Italian cuisine is
regional. Extremely; though you may think about, say, Tuscan, or Friulano, or
Piemontese cooking, the variations are actually much more local.
A couple of examples:
To celebrate
Christmas, the residents of the Tuscan city of Siena enjoy
Panforte, a
nutty fruitcake sweetened with honey that dates back to the middle ages, and
Ricciarelli,
chewy orange-laced amaretti. Come the season, every bar and pastry shop makes
them and proudly puts them on display. In Florence, which is just a half hour's
drive from Siena, you wouldn't have found either, at least not freshly made, until quite recently, and Florentines who buy Panforte (much is bought by tourists) say it's a Sienese thing.
Friuli Venzia
Giulia has many ties with central Europe, and as a result the cuisine
includes ingredients one simply doesn't find in much of the rest of Italy.
Sauerkraut, for example, which the inhabitants of the highlands above Trieste
combine with beans to make
Jota
(pronounced Yota), an unusual but tasty bean soup that's one of the
area's signature dishes. Jota is made with sauerkraut as far inland as Gorizia,
about 40 miles, where they also add barley, but if you continue on to Cormons,
another 9 miles, you'll find it
made
with brovada, pickled turnips, rather than sauerkraut. And if you continue
on to Udine, another 15 miles, people consider it to be foreign and don't make
it.
The reason for this
culinary fragmentation is simple: With the exception of the nobility and the
clergy, before WWII most Italians simply didn't travel, and as a result every
town and every valley has something unique. Neighboring towns and valleys will
also share techniques, or recipes, albeit with individualistic twists, but from
one end of a region to the other the picture can change completely. Therefore,
when speaking of regional cuisines, it's a good idea to keep in mind that we
are really dealing with a series of local cuisines, each of which is related to
those around it.
Having said this, one
can make some broad distinctions from North to South.
The Use of
Fats Though now
extravirgin
olive oil is popular throughout Italy, this has not always been true. With
the exception of a few areas near lakes that exert a moderating influence,
Northern Italy is too cold for olive trees to grow, and as a result much of the
population used butter for cooking. In much of Central and Southern Italy, and
the Islands, on the other hand, people cooked with olive oil. Much but not all;
rendered lard was used in Campania, Basilicata, the Abruzzo, and Calabria until
recently.
The Kinds of
Pasta Used In the days before industrialization, dry pasta made
from durum wheat, water, and a pinch of salt (spaghetti,
rigatoni,
and so on), was easier to make, and therefore more popular, in the South, where
warmer temperatures and increased sunlight hastened the drying of the pasta.
And indeed, though there are now dry pasta factories everywhere, modern
Italians generally feel that southerners still make the best dry pasta.
Central and parts of Northern Italy (especially Emilia Romagna and
Piemonte) are instead known for fresh pasta made with eggs, flour, and salt,
for example tagliatelle,
tajarin, or
pappardelle,
all of which are flat forms. The center and north are also known for stuffed
pasta, for example
ravioli
or tortellini, and
one can find these kinds of pasta in areas where they didn't eat much flat or
dry pasta until recently, for example Lombardia. What did they eat in the
sections of the north where pasta wasn't as popular in the past? Polenta, or
corn meal mush, which was a staple food of the poor, and
risotto;
most of the world's best short-grained strains of rice, including Arborio,
Carnaroli, and Vialone Nano are North Italian.
Popular
Vegetables The South is much warmer and has a much longer growing
season than the North. As a result vegetables that thrive under hotter
conditions, especially
tomatoes,
are more popular in the South, which thus also has many more dishes with red
sauces than the North. Among the other more Southern vegetables are
eggplant and
broccoli
raab. In the North, on the other hand, one finds plants better adapted to
cooler temperatures and less sunlight, for example head cabbages, black leaf
kale, cardoons, and
radicchio.
Foreign
Influences Given its position in the middle of the Mediterranean,
Italy is a crossroads, and many foreign powers have left their mark. As you
might expect, you'll find quite a bit of French influence (regional French, not
haute cuisine) in the areas of Liguria, Piemonte, and the Valle D'Aosta
bordering France, and Austro-Hungarian influences in the Veneto, Trentino Alto
Adige, and Friuli Venezia Giulia. There is also Spanish influence, especially
in Milano, which was under the Spaniards for a time; this Spanish influence
surfaces again in the South, which was ruled by the Bourbons until the
unification of Italy in mid 1850s, and in Sardinia, which was ruled directly by
Spain for a time. You'll find English influence in Tuscany, where the classic
bistecca
alla Fiorentina and
zuppa
Inglese, English steak and English trifle, respectively, were initially
prepared for the enjoyment of the sizeable English colony that settled Tuscany
in the 1800s. And you'll find Jewish influences in Rome, dating to the 1500s,
when Jews fleeing the Inquisition settled in the Eternal City. Finally, in
Sicily you'll find a fascinating mixture of Roman influence, Arab influences
dating both to the time that Sicily was an Arab province, and to more recent
trade with North Africa (cuscus, for
example), Norman French influence, and Spanish influence.
In short, Italian
food is as varied as the land and the people, and this means that there are a
great many delights to be discovered.
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