N° 42: A Three-Generation Mill in Piedmont, Italy
my conversation with Fausto Marino of Mulino Marino
Good morning,
Last spring, while researching a piece about farinata for the New York Times, I came across the Mulino (Mill) Marino via the River Cafe London. The Italian mill near the birthplace of farinata supplies the chickpea flour for the London restaurant’s chickpea pancakes. I emailed the Mulino Marino and got a warm response from Fausto, one of the several Marinos who run the company, and a couple of days later we had a phone call. As just a tiny bit of our conversation made its way into my short NYT story, I’m sharing more here. (My chickpea pancake recipe (which is not the traditional recipe!—the departure is explained in the head note) is here. I should note that in a comparison with an admittedly very limited sample size (one Italian brand and one American brand), I’ve found that Italian chickpea flour (purchased at the Italian market in Chelsea Market) is milled much finer than its American-milled counterpart (Bob’s Red Mill). That means it absorbs water much more readily and produces a farinata with a much creamier, less coarse, texture.
And, unrelated, here are some things I’ve enjoyed lately:
reading Deborah Eisenberg’s “Urgent Messages from Eternity: An exhibition of Franz Kafka’s postcards, letters, and manuscript pages rekindles our sense of him as a writer deeply connected to his own time and place.” It’s here in The New York Review of Books and is inspired by an exhibition at The Morgan Library that runs through April 13, 2025;
listening to “The Internet Dilemma” and “40,000 Recipes for Murder” episodes of Radiolab;
reading “My Father Was a Conservative Evangelical Pastor. Then I Came Out” by Timothy White in The New York Times. Here is a gift link to the piece, so that you can read it even if you don’t have a subscription.
As always, thank you for reading this. Have a good weekend. Talk to you soon.
Brian
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Above: Fausto’s cousin Federico Marino with a printout of the New York Times story for which Fausto and I spoke—and a bag of their chickpea flour
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A THREE-GENERATION MILL IN PIEDMONT, ITALY
An Interview with Fausto Marino of Mulino Marino
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This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
So you are in Cossano Belbo in Piedmont? Yes, southern Piedmont—very close to Barbaresco and Barolo. Our village, Cosano Belbo, is in the Belbo valley. It’s a small town of the 900 people and our land is quite narrow and our village is divided between the cultivation of grapes on the south of the valley and the northern part of the valley where you see the cultivation of grains.
Imagine that where we are—the hilly Langhe area—it’s the pillow, let’s say, between the start of the Maritime Alps in the west and the flat Pianura Padana in the east, which includes the cities of Milan, Piacenza, and Parma.
Are you at the mill? Yes, I’m at the mill at the moment, milling farro (spelt).
Above: Fausto Marino at the mill
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