And the day came, when we understood we were not poor anymore.
Our century-long history of "people used to negative events" was over;
We were not those brave, determined and adventurous people any more.
On that day we stopped speaking our harsh language and started to eat junk food.
A great and noble cuisine died on that day;
That was not a world-famous cuisine; nobody knew it; we ate those dishes secretly,
But we were thinking of everyone else, who was eating ambrosia.
We were eating those dishes instead,
They were cooked by our grandmothers and mothers and aunties and sisters,
They also looked strong and harsh and all of them were great cooks,
They as good as the Sistine Chapel's artists.
Their cuisine meant hard work and patience, love and aromatic herbs;
This was a kind of cuisine fit for "slim" people, living on a barren soil,
Their land made of rocks and hand made terraces cut out from the sheer rocks,
And then the barren olive-trees.
People eat fast food now;
They do not know what they eat;
The magic of a meal has disappeared, the sheer need food is the only one left.
That cuisine was not made for people living for eating;
But for people, who live while eating;
There were not oily dressings and sauces or strange and curious dishes;
It took hours at the stove and no trick whatsoever!
I think of my travelling around the world,
I did lose a lot of my land!
And over here, in Liguria, people still ate in that special way…
Thinking of this … I'd cry my eyes out.
Life gave me a lot;
But I lost Liguria's cuisine once and for all.
We are proud of the discovery of America,
It's nothing if compared to the Pesto sauce's recipe.
America was there to be discovered;
If the Pesto sauce had not been there,
Liguria itself would not have existed.
I'm not talking of that kind of Pesto Sauce,
Milan's people like to eat;
That's not Genoa's Pesto sauce,
It's just an ugly cream;
I'm talking of our great Pesto sauce,
A lively product spreading around the intense fragrance of the strong cloves of garlic
And the noble fragrance of Liguria's basil.
Now everybody has understood ours was a great cuisine,
and so are our wines;
Stones and the sun and the breathing of the sea are these wines' ingredients,
they smell like the most beautiful July's dawn;
And this book aims at waking up the dead.
Vittorio G. Rossi

Foreword to the book "Cucina e Vini della Liguria" (Liguria's cuisine and wines), written by Giuseppe Gavotti, Sabatelli Editore, 1973