A missed opportunity. Francesco Rizzo, a Cagliari native and owner of Cascina Ovi, a restaurant in Segrate, doesn't mince his words when commenting on the MasterChef episode set in Cagliari: "I was curious, even happy, to see one of Italy's most popular cooking shows set in my hometown. That's precisely why I was so disappointed."
"Even in areas with lesser gastronomic credentials," says Rizzo, " MasterChef has often managed to create 'great cinema,' presenting even simple products (a cheese, a tuber, a raw material) while explaining their use, meaning, and history. In Cagliari, I didn't see all this ." In the episode, "I didn't hear the origin of a raw material explained, the history of a dish, the reason for a tradition . Many excellent products were showcased, but without highlighting a single one as it deserved and as it could have ."
A passage Rizzo calls "emblematic" is the one dedicated to filindeu, often called the rarest pasta shape in the world: " They've given visibility to this masterpiece of Sardinian culinary art, but without explaining what filindeu are, why they're so precious, or the fact that the women who still know how to make them can be counted on one hand. Bruno Barbieri tried kneading them and then dismissed the result (decidedly far from tradition) with a 'they're not that bad.' I wonder what would have happened if the same scene had involved tortellini or another pasta symbolizing one of our Italian regions."
"Filindeu," Rizzo continues, "are an absolute rarity, a cultural as well as gastronomic heritage. The public hasn't been able to understand what they are, what value they have, or how to eat them. Nothing has remained in the eyes of the spectators. " "As for the dishes prepared by the aspiring chefs... let's forget it. More than a celebration of Sardinia, it seemed like a kind of picnic to me." "Once again," he concludes, "Sardinia hasn't been portrayed for what it truly is: a profound, complex, and cultured culinary civilization. MasterChef had an extraordinary opportunity. They squandered it."
(Unioneonline/D)