La cucina italiana

All right, amici, let’s talk about food. And when you’re talking about food in an Italian context, it’s a serious topic.  There are a lot of things Italians speak lightly about – politics, which are a joke, or love, which is a game – but no one plays around when talking about the Holy Four: football, coffee, food, and wine. I’m not going to attempt to tackle the first one, but I’ve gotten a fair bit of exposure to the other three and, like a true Italian, can now talk (and talk and talk) confidently about them. 

Given the breadth of the topic, I’ll start with some basic distinctions between Italian food and American Italian food, and the Dos and Don’ts of authentic cucina italiana.

THE MYTHS

            Fettuccine Alfredo is a thing.

False. Fettuccine Alfredo is as American as it gets. While Italy has its fair share of cream sauces – and delicious ones – you will never find an authentic Italian ristorante serving this dish. It breaks the rule of NEVER plopping chicken or other meat onto a pasta dish (see Myth #2), and it lacks the delicate craftsmanship common to all truly Italian sauces.

Pasta can be a side dish.

Incorrect. Pasta is its own piatto. It may be complemented with vegetables, cheese, and meats within its respective sauce, but it is a culinary faux pas to slap a chicken breast on top, for pasta can never take second place. Pasta and meat are separate dishes in a traditional Italian meal, with pasta as a primo piatto and a hearty meat or fish arriving afterward as a secondo piatto. Combining a full “main” course with pasta on a plate? Forget it.

  

      It doesn’t matter what sauce goes with what type of pasta.

           Wrong. Certain sauces are always paired with certain pastas, because the true Italian chef knows that certain pastas hold sauces differently, based on their shape and texture. Carbonara, for example, is almost always paired with spaghetti (once I saw rigatoni, but that was weird), and you rarely see vodka sauce with anything but penne.

Italian food involves red sauce, cheese, and bread.

Not even close. There is so much more than spaghetti al pomodoro and pizza margherita. Tuscan cuisine from the north rarely features tomatoes at all; it revolves around grains, legumes, and rich red meat in dishes like bistecca fiorentina (Florentine steak) and hearty stews. A typical Roman specialty is the carciofo alla romana, an artichoke seasoned and stewed in the ascetic style of the Eternal City (mainly salt and garlic). To my surprise, Italians also do potatoes extremely well, delicately roasting them with oil, salt, and rosemary and occasionally putting them on white pizza. Veggie-based soups and meaty stews are found on almost every menu, and the staples of a multi-course Italian meal – vegetables (roasted or in a salad), antipasti, the secondo piatto, and of course the dessert – are just as often tomatoless, cheeseless, and breadless. Veal, beef, pork, salami, fish, artichokes, zucchini, eggplant, olives, and spinach are all integral to Italian cuisine and operate just fine on their own. Plus, with the growing number of diners with vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free diets, many ristoranti have a wide assortment of dishes that do without these stereotypical elements. Italian chefs are traditional, not uncreative, and with such a deep history that varies with each region and season, the typical “Italian cuisine” one might find at Olive Garden is only a fraction of the true palate of this food-ucated nation.

One of my favorite meals thus far had no red sauce, cheese, or bread. Carciofo alla giudia ("Jewish-style" artichoke with breaded cod)

Now that you hopefully are feeling a bit food-ucated yourself, here are a few of my tips for dealing with the newfound appreciation for il migliore cibo nel mondo.

1. It's okay to still like Olive Garden and Papa John's. Just acknowledge that the pizza you get at home and the pizza you get in Italy are two completely separate species - American and Italian - and you're free to be satisfied with both.

2. Italian cuisine is as much about the process as about the food itself. Food is meant to be carefully planned, created, shared, and enjoyed. To get the full effect, one must eat sitting down among friends and/or family, engaged in pleasant conversation. Eat slowly and steadily, beginning immediately after being served and taking the time to truly savor the flavor. It’s best to spend well over an hour enjoying a main meal, and therefore it’s natural to cultivate friendly relationships with the wait staff, for whom this is a profession rather than a summer job.

3. For God's sake, clean your plate. Not only is it wasteful, but it’s taken as a personal failure by the waiting and cooking staff to leave food uneaten. Sometimes it genuinely is impossible to eat everything before you, and you then must muster the backbone to tell the disappointed server, Sono sazia! But at the very least, give everything a try. And save room for dessert.

4. Be patient, brave, and open. Patience will allow you to wait while your freshly prepared supper is being crafted behind the scenes. Bravery gets you out of your comfort zone so you manage to try whatever the hell “speck” is (it’s a kind of ham, by the way). Openness will keep you willing to move on to the next culinary adventure – like the impossible choice of pesto versus penne alla vodka – which is always worth the risk.

Keep calm and eat gelato.