Great ingredients are enormously important in Italy. As my friend Silvestori pointed out, Italians start with great stuff and don’t fuss about with it like French chefs do. Italian cooking methods are simple; the wow comes from what is used rather than from sophisticated techniques and delicate procedures.
Though a veteran of at least a hundred meals in this journey, I’m not trying to pretend to be an expert – even on the food of one town of Italy. This is therefore a personal and possibly wildly unrepresentative set. Even from that I have chosen only a few stars – there’s much I had that I’ve left out. Its a blog post, not a compliance document.
Tomato
The defining ingredient in Italian food, to my mind, is the tomato (or pomodoro). Many countries have tomatoes but somehow in Italy it is juicer, tangier, sweeter and more tomato-y than anywhere else I’ve seen. The tomato is universal in Italian cuisine – raw, grilled, dried, stuffed, puréed, roasted, in salads, sauces, sandwiches, inside, on top, underneath, everywhere. And the Italians really know how to treat a tomato well – you see pomodoro in the description, it’s unlikely to be bad. I did pass near the town of San Marzano, whose tomatoes are epic even by Italian standards, but the country is just floating in wonderful variants, and wonderful dishes made with those variants.
Two other vegetables also played important gustatory roles in my journey – one was the eggplant (parmigiana) which kept popping up as a star in many dishes (especially combined with tomato and parmigiano the cheese). The other star was the artichoke, not a common vegetablele in the rest of the world but everywhere in Italy and indescribably good fried, steamed or on on pizzas. Italy is the world’s largest producer of artichokes, and it shows.
Pork
Pork is massive in the north of Italy, and I went after the prosciutto (ham), the salame (sliced sausage) and the salsiccia (sausage). I had (quite literally) platefuls of the stuff every day in Milan, the Lombardy region and Tuscany – breakfast lunch and dinner. Of course, prosciutto di parma is spectacular (and culatella di parma even more so) but what really made me weak in the knees was a slice of porchetta and a tuscan soppresata I purchased at a random butcher stall in Montalcino’s local market. Mortadella di Bologna is another item that made me seriously consider illegal immigration while the salsiccia – that fennel-flecked Italian sausage – appeared frequently on my plate especially in Naples and Rome and did not disappoint.
There is, of course, enormous variety of hams and salamis and sausages in the country; I walked into stores that had no less than a hundred varieties hanging about (usually literally). Tasting boards with twenty varieties are not uncommon. Pork also showed up as chingale (wild boar) all over Tuscany, much to my delight.
Again, the south is different. I noticed much less pork, more vegetables and seafood once I left Naples and headed down to Puglia.
Cheese
Who can ignore the cheese – parmigiano, pecorino and mozzarella being the heavyweights with the occasional appearance of others like Gorgonzola, Stracciatella or Gran Padano. Italy does not have the legions of cheese like France but there’s a fair amount of it nevertheless, much if it excellent.
Everyone knows Parmigiano (Parmesan); without doubt the most famous cheese in the world and yes served for sprinkling with meals in most of Italy. Parmesan also goes into a lot of dishes – I had some wonderful pastas with parmesan, a soup made from parmesan and of course parmigiana melanzane (eggplant with tomato and parmesan). Or I can just have it plain; it is without question my favourite hard cheese.
Trivia – most parmesan cheese workers in Italy today are Sikhs immigrants from India. I even ran into a Gurudwara in a town near Parma.
The cheese I encountered most in food was Pecorino – a cheddar-like sheep’s milk cheese that popped up with alarming frequency in bakes and paninis and pastas. True of Italy’s insistent regionalism, both parmesan and pecorino faded as I went south of Rome, displaced by buffalo-milk Mozzarella, which really comes into its own in Naples and stays king all over the south. Mozzarella is inside or on everything in the south – usually in conjunction with those luscious tomatoes and some olive oil. And of course on pizza too.
My greatest mozzarella moments were just the cheese all by itself, dripping milky goodness into my mouth without assistance. Mozzarella is also what goes into a burrata, which will make you weep with joy while going weak in the knees.
Beef
Surprisingly, I didn’t encounter that much beef in Italy but I did encounter the grand and magnificient Bistecca alla Fiorentina in (where else) Florence. It was my most expensive and magnificent meal – a huge 800gm porterhouse of Chianina beef aged three weeks, perfectly seared medium rare and served absolutely plain. Even among all the great steaks I’ve had in New York and elsewhere this was a showstopper.
The other bits of beef that blew my mind was the neck (bolito), intestines (trippa) and stomach (lampredotti) of Florence and Rome. Sounds disgusting, tastes wonderful.
Octopus
I’m sure you’re thinking – who puts octopus (or polpi) in a list of star ingredients? I had the most marvellous time eating octopus in Puglia. Unlike my previous experiences with those eight legs, octopus in Puglia is neither rubbery nor tasteless; I sought out and drooled over octopus dishes – from sandwiches to main courses. – and still dream about them every once in a while. Its not that I was starved of great seafood – umbrina, tuna, anchovy, mussel, clam, grouper, shrimp, langoustine and more – but even among all this bounty the octopuses of Italy stood out as both unusual and wonderful.
Fruits
Yes, I ate fruits. And lots of it – starting day two and my encounter with half a kilo of it at a cherry farm. Huge dark red cherries where in season, dirt cheap and pretty much everywhere. I did not hesitate to clean out every fruit basket I encountered of every cherry. Rome and Puglia was filled with musk melons and watermelons, both highly satisfying in the heat. Even more so when topped with parma ham. Apricots were also everywhere and I reached for one or two ever so often. Other fruits I ignored, though lemons and oranges showed up in my drinks and granitas and gelatos.
#toptobottomitaly2020 #pedaleatrepeat
The Well Fed Bong 
Leave a comment