The Chianti Chronicles

October is Italian-American Heritage Month, and it’s also Sun-Dried Tomato Month.  Those are two good reasons to remember how and what famous Italians ate.  Consider these tasty tidbits, most of which are drawn from our book:

• Michelangelo Buonarroti was often too busy to eat. During periods of intense labor, the Renaissance artist would simply nibble on a piece of bread as he worked. When not on the job, he enjoyed a sweet white wine called Trebbiano, which he often shared with friends.

• Sometimes the friendship between composer Giacomo Puccini and conductor Arturo Toscanini went south.  One Christmas, Puccini sent Toscanini an Italian sweet bread called panettone.  After shipping the bread, Puccini recalled that he and Toscanini were then on bad terms, so he followed up the gift with a telegram reading: PANETTONE SENT BY MISTAKE. PUCCINI.  The next day, he got a telegram back: PANETTONE EATEN BY MISTAKE. TOSCANINI.

• When the Roman emperor Vitellius was presented with the Shield of Minerva, he was preparing to eat, not to enter battle. The Shield was his favorite dish — a hodgepodge of pike livers, peacock brains, flamingo tongues and other exotic ingredients.

• Actress Sophia Loren once declared, “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”

• Pope Clement VII loved mustard and consumed some at most meals.  The pontiff frequently granted favors to those who brought him a mustard-laden recipe that he enjoyed.  No wonder those who won Clement’s assistance were sometimes called “the pope’s mustard maker.”

• Italian premier Benito Mussolini felt that meals should not take more than three minutes and that no one should devote more than ten minutes per day to eating.  Before he rose to power, he and his political allies would literally duel with opposition groups.  Mussolini had a special code phrase to inform his wife he would be dueling: “Today we’re making spaghetti.”

• Frank Sinatra left his family’s home in New Jersey at the age of 17 and moved to New York City, seeking to launch a professional singing career.  During his first few years in the city, cream cheese-and-nut sandwiches were the mainstay of Sinatra's low-budget diet.

• In ancient Rome, silphium was an herb that grew wild and was highly prized by gastronomes.  But the plant is extinct today because the Romans overharvested it.  The very last silphium on Earth was devoured by the despotic emperor Nero.

• Enrico Fermi, the great 20th century Italian physicist, never needed to be summoned to meals. “The alarm clock in Enrico’s brain worked with extreme precision,” recalled his wife Laura.  “Enrico was never late and never early for our dinner at one and for our supper at eight.”

• In the year 888, Guido, the duke of Spoleto, was viewed as a contender to assume the throne of the Frankish kingdom. But his frugal dining habits helped derail his bid.  “No one who is content with a modest meal can reign over us,” one of Guido’s critics insisted.

• Celebrated tenor Luciano Pavarotti, a pasta lover, was estimated to have gained and lost more than 5,000 pounds during his operatic career. He once theorized that fat people were happy because their nerves were “well protected.”

• Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef to Pope Pius V in the 16th century, wrote a recipe for omelets that specified that the eight eggs were to be two-day-old eggs rather than fresh ones because fresh eggs “don’t turn out as yellow as the others.”

• Pop-rock singer Billy Joel — who wrote and sang the 1977 song Scenes From an Italian Restaurant — came up with the words for his song “Big Man on Mulberry Street” from the walks he took to New York City’s Little Italy district to purchase food.