Good for lust, fends off rust: it must be tiramisu

There is even a Tiramisu hero, here

Ever since Cat the Kat decided to take her blogging sabbatical, this weblog has been devoid of anything resembling a Food Correspondent. It is therefore with some trepidation that this Kat tiptoes into the wonderful if somewhat calorific world of the tiramisu. The impetus to do so has been supplied by a prompt from Chris Torrero (katpat!), who furnished him with this link to "Tiramisu claimed by Treviso", which recently appeared online on The Telegraph. This piece states, in relevant part:

"...  Treviso, near Venice, is demanding to be recognised as the creator of the popular dish, saying it was invented there in the 1970s. The move comes as regions and countries becoming increasingly protective of their signature food and drink, with Naples promoting itself as the home of pizza, France guarding Champagne and the EU telling Croatia that it can no longer use the name prosek for one of its wines because of the similarity to Italy’s prosecco. The regional government of Veneto will draw up the dossier about tiramisu's provenance and lodge it with the European Union in Brussels.

They will seek to have it given Specialità tradizionale garantita (Guaranteed traditional speciality) status, as was achieved for Neapolitan pizza in 2010.

The campaign for official recognition of the dessert’s provenance is being led by Luca Zaia, the president of the Veneto region, which includes Treviso. “It’s like pizza in Napoli,” he said. [No it's not, scoffs Merpel, who once saw a pizza.  Everyone knows that pizzas are round and flat; they come in cardboard boxes and are delivered on motorbikes] “We are going to present a dossier to obtain a declaration that tiramisu is a typical Treviso dish, to combat the many imitations that you find elsewhere.”

... its exact provenance has never been proved beyond doubt [that's because they haven't found any fossilised remains to carbon-date], and there are claims that it was invented in the 17th century in honour of a Grand Duke of Tuscany, or in Turin in the 19th century as a gift to Camillo Cavour, Italy’s first prime minister, or even as an energy-giving treat for prostitutes [and their clients, here] working in an Italian brothel in the 1950s.

“It is right that we ask for recognition for this regional dish, in order to raise the profile of Treviso and the Veneto region in terms of food,” said Mr Zaia, who served as minister for agriculture during the last government of Silvio Berlusconi [a man who, by all accounts, is not in need of any "energy-giving treat" of the sort mentioned in the previous paragraph] ... 

“It’s a product that is at risk of being imitated in many different versions, which do not do justice to the place where it was born" ...”.

This Kat wonders if the good folk of Treviso have left it a little late, now that so many people have been registering TIRAMISU as a trade mark: a quick click on the UKIPO website shows a list a couple of pages long of word and word-and-device marks which include it.  For example, there's a Community trade mark for "lecterns and supports for computer notebooks" and there's a UK registration for "preservatives against rust and the deterioration of wood". He never knew it had such qualities ...

Merpel is sad to see variations on recipes described as "imitations".  Often a change or two is introduced for reasons such as non-availability of ingredients, health or cost -- and the result can be even more pleasing. Why are these variations always "imitations" and not "improvements", she wonders.

The BBC's tiramisu here
Health Magazine's tiramisu for 300 calories or less here
Tiramisu Martini here