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Regional Italian Cuisine: Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking The Italian Grill

Italy is comprised of twenty regions, each with their own distinct culinary traditions shaped by geographic, historical and climactic differences. For much of its history, Italy was made up of independent city-states and regions rather than a unified kingdom, which helped preserve varied regional cuisines. While some regional influences came from neighbors like France and Greece, Italy only recently developed improved infrastructure and a post-war economy that facilitated a large-scale exchange of cooking styles nationwide. The author's travels throughout Italy revealed that even neighboring towns often had their own unique versions of dishes or specialties.

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221 views1 page

Regional Italian Cuisine: Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking The Italian Grill

Italy is comprised of twenty regions, each with their own distinct culinary traditions shaped by geographic, historical and climactic differences. For much of its history, Italy was made up of independent city-states and regions rather than a unified kingdom, which helped preserve varied regional cuisines. While some regional influences came from neighbors like France and Greece, Italy only recently developed improved infrastructure and a post-war economy that facilitated a large-scale exchange of cooking styles nationwide. The author's travels throughout Italy revealed that even neighboring towns often had their own unique versions of dishes or specialties.

Uploaded by

gadmale
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Regional Italian Cuisine

Italy is made up of twenty regions with distinct characteristics. Every town, every village, makes the same dish in vastly different ways, and every town and village has its proudest specialty. These cooking traditions define people's identities just as much as their dialects and their traditional costumes. Local cooking preferences and customs are shaped by geographic, historical, and climactic differences: some regions are landlocked and mountainous, others hug the sea and are hilly; some regions have absorbed Arab or Greek influences, others have been marked by the French or Austrians; some regions live under the dazzling Mediterranean sun most of the year, others have cold winters, snow, fog, and harsh winds. Italy is a small country (less than half the size of Texas), but it is one with a long and venerable history. From the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 to 1861, when it was finally unified under one kingdom, Italy was made up of independent city states, republics, and regions that spent much of their time fighting off encroaching neighbors and outside intruders. This, along with the fact that the large-scale exchange of culinary traditions among Italians is a recent phenomenon (linked to modern roads, technology, and an improved post-war economy), explains how Italy managed to maintain its varied cuisines into the twenty-first century.

As I was researching Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking and The Italian Grill, I visited every region of Italy, from the well-traveled country roads of the Chianti wine zone in Tuscany to the deserted peaks of Monte Pollino in Basilicata. I talked to local cooks, ate at people's homes, shopped in the open-air markets. What I found, time and again, is that a dish that was much loved in one town was unheard of a few miles down the road. And what I conclu

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