Italian Food Basics

(Photos courtesy of Dottorpeni@flickr.com/creativecommons)

La cucina italiana..one of the richest food cultures in the world. It wasn't until 1861 when the country passed from only regionalized cuisine to become unified and food could be transported to other regions with no trouble, and ultimately being more diverse and rich.

For italians, fresh produce is the most important factor at the time of cooking and eating, so they prefer local ingredients, in order to guarantee freshness and flavor. That's the reason you can still find better specific products by region...south, north, the coast, and so on. Northern Italian cooking is different from southern Italian, especially in their basic ingredients. For example, the north is more dairy-farming, so butter is a basic part of their cooking, while olive oil is more common in the south, because they grow olives...pretty logical, huh?

The only charateristic italians share at the time of cooking and eating are that they only want high-quality ingredients. Italian cuisine is one of the oldest cooking cultures in the whole world!

The Romans are really the people who started it all, laying the foundations for italian and european cuisine as well. At the beginning cooking and farming were very simple, with roman peasants growing a few basic ingredients, and meat, for example was practically inexistent there. For the roman peasant, their working animals were to valuable to become a meal. Trading with other parts of the world gave them great farming and cooking diversity, and dishes became more elaborated. Even french cuisine have elements and influences from the italian. Anyway, even to this day, italians prefer the natural flavors of raw ingredients rather than too elaborated cooking. Their main recipe and foundation is simplicity. If you happen to travel to Italy, you will find plenty of great small local delicatessens with traditional cheeses, high-quality meats, sauces, marinated olives, fish, vinegars, sun-dried tomatoes and...ohh, should I keep going? Goda del vostro giorno...enjoy your day! If you are curious about Italian food and wanna read more, click here.

Enjoy your senses to the fullest!

Adal

Don't forget to log in to The Coconut Bistro Channel on YouTube! This has been a great addition to The Coconut Bistro, showing many related videos, complementing my articles and beyond. And it's growing every day! Also, don't forget to post and share your comments here!