Italy is a country of great diversity nearly in every facet of life and food is one of them. From the north to the south, Italy offers a large variety of crops such as: tomatoes, lemon, garlic and olives in the south, rice and maize in the north. This rich diversity of ingredients, which are locally available, has naturally affected the famous recipes of Italian cuisine as never seen on any other cuisine.
The most famous dish of Italian cuisine, known as pasta, has more than 400 different forms. There are also many different varieties of sauces, which are undisputed counterparts of pasta dishes. Each sauce, cream, tomato, cheese, meat or fish has a matching form of noodle. Pizza is also a very famous dish of Italian cuisine. Most of the great Italian dishes come from peasant heritage and the common characteristic is that they can be prepared very quickly and economically.
Tuscany Cuisine
Tuscany: Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo, Fiesole
Just as Dante executed a kind of coup...claiming de facto by his masterpiece the Commedia, that the local Florentine dialect was henceforth to be known as THE Italian vernacular...so Florentine cooking, especially that of the early Renaissance, has become the resonant voice of Italian food in European history. Great Florentine cooking blossomed, appropriately, in the same cultural garden as did Giotto, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. In fact, Florentine feasts were major cultural happenings -- various courses were interspersed with performances by actors, dancers, or musicians. The table provided an occasion for visual artists to create elaborately wrought sculptures and dioramas out of butter, sugar, ice, and even napkins (which sometimes were folded so as to release a live bird or other creature when unfolded by the guest). Despite the over-the-top performances of the feast, the Florentine Renaissance, especially as it occurred in the kitchen, became a puritan-esque rejection of excess and rich sauces. Recipes glorified the simple goodness of the ingredients. Sauces were light if present at all. Even in the Medici palaces, herbs and oils displaced butter and cream.
Celebration of pure, simple goodness is an easy task for Florentines, who live in the Eden-like bounty of Tuscany. Game is abundant, and seafood always near. Tuscany's famous white Chianina cattle are butchered into steaks, which are grilled and served rare and unadorned save perhaps for a squeeze of lemon (Bistecca or Costata alla Fiorentina). These cows produce little milk, and Tuscany therefore uses more olive oil than butter, and has no distinctive cheese-making tradition. Olive oil from this region is among Italy's best. Italian olive-o-philes are as fanatical and exacting as French oenophiles. Chianti is a regional wine and is the perfect mate for nearly all her foods. Tomatoes, potatoes, and white beans, all originally imported from the Americas have become seamlessly integrated into the cuisine. Rosemary, sage, basil, and parsley are the main cooking herbs; nutmeg and black pepper the most common spices. Other raw ingredients, which mark the local fare, are artichokes, melon, pumpkins, chestnuts (an ancient ingredient used to make flour for cakes, sauces, etc.), mushrooms, spinach (which is, of course, the trademark ingredient in anything cooked 'Florentine'). The Tuscan cook loves to roast meats over an open fire, to cook a great pot of soup, and to coax the best out of her raw ingredients.
Roman Cuisine
Roman Cooking!
While there is not a Roman haute cuisine, Rome has a long history of sumptuous feasting. In ancient Rome, banquets presented such elaborate displays of wealth that periodically; 'sumptuary laws' were passed to control the waste. Hosts spent fortunes on their guests -- serving fish (sometimes guests were given the pleasure of watching the fish die slowly in a glass jar set before them), roe deer, suckling pig, partridges, flamingoes, and parrots. Garum, ancient Roman seasoning mixtures, combined a huge variety of flavours including dill, anise, hyssop, thyme, rue, cumin, poppy seeds, garlic, fermented fish sauce ... the list goes on and on.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Tuscan Pope Leo X, né Giovanni de' Médici, brought to Rome the theatrical Florentine feasts that served more restrained food. Today, Roman cooking is resolutely simple. Classic southern Italian flavours such as garlic, black pepper, rosemary, and parsley are all present with an added penchant for mint. Beans, as in all parts of the country, are important. The Romans have a particular fondness for organ meats. You name it, they love it. In keeping with this, Romans are particularly good at fritto misto -- the classic mound of mixed fried meats. Their famous meat dishes include roast suckling pig and abbacchio, the youngest suckling lambs, which have never eaten grass. These suckling lambs are usually between 30 and 60 days old and have lost most of their baby fat but their meat is not yet tough. Abbacchio is traditionally roasted (arrosto); but is also often prepared alla cacciatora (simmered in olive oil, vinegar, rosemary, and garlic), or stewed with a sauce of lemon and egg (abbacchio brodettato). Fish and snails are popular and easy to find in the markets, despite the fact that Rome is not a port city.
The Jewish ghetto in Rome, which was founded in 1554 under Papal orders (the Roman Jewish community dates back at least to the first century of the Common (Christian) Era when the Romans conquered Jerusalem), has developed its own variation on Roman cooking and today produces the best deep-fried baby artichokes around (carciofi alla giudea). It was the cooking in the Jewish ghetto, which demonstrated to Italy and the world that the eggplant, a member of the nightshade family, was not poisonous.
Italy is a country of great diversity nearly in every facet of life and food is one of them. From the north to the south, Italy offers a large variety of crops such as: tomatoes, lemon, garlic and olives in the south, rice and maize in the north. This rich diversity of ingredients, which are locally available, has naturally affected the famous recipes of Italian cuisine as never seen on any other cuisine.
Tuscany: Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo, Fiesole
Roman Cooking!
