Italiano
Marco Polo was avidly curious about the customs, stories, and rites of the people who lived in the empire of Kublai Khan.
Although, food customs did not matter to him that much.
Proof of this is that in his Book of the Marvels of the World he dwells very little, and in any case briefly, on describing popular foods or drinks in the Far East.
Nor their etiquette, considering that he does not make the slightest reference to chopsticks (meanwhile, in the West, the use of the fork was a rare extravagance, moreover opposed by the Catholic Church).
As for food, in fact, what strikes Marco is perhaps what is missing: bread.
Certainly not Spaghetti…
Apparently, a Westerner of that era, however experienced and cosmopolitan, could not understand the idea that some people did not consume bread, a staple food that had accompanied every known civilization since the time of Adam and Eve.
He speaks of it when describing Ormus (now Hormoz, in Iran):
“The food of the natives is different from ours; for were they to eat wheaten bread and esh meat their health would be injured”,
because of the heat so strong that it makes the land unsuitable for sowing wheat or grazing.
And again, when he tells of what he found in the province of Manji (now Hangzhou, in China), where the wheat gives such poor harvests that it is not used to make bread, but only processed to produce “vermicelli or pastry“.
In Yachi (probably what is now the city of Kunming, China):
“The land is fertile in rice and wheat. The people, however, do not use wheaten bread, which they esteem unwholesome, but eat rice.”
And finally in the kingdom of Fansur (Barus, district on the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia):
“There is not any wheat nor other corn, but the food of the inhabitants is rice, with milk”.
However, there the Venetian traveller was amazed at how they extracted flour from a tree (sago tree) and made a kind of bread very similar to the barley one.
Anyway… did you feel like eating bread?
Well, what I can recommend is a Inox Bim retarder proofer to make your dough rise when and how you like!
