Taste Italy
Italia
Twenty regions arguing, affectionately, about whose pasta is correct. The useful answer is local produce, quiet technique, and an allergy to wasting a good tomato.
Emilia-Romagna's egg pasta and cured pork, Campania's fried street food and tomatoes, Sicily's Arab-Norman sweetness, Liguria's pesto, Veneto's rice: neighbouring countries in practice. Carbonara, as Roman trattorie cook it now, is guanciale, egg, pecorino and pepper — no cream, no peas. Cacio e pepe is even sterner: cheese, pepper, pasta water, emulsion. Pasta alla Norma is Catania's eggplant, tomato and ricotta salata. Risotto alla Milanese wants bone marrow and saffron, not a random handful of vegetables. Focaccia in Liguria is oil and salt in the dimples; pizza Margherita is a Neapolitan oven craft. Ribollita is Tuscan bread-and-bean thrift. Tiramisu is a late-century dessert that still splits families over alcohol and sogginess.
30 recipes · 3 cuisines
Essential dishes
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More dishes
Further Italy listings, including shorter editorial recipes and imported methods.
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Regional cuisines
Think you know Italy food?
29 quiz dishes. Optional — Passport stamps still come from cooking.
Take the Italy food quizFood history
Roman, Etruscan, Arab, Spanish and Austrian influences layered onto peninsula agriculture without producing one national kitchen. Tomato only became central after the Americas. Many dishes now treated as eternal — carbonara among them — settled in the twentieth century. Home cooking still organises itself around market vegetables, dried pasta, and the pot of something already in the fridge. North and south remain more useful than 'Italian' as a single flavour.
Common ingredients
Techniques
- soffritto
- al dente boiling
- emulsifying pasta water
- slow sauce
- grilling