FOOD CULTURE

Food in Italy

Food in Italy is a tradition. Italian cuisine is Mediterranean and it variates from region to region. For example, here in Sicily, one of the two big isles, you can find a lot of sea food, while in Piemonte, a mountainous region in the north of Italy, you can find lots of meat that comes from hunted wild animals. This goes also for pasta and pizza, the most famous Italian food. For instance, in Naples you can find a high crust pizza, while in Rome you can find a low crust pizza. With pasta the situation is more complex because there are hundreds of versions, cooked and elaborated in other hundreds of versions.

Usually, during lunch you eat a first and second course with the particularity that they are simple and normal in quantity dishes: for example, as a first course we eat pasta with tomato sauce or pesto while for the second a slice of roasted meat accompanied with a salad and then some fruit and at the end a coffee. As for the weekend: on Saturdays we usually eat out with friends in a pizzeria for dinner while on Sundays we eat at home with our family and sometimes we eat fish such as linguine allo scoglio or farfalle with salmon and as a second course a slice of swordfish.

During the Easter period there are 2 important days: Easter Sunday, whose lunch is done with the family and the main dishes are homemade pasta, seasonal vegetables, savory pies, meats and cheeses and of course lamb. The other day is Easter Monday which is spent entirely in the countryside with either family or friends and usually you eat pork kebabs, savory ricotta pie, chicken breast, grilled vegetables and spring onions.

It is very common for guests to come home lunch or dinner. At lunch there are 5 courses: first we have an appetizer which usually consists of a platter of cold cuts. Then we have a first course, which consist of a pasta dish. The main course consists mainly of a meat dish. After that we usually eat some fruit. Finally we eat dessert. At the very end we usually have a coffee or a digestive. However not everyone has it. The pasta dish can be either baked pasta, which is pasta with tomato sauce, ragu and béchamel, or pasta carbonara, which is pasta with egg, pecorino and pork cheek, however everyone makes it as they want. We usually go out for dinner and have a pizza. Overall, a meal with guests is almost the same as a normal meal, the only difference is that the portions are bigger.

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