesto Genovese. So Genovese is what we think of as like the basil pesto, but Modena is essentially lard with crushed garlic and rosemary in it.
Pesto just means like kind of the mashed up stuff… So if you’re traveling over there, ask what is the local specialty? Don’t try to get spaghetti or ravioli or what you think you’re going to get. Ask what is the best food on the menu?
A 1990’s era court decision that suggested women can’t be raped if they’re wearing tight jean sparked protests across the country. It’s just one example of laws leaning in favor of the accused, rather than the victims. Dregni says he’s seeing changes in women’s rights.
…When those cases came into the newspapers, a lot of people were out rightly outraged because they said, oh, and also because, you know, there’s this case of this woman being sexually assaulted in a Maserati and the judge concluded that, well, it’s too tight in the Maserati to actually do anything. So things like that. And then people were outraged.
I mean, it’s sort of the same type of machismo that we see, like, oh, you know, they sort of deserved it or these kinds of things because of the clothes they wear. And it’s like, of course, that’s ludicrous. I think that society is changing because, I mean, young women and young people in general, they just don’t.
It’s a different mentality now. I mean, they see that old kind of macho, big Italian families and, you know, and it’s that is changing.
[full transcript]
Ashley Thornberg
The book is called Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital. There are lots of things to love about Italy..the fashion, the fast cars, the art, and of course the food. … Can you elaborate a little bit more on the food and specifically what roped you in?
Eric Dregni
So I went over as an exchange student when I was 17 and lived up in a town called Brescia outside of Milan. And my host family there, the mother was a fantastic cook and made all these great meals. And I think I was one of the few people that they said, you know, stop eating so much too, because usually, you know, they’re always pushing all the food.
And so then after college, I wanted to go back to Italy and I thought, okay, where’s all the best food in the world really, you know, because Italy is such a culinary capital. And, you know, everybody talks about Parma, but then I realized Modena actually has balsamic vinegar, has tortellini, has prosciutto, has Parmesan and all of that. And so I ended up there because it’s the sister city of St. Paul and I teach in St. Paul. But this obsession with food, it’s really hard to understate it because it’s all about getting the best meal all the time. And it really is like there, when they hear that we Americans, we eat in our cars, they’re like, no, they don’t believe me that when I say that, or that, you know, drive through restaurants and different things, they’re like, no, it’s all about sitting down at the table, finding out where your food is from. I mean, all the slow food movement, of course, began in Italy.
All the local food. I mean, that’s what it all is there. It’s really this obsession with eating well, because then you feel well, too.
Ashley Thornberg
And you can eat well without it being a very complicated meal, right?
Eric Dregni
Well, yeah. And that’s sort of the essence of Italian cooking is you keep it simple, right? You don’t need all these fancy, you know, the French cooking tends to be a little more intricate and all of that.
Italian cooking is just good ingredients and you do it to the best of those ingredients’ abilities.
Ashley Thornberg
The book came out originally in 2009. It’s now out as a paperback. And as I was reading this, I was kind of wondering as you were living in Modena prior to 2009, when the book first came out, how many people had kind of heard of that and then now I wonder with things like the Chef’s Table on Netflix and there being a big focus on that region of the world and just how much more internet based travel has opened up places that we didn’t necessarily used to know about. Do you know how much Modena is understood compared with when you were living there?
Eric Dregni
Yeah, that’s a good question. Because I think now there really is sort of this, you know, culinary tourism to especially Emilia, which is the northern Emilia Romagna part, because you ask why is it one of the subtitles of the book? I said, it’s Italy’s culinary capital.
And I meant that to be sort of a tease against other Italians, because any self-respecting Italian will say, well, of course, my home region is the culinary capital of the whole country. But they do grudgingly admit that Modena and Parma and Reggio and Bologna are, it is sort of the best food because they call it like Bologna la grassa, like fat Bologna, because the food’s so rich and good. And so now, I mean, as you, back to your question, that it does, there is sort of this opening up that you don’t need to just go to Venice, Florence and Rome, that all of those other regions of Italy, they hold so many little secrets that it’s so fun to discover.
So I love going back to like the smaller towns and all that. And each of these towns will have what they call a sagra, which is sort of the town festival based on their culinary specialty.
Ashley Thornberg
Talk to us a little bit more about the culinary specialty, because as I was reading the book, I was surprised when you said something like spaghetti or ravioli wouldn’t necessarily be on a menu. It would very much depend on where you are and if spaghetti is from where you are. [There’s a] heavy focus on regional eating.
Eric Dregni
I mean, everybody knows what spaghetti is throughout Italy and, you know, at home people will cook it. But in Modena, it’s all about tagliatelle, I mean, which is sort of the equivalent of that, but those that’s made with fresh egg pasta and usually served with ragu, which is like a meat sauce, not, not the stuff you get in the jar.
It’s all about the region. In Modena, one day I went down, there was, we live right above a butcher and they had pesto there.
So I was really excited. They go like, I hadn’t seen pesto. And so I bring it home to our apartment and I open it up and it’s all white on the inside.
I’m like, Oh my God, what happened to this? I bring it back and they’re like, Oh no, this is pesto Modena, not pesto Genovese. So Genovese is what we think of as like the basil pesto, but Modena is essentially lard with crushed garlic and rosemary in it.
Pesto just means like kind of the mashed up stuff. Right. So, and it’s all like, they’ve heard of, you know, pesto Genovese and you can get it even sometimes, but in general, it’s all about that one region.
So if you’re traveling over there, ask what is the local specialty? Don’t try to get spaghetti or ravioli or what you think you’re going to get. Ask what is the best food on the menu?
Ashley Thornberg
Eric, so much of this book is about food, which is often referred to as a country’s soft power. You know, military is your hard power and your cultural exports are your soft power. And so really it is a cultural exploration.
And a part of the book I found just extremely delightful is a sentence that says, once you chose your bar, you should avoid being seen at rival cafes, as the bar could often represent your political bent or more importantly, your soccer team. So just paint a little mental picture here for what these little bars and little cafes are like and how you knew which one was yours.
Eric Dregni
Well, we live right above a bar that’s still there in Modena called Il Cappuccino. And so Maurizio, who still runs the place, would see us coming in and out all of the time, and so we would have to go there. And so in Italy, they use the term bar, bar.
And what they mean is a cafe in our terms. But they also have wine and they have aperitivi and they even have hard liquor and stuff, but I mean, mostly it’s just a coffee shop. And so, yeah, when you go into a coffee shop, we have this idea that you’re going to sit there and drink a cappuccino all day and do all of that kind of stuff.
That’s not really how it works. So you go in there. Typically, you have to go right up to the bar.
And then you order a cafe. So when we have all of these lists of all these different kinds of coffees for there, it’s mostly just cafe or cafe macchiato or cappuccino. Those are sort of the main three.
And all these other ways of having it, you know, it’s sort of obscure to most of them. You get a coffee, you put a little bit of sugar in it. So it’s this teeny little demi-tasse and then it’s about half of that.
And then you put some sugar in if you want and stir it up and then you drink that coffee like a shot and then you’re done. And so for Italians, a cappuccino or cafe latte or those kinds of things, that’s that’s a morning thing. And so the idea of having that after a meal to them is just abhorrent.
I mean, they just they it gives them chills that we Americans go and have a cappuccino after a meal. I mean, they really get very upset about it. So, yeah, when you go into a bar.
Yeah, the coffee and the coffee, if you go to a touristy town like Florence or something, you want to sit down in the piazza, then it’s often going to cost you double or triple what it would cost up at the bar. So it’s not a lengthy time that you have. And then actually one of the things we think, oh, how much coffee they’re going to drink in the day, right, they’re going to sit and drink their coffee.
Well, Italians realize this at camp because we have this fancy espresso machine because it’s sort of essential for an Italian camp. And our Italians, when they found out that they could have as much coffee from this espresso machine as they wanted, they would have 10, 11 shots of coffee a day. And that got pretty exciting, of course, and especially when the coffee machine broke down and we couldn’t have it.
And it was like the whole camp was going to fall apart then. So in Italy, it is coffee runs. I mean, it’s sort of their gasoline for running the whole country.
Ashley Thornberg
How do you prepare your coffee now?
Eric Dregni
All right, so at home I have what they call a macchinetta or a mocha, which is just the stove’s top Bialetti espresso. And I don’t know, everyone wants all these those little those little plastic cups or these French press or these other things. Personally, I don’t think they make as good coffee.
And a lot of Italians will agree that the macchinetta, the Bialetti ones that you know, the aluminum ones, the classic design from the 20s that you put on top of the stove, a lot of times those will make better coffee than the coffee you get in a bar.
Ashley Thornberg
I feel, yeah, I feel like I’ve seen these before. Correct me if I’m wrong here. They have kind of a canister on the bottom and then you put the grounds in the middle and then you put it on the stove. And then as the water heats up, it collects in the top. Is that correct?
Eric Dregni
Yeah. Yeah. And so you don’t you know, everybody thinks, oh, you need to go buy a little fancy espresso machine for your house.
Don’t do it. Just go to these. I mean, and they’re usually, you know, about 30 bucks and you want to get the smallest one possible because the bigger ones don’t make as good a coffee as the really little ones because you don’t want to.
It’s not like American coffee that you have this big mug that you’re drinking. It’s like you get that little shot of coffee to get you going.
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, yeah. I had it once and I thought my heart might stop. It was going so fast.
Let me ask you about pasta. Do you prepare your own pasta now after this?
Eric Dregni
Well, sometimes I’d like to say that we do it all the time, but we don’t. But we do have all of the tools to do it. So when we were over there, there was this Italian grandmother, La Nonna, who was the grandmother of these students that my wife Katie taught over there.
And she always would make pasta and have tortellini and tortelloni and all of this in her freezer that she would pull out then or have it fresh. And her daughter wanted nothing to do with that. And then the granddaughter as well just wanted I mean, they wanted to eat it, but they didn’t want to have to prepare it because it’s a lot of work and a lot of busy work, especially when you’re stuffing these little tortellini.
And so when we told her that we wanted to learn how to make fresh pasta, she was thrilled. And so we had this big session that lasted more than five hours of rolling out the pasta and doing all of this. And then in the end, she gave us one of those little pasta makers, you know, the ones, the little metal ones that you can roll the pasta through.
But she said, OK, I want to keep you I’m giving this to you to keep you honest, because you should never use this. I’m like, why are you giving this to us? Because she said we should use we have this big rolling pin that is probably almost three feet long that you’re supposed to use this big one.
And then you get all these muscles from rolling out the pasta and try to get it get it as thin as possible. So pasta, I mean, it’s actually not that just making the regular tagliatelle. It’s really not that hard to make.
We should make it more often.
Ashley Thornberg
It’s fairly important, though, to get a quality flour.
Eric Dregni
Yeah, the flour, it’s a trick. You need flour. I don’t know that a King Arthur flour will work pretty well.
And then the bigger trick is to get good eggs. You want fresh eggs and not just the eggs with kind of the pale yellow yolks. You want really good ones.
So that’s more of it. And then also when you roll it out, you want to roll it out quickly that it doesn’t dry out because you need it. I don’t know.
And it just takes a little bit of practice.
Ashley Thornberg
We’re visiting today with author Eric Dregny. His book is Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital. It is now out in paperback.
He has also written In Cod We Trust Living the Norwegian Dream and The Impossible Road Trip. He’s also a professor of English at Concordia St. Paul. And Eric, we’ve been talking about food.
We’ve been talking about culture and really sort of light and fun elements. And there is also a lot of cultural differences that get kind of serious pretty quickly. And just a heads up to our listeners here.
If there are any sensitive or young listeners around, this might be a time to duck out of this conversation because Italy is quite known for its sex appeal and for its very different morals when it comes to sexuality. In fact, you’re teaching in a school and an administrator says, I don’t care what you do here. I don’t care if you sleep with all your students.
I know you will. Please just don’t write anything bad about our school. How much as coming at this from a Midwesterner, was that difficult for you?
Eric Dregni
Well, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t really believe he was saying that. And it’s not I mean, just to make it clear, that’s not typical.
I mean, obviously he was very slimy and everyone kind of kept clear of him because of that. But there was I don’t know. OK, because I would say, well, what about like sexual harassment and these types of things?
They’re like, oh, well, that doesn’t really exist in Italy. And I’m like, oh, yeah, right. It does.
So bringing up those types of topics. And so Italy, I mean, like any place, it’s got a lot of contradictions. So on the one hand, it’s like, you know, got this beautiful fashion and it’s very like, you know, the sex appeal and they’re really into all of that.
But at the same at the other hand, I mean, Italy has some of these outstanding feminists like Oriana Falaci, these are journalists and these really strong, you know, women who are so I don’t know. I mean, so all of that kind of stuff. And there is this idea that a lot of people would say, like, oh, it’s not so bad to provarci, like to give it a try, like ask this woman out, like even though you’re not that interested, but it’s sort of what you’re supposed to.
….Culture is slowly changing, I believe, there’s a little bit of that, that it’s not such an insult and, you know, and from a Midwestern puritanical sort of view, it’s pretty shocking.
Ashley Thornberg
Let me ask you a little bit more on that when you say the culture is changing, because I remember this court case from several years ago. And again, if there are young or sensitive ears around now is a good time to dish out of this conversation, because there was a high profile case in Italy that said a woman couldn’t be raped if she was wearing tight jeans because it would just be too hard for the aggressor to get off. You spent time in Italy at this point a few decades ago.
How do you talk about the changes that you’re seeing specific to that kind of attitude?
Eric Dregni
Well, I think when those cases came into the newspapers, a lot of people were out rightly outraged because they said, oh, and also because, you know, there’s this case of this woman being sexually assaulted in a Maserati and the judge concluded that, well, it’s too tight in the Maserati to actually do anything. So things like that. And then people were outraged.
I mean, it’s sort of the same type of machismo that we see, like, oh, you know, they sort of deserved it or these kinds of things because of the clothes they wear. And it’s like, of course, that’s ludicrous. I think that society is changing because, I mean, young women and young people in general, they just don’t.
It’s a different mentality now. I mean, they see that old kind of macho, big Italian families and, you know, and it’s that is changing.
Ashley Thornberg
Eric, how do you talk to your students, both in the United States and in Italy, about these kinds of subjects that can be really deeply held beliefs that would be vastly different from one culture to the next?
Eric Dregni
Yeah, that’s a good question, because seeing my students in Italy, their stereotypes of Americans are all that, you know, that everyone’s overweight, everyone has guns, everyone’s shooting and, you know, all of these things like that. And of course, there’s an element of truth to some of that. But then it’s like the vast majority.
It’s not that way. Just as we Americans, we have this mentality, oh, like Italy, they’re mafiosi, they’re doing, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s like, well, there’s an element of truth in that.
But it’s not the majority of what’s happening over there. And to just put on just to understand that cultures, I mean, there’s a million like to say, like, oh, everyone in the Midwest is this way. And it’s like, well, there are certain tendencies, but it’s just not true for the most part.
So to try to dissect that and figure out, OK, what am I? What is the historical reality of like, OK, the mafia began in Sicily or whatever. But up in the north, it’s you know, it’s there’s other things that they have different problems up there, just as in the US, like where this democratic country. But then Italy, in a way, is much more democratic with all their representational parliament and all of that.
So we have to kind of look in the mirror like, OK, what are we projecting onto these other countries that we’re not looking at in ourselves?
Ashley Thornberg
Eric, you’ve written about 20 books at this point. What are you working on now?
Eric Dregni
One book I’m working on is about raising or trying to raise bilingual kids, Bilingual Bambini. And so bringing them to the Concordia language villages, which you mentioned, bringing them over to Italy, trying to, you know, in the Midwest here, we’re pretty much as far as you can get into the English speaking world. And so how do you incorporate another culture into our daily lives at home?
And, you know, it’s when going out in public and speaking, so I always speak Italian to my kids and a lot of people just think, who is this guy? Why? Because I don’t look like I’m not Italian, so I don’t look like that.
So it’s pretty interesting, the different looks and the different feelings and trying to be citizens of the world, yet live in Minnesota.
Ashley Thornberg
Eric Dregni is an educator and an author we’ve been visiting about his book, Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital. Eric, thanks so much for joining us today.
Eric Dregni
Thanks for having me on. Arrivederci.
NOTE: AI provided the transcription of the above interview and there may be errors. The audio of the show is the official record.