Subject : Advance Food Production
Title : Different Culinary Regions of Italy with its famous food
Italian cuisine is a Mediterranean cuisine consisting of the ingredients, recipes and cooking techniques developed across the Italian Peninsula since antiquity, and later spread around the world together with waves of Italian diaspora.
2. IMPORTANCE OF CULINARY REGIONS IN ITALY
• 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 have 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. This article will provide you a brief introduction on
regional cuisine from 4 different regions from north to a very south.
4. ABRUZZO
• Specialty Dish : Lamb with cheese and eggs
• Famous for Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wine, which is produced with the
Montepulciano grape.
• One of Italy's most rugged regions, sheep farming predominates in Abruzzo. Meat
dishes and cheeses here tend to come from that animal.
• Agnello cac' e ove (lamb with cheese and eggs) is "traditionally eaten over the
Easter period, since the animal must be young and sheep are born in the spring,"
says Roberto Burdese, president of Slow Food Italia. The sauce, of course, is made
only with sheep's milk cheese.
5. BASILICATA
• Specialty Dish : Làgane with olive oil and chickpeas
• Like its southern neighbors, simplicity is the hallmark of Basilicata's cooking.
• Away from the coast, you won't often encounter ceci (chickpeas) in northern
Italian food. And the pasta (làgane) will be called tagliatelle or pappardelle, and
almost certainly made with egg alongside durum wheat flour and water.
• Here, the làgane is tossed with olive oil, sauteed garlic and cooked ceci.
6. CALABRIA
• Specialty Dish : Macaroni with pork, eggplant and salted ricotta
• A speciality of Calabrian chef Pasquale Pangallo, this dish merits an entry in "Cucina
Regionale," the bible of Italian regional cooking. It combines several of the south's
classic elements.
• Melanzane (eggplant) were introduced to Italian cooking by Arabs, regular visitors
to, and occasional occupiers of, southern Italy from the ninth to 11th centuries.
• Calabrian cured meats, such as capocollo (pork neck), are generally spiked with chili
pepper, a ubiquitous spice in Calabrian cooking. Ricotta salata (salted ricotta), a
dried, pressed sheep's milk cheese, gives the dish a salty kick.
7. CAMPANIA
• Speciality Dishes : Pizza Napoletana reinvented
• In Campania -- Naples above all -- cooking is all about carbs, the white flour of a
pizza base in particular.
• "The word 'pizza' has wildly varying definitions depending on the sub-region and
season," explains food journalist Katie Parla. "It can refer to a savory Easter bread or
a pie for one, for example."
• Pizza Napoletana is a thick-rimmed pizza built in a wood-burning domed oven,
traditionally topped with cow's milk mozzarella, tomato sauce and another topping
or two.
8. EMILIA-ROMAGNA
• Special Dish : Tortellini with acacia flowers
• A vast, wealthy region located in northern Italy, Emilia-Romagna is rich in meats
and super-eggy pasta. The craft of curing meat is held in high esteem here —
Italy's best known meat product, prosciutto di Parma, is created in Emilia, as is
the "king of cheeses," Parmigiano Reggiano.
9. FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA
• Speciality Dishes : Spiced frico cheese and toast
• Friuli has a hybrid cooking culture, as you might expect from a region at the corner
of the Italic, Slavic and Germanic worlds, with a landscape spanning the sea, karst
and high Alps. San Daniele cured ham comes from Friuli, as does some of Italy's best
white wine.
• Most closely associated with the Carnia countryside around Udine, frico is based on
the local Montasio cow's milk cheese.
• The mature cheese is cooked, almost to melting point, then spiked with sugar and
cinnamon and served either cubed or on toasted bread. The dish is a warming
balance of spice, salt and sweetness.
10. LAZIO
• Speciality Dishes : Spring lamb with salt-cured anchovies
• Lazio is a region divided by mass tourism. Rome, its capital, welcomes millions of
visitors every year. The countryside, on the other hand, is left to itself.
• Katie Parla, whose app Katie Parla's Rome picks out some of the city's best
restaurant and street food spots, says one element captures the essence of
Lazio's agricultural roots: abbaccio.
11. LE MARCHE
• Speciality Dishes : Ancona spicy fish stew
• Ancona's classic dish, brodetto all'anconetana, reflects the city's seafaring
heritage. It's a slightly spicy, tomato-based soup/stew made from local catch.
• "The dish was originally made on board fishing boats, for lunch,"
• "Cooks used poorer catch, or fish a little broken by the nets and not saleable at
the market.
12. LIGURIA
• Speciality Dishes : Chickpea flatbread
• Many cooking traditions in Liguria -- the small, crescent-shaped region strung
out along Italy's northwest coast -- come from the region's seaport, Genoa.
Among them is farinata, a thin, unleavened flatbread made with chickpea flour.
• Often served as a side or street-food dish, it's traditionally cut into triangular
slices and eaten with a dusting of salt, black pepper, rosemary or all of the
above.
13. LOMBARDY
• Speciality Dishes : Risotto alla milanese
• Lombardia is the region of Milan.
• Popular dish would be risotto, it’s the main pasta dish you can order while there,
and what better condiment than zafferano (saffron). Typically a red plant once it
is cooked it turns yellow, and it’s delicate flavour is something you’ll never forget.
You know you’re having authentic Italian food when you’re eating a good
risotto.
14. MOLISE
• Speciality Dishes : Tripe dumplings
• With a population of less than half a million and fewer tourism sites than its
neighbors, Molise is perhaps Italy's least known region to outsiders. As in
neighboring Abruzzo, the uneven terrain makes lamb the livestock of choice.
• In Molise, they eat almost every bit of the creature -- lamb offal is a feature of
many traditional dishes. Allulur is a dish of tripe dumplings, encased in the
sheep's rumen (part of the stomach) and boiled.
15. PIEDMONT
• Speciality Dishes : Bagna caôda or "warm dip"
• Bagna caôda means "warm dip" in Piedmontese, a dialect widely spoken in
northwest Italy until recent decades.
• Preparing the dish is simple: chopped garlic is cooked slowly with oil and butter
to form an emulsion. Chefs then pour in a few more cups of olive oil, chopped
anchovies and peeled walnuts, and cook it down till it becomes a salty-garlicky
bath.
16. PUGLIA
• Speciality Dishes : Orecchiette pasta with turnip tops
• One of Italy's flattest and most fertile regions, Puglia is the south's breadbasket.
Wheat and olive oil are produced in abundance, making it a top Italian region
for vegetarians. Orecchiette are "little ears" of durum wheat pasta, often made
here without egg.
• This classic Pugliese primo (first course) sees them tossed with cime di rape,
broccoli rabe or "turnip tops," a little oil and seasoning, sometimes including
preserved anchovies.
17. SARDINIA
• Speciality Dishes : Pilau
• Fregola [small balls of pasta] is a central element in Sardinian cuisine, which uses
durum wheat flour for many baked goods," says Burdese of Slow Food Italia.
• It's also the main ingredient in pilau, a couscous-like dish, prepared like risotto
by cooking the grains in a fresh stock. Around the island, you'll find versions of
pilau made with sheep or goat meat, or with crustaceans and shellfish in a
tomato sauce.
18. SICILY
• Speciality Dishes : Pasta with sardines
• Pretty much every Mediterranean country that ever had a navy has invaded
Sicily at some point in the past 3,000 years. Ancient Greeks and Romans left
ruins across the island. Norman-French, Arabs, Spanish and others shaped the
architecture of its capital, Palermo.
• "With its contrast between sweet and salty, pasta con le sarde recalls the Arab
influence, which has strongly influenced Sicilian cuisine," explains Burdese.
• The dish is usually made with bucatini (hollow pasta tubes) served al dente with
fresh sardines, raisins, pine nuts and, most importantly, wild fennel and saffron.
19. TRENTINO-ALTO ADIGE
• Speciality Dishes : Strudel
• Italy's northernmost region has a split personality. It was part of Austro-
Hungarian Empire until its collapse after World War I. As with the language,
cooking comes with an Austrian accent.
• "Apples, pine nuts, raisins and spices wrapped in a pastry sheet make up the
standard recipe. At El Pael, they customize it with figs and walnuts, or use ricotta
and apricots."
20. TUSCANY
• Speciality Dishes : "Naked" ravioli with ricotta and spinach
• A rural region, Tuscany's food heritage is rooted in its farming traditions.
• Gnudi are "ravioli" deprived of the sheet of pasta that normally encloses them,
leaving only the filling.
• "To prepare the dish, the farmer needs only ricotta (sheep's milk cheese), flour,
egg and spinach, plus a simple dressing of olive oil, sage and pecorino cheese."
21. UMBRIA
• Speciality Dishes : Tagliatelle with truffles
• Game such as cinghiale (wild boar) works its way into every course -- except
dessert, of course.
• Then there's the fungus. The black truffle grows just below ground level in
deciduous forests all over the region.
22. VALLE D'AOSTA
• Speciality Dishes : Polenta with beef stewed in wine
• Valle D’Aosta’s typical Italian food we’re taking into account is Fontina, it’s pretty
much the standard cheese that you’re gonna get in Italy, everyone loves fontina
in this country, any ham and cheese sandwich will have it, so you probably
already had it while here.
23. VENETO
• Speciality Dishes : Rice and pea risotto
• The peas and rice float in a vegetable broth made from a simple base of onion
and pancetta -- the fatty, cured-pork cut.
• Venice never had a king, but this dish was certainly fit for the doge -- a kind of
chief magistrate. It was traditionally served at the annual Doge's banquet
