Italian food is enjoyed all over the world. It comes from 20 regions of the country, each with its own unique characteristics. Certain regions of Italy are known for certain dishes but can be made differently depending on the region where the chef is located. The best way to sample these cuisines is to travel to Italy. If a trip to Italy is not in your future, there are a number of local Italian restaurants that provide many of these dishes. Or, you can be adventurous and try to make them from recipes found on many popular Italian cuisine websites.
Dishes specific to certain cities include Tuscany’s Campi, which is braised goat meat, and Liguria’s corzetti of Valpolcevera, which is pasta shaped like a figure eight. These dishes are unheard of in Italy’s other cities.
The cooking styles and preferences of Italian chefs vary greatly. But no matter where a dish is served, it has a rich history behind it. Recipes can and do go back thousands of years, yet others are much more modern.
Once the New World was discovered, many recipes were created from scratch, with no history to support them. Recipes written after the discovery of the New World included ingredients such as cocoa, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, corn, and peppers. These dishes quickly made their way to the shores of Europe.
Certain dishes originating in Italy are associated with specific holidays. For example, Easter calls for a special style of Italian bread. It is made using ingredients such as vegetable oil, anise seed, and mixed candied fruit, among others. Christmas also calls for a special style of bread in Italian cooking called Panettone. It is made using raisins and citron, as well as the typical ingredients used to make bread.
Zelten cakes are another Christmas staple. The flavor and consistency makes it comparable to fruit cake. However, Zelten bread is generally baked two weeks before the holiday. It is believed that this allows time for its flavor and texture to improve.
In Northern Italy’s Tyrol region, strudel is a much loved food. While Northern Italy’s strudels are delicate, Southern Italy’s strudels are more filling. One of the differences is that they use many more eggs, and olive oil as a substitute for butter. Naples, Italy is well known for its struffoli, which is egg pastry fried into cubes that have colored sugar and honey coating them.
These are just a few of the foods that are most associated with Italy. The diversity of the country’s dishes makes them popular in almost every country in the world.
Source: Patch
