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“In 1996, I was travelling, as I frequently do, on the National 231 road that links Cuneo to Asti, and that crosses through Bra, the provincial town where I live and where the Slow Food international movement is headquartered. […] On the way back home, I stopped off at a restaurant belonging to a friend who I hadn’t seen for quite a few years, and who cooked fabulous peperonata5. I wanted to taste it again to boost me up after this exhausting trip which was almost over. But, to my dismay, I ate a horrible peperonata that had no taste whatsoever. The chef’s skills could not be called into question but I still asked for explanations as to why the taste had become so bland. My friend told me that he no longer used the same raw material to make this famous peperonata, whose taste and smell had remained engraved in my mind: Quadrato Asti peppers, a deliciously-tasty, flavoursome, fleshy variety, were now rarely grown in this region and he had replaced them with cheaper peppers imported from Holland which were grown intensively from hybrid varieties. A such, the result was visually optimal, an array of bright colours, basically peppers that were perfect for export – you can fit thirty-two into a crate, not one less, not one more, and they’re all ever-so appealing, all identical -he told me, but appallingly tasteless.”
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