Here, I knew it, my travel companion Tomato immediately showed off. And certainly, it is ‘golden’ and has never missed an opportunity to show off. Throughout the long journey across America, it never stopped talking about itself.
I, on the other hand, am a complainer, I mutter, and so as soon as I arrived I started like this: ‘Who are these here? They say they call themselves Beans? But I am the Bean! They say they have always been here, and that I am ugly, stubby and vulgar. What a welcome!‘
And indeed there was a reason: when I landed from the New World, in the 1500s, Italy had known beans for centuries — only they were different, the broad bean, the black-eyed bean. I am the newcomer who takes the name and place at the table of those who were there before. Forget about ‘have always been here’: the intruder, if anything, is me.
However, someone is convinced that I can be useful and begins to cultivate me. I cost little and yield a lot, I don't need much care. They say that it was even a Medici, Caterina, who had me brought to France, who popularized me somewhat all over Europe. I would have had a nobility, in short — only no one ever noticed.
Time passes and I become ‘common’ for what makes me the substitute for meat. The meat of the poor! In the less clean kitchens, in pots left on the fire for hours. And yes, I am inside there grumbling, or as others say ‘muttering’.
Never a compliment, a phrase of gratitude, yet I keep at it. Nothing, I am always only a side dish of little value and even when they accompany me with pasta, only scraps, broken pieces, leftovers for me. Pasta and beans, a working lunch, an everyday thing.
Of course, with the consequence I generate in digestion, I am certainly not suitable for parties. And to think that when they explained to me that I cause ‘flatulence‘, I had hoped you had guided someone to music.
What a fool!
Yes, but some satisfaction, spending years satisfying a lot of people, I get that. For me, you start saying ‘it fits perfectly‘, because when you are hungry nothing is more welcome than a nice plate of beans. And if I think about it, how many armies, how many families, how many generations of peasants have made it through the evening thanks to me: far from being ‘a side dish of little value’, for centuries I have been the difference between eating and not eating. A little pride, in the end, I can also afford.
I remain a grumbler, a true ‘pot of beans,’ but with a full belly even a humble bean feels useful, sometimes even evocative. However, I do not forget my hidden nature, and when I am a bit sad I think that even a devil like Barbariccia, chief of the Malebranche, must have eaten beans, if it is true—as I like to believe—that Dante dismisses him like this: ‘He had from his ass made a little trumpet‘.
Giorgio Monaco
Credit cover Smart2Win
Giorgio Monaco
Experienced manager, strategic consultant and great enthusiast of Italian food.
