Typically prepared with fresh ingredients from recipes spanning generations, Italian food is an integral part of Italian heritage and one of the country’s main cultural exports. Italian cuisine is famous around the world for its richness and diversity. Sauces, pastas, sausages, wines, cheeses, and breads differ not just from region to region, but from town to town.
Although many people associate Italian food with a few standard dishes like pizza and spaghetti Bolognese, there is actually tremendous diversity among the various regional cuisines of Italy. From delicate tortelli filled with squash in Lombardy to spaghetti tossed with salted gray mullet roe in Sardinia, regional food preferences and cooking styles vary widely across Italy.
Some recipes are thousands of years old and have changed very little over the course of time; others were born in the Renaissance or after the discovery of the New World, when a wealth of new foodstuffs like tomatoes, beans, peppers, zucchini, corn, and cocoa reached European shores; still others appeared in the last decade or so, novel elaborations on ancient themes.
Each recipe, each dish has its own history. Tracing down the culinary history of Italy we find that it started to make its mark during the Roman Empire movement more than 2000 years ago. Italy may be home to the world’s oldest known cookbook. This suggests the potential for unifying characteristics within such diversity. Sometimes attributed to the famous epicure Marcus Gavius Apicius of the first century A.D., the cookbook De re coquinaria (On Cookery) is a collection of hundreds of ancient Roman procedures for preparing dishes.
Italians are very keen on preserving culinary traditions of their own area. Recipes are passed down from mothers to daughters (and to sons as well), and a girl's ability to cook is still valued as an asset when she is dating someone. In Italy cooking is regarded as a way to communicate one's feelings, and being unable to cook or having no interest in food is seen as a social impairment.
The real lesson Italian cuisine taught the world is a simple one: it’s all about what you eat and the quality of the ingredients you use. Olive oil is not just oil. Tomatoes must be fresh. Garlic is good for the hearth and red wine is great as long as it’s good. In Italy wine is considered a food too, and it's not uncommon to see children as young as 13 allowed to have a little wine mixed with water to drink during their meals.
August 5, 2013
Photo sources: wikipedia.org
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