Italian Food

Italian Food in the United States

If you were to judge Italian cuisine by the food that is served in Italian restaurants across America, you might think that the food of Italy consists mainly of pasta with different types of sauces and pizza with an assortment of toppings. Although pasta and pizza are certainly important Italian foods, Italian cuisine as a whole is comprised of a wide variety of ingredients. These include vegetables like cardoons and salsify, which are considered exotic in the United States, all types of meat both fresh and cured, a plethora of foods from the sea, and a sampling of different grains.

Knowing this, it might seem curious that most Italian-American restaurants serve so few of the dishes that are consumed across Italy, but a look at the history of immigration from Italy to the United States provides a clue. In the late 19th century, many thousands of refugees arrived at Ellis Island from Southern Italy and from Sicily. These immigrants brought with them their culinary traditions, and since the cooking of the Southern regions of Italy includes a great number of pasta dishes, many tomato based sauces, and the use of significant quantities of olive oil, that is what Americans learned to think of as Italian food. However, with a growing number of imported Italian ingredients available, it can be very exciting to learn how to prepare the widely divergent dishes of the different regions of Italy.

The Regional Cuisine of Italy

Italy has twenty different regions that are carved out by the Apennines and the Alps and shaped by their proximity to the many nearby seas, including the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the Ionian. With widely varying geographies and climates, it is generally accurate to say that the cooking of each region differs from that of the others. For example, the cuisine of Apulia, (the part of Italy that makes up the heel of “the boot”) which has a lengthy coastline, includes dishes made with octopus, mussels, and shrimp; while that of Lombardy, which is inland, relies more heavily on dairy and meats such as veal and pork. It is notable that even within certain regions of Italy, culinary traditions can differ from town to town. Given that the cuisine of Italy developed before world travel was common, the prevalence of regional cuisine based on locally grown, seasonal products makes complete sense.

Italian Food in a Global Context

Although world travel wasn’t frequent until the last century, it has had an impact on global gastronomy for centuries. For example, some historians believe that the roots of Italian pasta are in Chinese noodles, although the story that Marco Polo discovered noodles in China and brought the idea back to Italy is considered to be merely legend. Be that as it may, scientists recently discovered 4,000-year-old noodles in China, which firmly cements China as the originator of the noodle. The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), which is now revered in Italian cuisine, is actually indigenous to South America, and didn’t appear in Europe until the 16th century. In Italy, as in the United States, the fruit of the tomato plant was originally thought to be poisonous as it is a close relative of the nightshade plant, and it was grown as an ornamental. However, once it was known to be safe to eat, it became an integral part of Italian cuisine.

As you prepare Italian food, it can be interesting to consider the forces that may have colluded to create the dish you are making: a particular pattern of rainfall in a valley that causes one grain to grow better than another, the use of an exotic fruit from halfway around the world, and culinary traditions passed down from generation to generation over hundreds of years.

The Regions of Italy

• Piedmont
• Tuscany
• Emilia-Romagna
• Sicily
• Sardinia
• Val d’Aosta
• Lombardy
• Trentino-Alto Adige
• Veneto
• Friuli-Venezia Giulia
• Marches
• Umbria
• Liguria
• Latium
• Abruzzo
• Molise
• Campania
• Apulia
• Basilicata
• Calabria