Italian Cuisine Truisms

You may come to this conclusion from eating in Italian restaurants outside of Italy, or from films, but it's wrong: Italian cooking is instead seasonal, with lighter, defter dishes in the summer; fried foods, which cook quickly and thus help keep the kitchen cool, are popular in summer, as are briskly sautéed dishes, light soups, and quickly prepared pasta dishes, especially with tomato sauce. In winter, on the other hand, people prefer foods that will stick to the ribs, helping to keep the cold at bay, for example thick minestroni and hearty soups, pasta with meat sauce, lasagna, slowly simmered stews (with polenta in the north), and hearty roasts.

Ok, so things are lighter in Italy. But why is Italian cooking heavy abroad?

The Italian immagrents who left the Peninsula a century ago were fleeing a poverty so fierce it was simply called miseria -- misery. Many had never eaten meat more than once a week in their lives, so as they settled, got jobs, and began to earn money, they filled their tables with the richness of their new lives to banish the meories of the hardships they had endured.

Dino Coltro's recollections of the peasant diet in the Veneto.