I first came to this topic as an eater. My partner and I fell in love through food. We met during the pandemic and got to know each other through long walks and cooking. Early in our date, when she held a glistening pile of pasta in front of me, I thought how lucky I was to have fallen in love with an Italian. (She was born and raised in Rome.)
Most Italians take great pride in their cuisine. A passion that sometimes reaches the level of madness. The food and beverage industry accounts for a quarter of Italy’s GDP and accounts for a significant portion of tourism. Food is closely tied to ideas of national identity, and politicians often rely on a kind of gastronomic nationalism. (When running for office, current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni posted a video of her making tortellini with a typical Italian nonna.)
Italians aren’t the only ones with this enthusiasm. Italian cuisine is one of the most popular cuisines in the world. Home cooks love cooking Italian food, and about one in eight restaurants in the United States serves Italian food.Shows like Stanley Tucci looking for italy and the Netflix series from scratch It highlights how hungry audiences are for sweet, almost erotic depictions of Italian food.
But as I researched this list, I discovered that behind the hype and tired clichés, Italian cuisine has a complex and often contradictory history. Scholars have questioned the true origins of classic dishes like carbonara. Immigration from Italy to the United States has made it nearly impossible to disentangle the two gastronomic traditions.
Italians often cling to this cultural purity. Ten years ago, when Italian chef Gino D’Acampo appeared on British morning television, he was taken aback by the suggestion that ham could be substituted for carbonara. “If her grandmother had wheels, she would have turned into a bicycle,” D’Acampo replied incredulously. The video went viral and reinforced the stereotype that Italians are picky eaters. However, the history of Italian cuisine, like that of any other country, is a melting pot of influences.
But what will the future hold? Migration patterns, along with demographic and climate change, mean cuisines will also need to adapt. Since 2003, Europe has been hit by an unprecedented number of heatwaves, and Italy’s largest farmers’ union estimates that almost a third of the country’s agricultural production is now threatened by climate change. . Rooted in tradition and insistent on authenticity, Italian cuisine must change.
But for now, I’m excited to visit Rome on vacation and indulge in the city’s delicious cuisine: creamy cacio e pepe, decadent tiramisu layers, and hearty pizza. I take photos of the food, eat it splendidly, pack my suitcase with olive oil and cheese, and head home. This time, I would like to enjoy cooking while knowing the background behind it. Like the best Italian cuisine, this topic is full of complexity and nuance. Read this collection of articles that complicate the understanding of Italian cuisine and understand its meaning within Italy and beyond Italian borders.
This Italian podcast, hosted by Alberto Grandi and Daniele Sofiati, explores the real history of Italian cuisine and aims to separate truth from marketing.
In this fascinating article, Italian journalist Marianna Giusti aims to uncover the truth about classic Italian dishes such as carbonara, tiramisu, and panettone. Despite being a relatively recent invention, these dishes are prized for their authenticity. She talks to older family members and friends from all over southern Italy, asking them about the food they ate as children (lots of beans and potatoes) and how it differs from the food on today’s menus.
Inaccuracies about the origins of Italian cuisine might be considered harmless if it weren’t for how gastronomic nationalism has influenced Italian politics and culture. She cited the example of Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, who suggested adding pork-free “welcome tortellini” to the menu of San Petronio’s feasts. She intended to show inclusion for the community, which does not eat pork, but was slammed by Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega party. “They are trying to erase our history, our culture,” he said. For me, food is one of the great unifying factors in life. I love uniting people around food, but just as often food is used to divide people. This work inspired me to reconsider what I thought I understood about Italian food and to think critically about who and what is welcome at the table.
It’s all about identity,” Grandi tells me over a sip of Osso Buco Bottoncini. He was a follower of the British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who wrote about what he called the invention of tradition. “When communities find themselves robbed of a sense of identity by historical shocks or a break with the past, they invent traditions that serve as founding myths,” Grundy says.
In this provocatively titled article, journalist John Last examines how climate change and immigration patterns are changing Italy’s diet. He examines how ingredients from overseas and the labor of immigrants were used to create one of the world’s most beloved dishes. He also cites research that reveals that the role of immigrants in Italy’s agricultural and culinary sectors has been systematically ignored. Italian cuisine is often praised for bringing together eaters of unadulterated, authentic cuisine. The reality is more complicated. I enjoyed how this well-reported essay questioned notions of culinary purity and raised questions about who the story was excluding. I read with interest how Italy’s microclimate gives rise to regional specialties and how climate change will force them to adapt. If you’re interested in the future of Italian cuisine, this is the essay for you.It has also been anthologised Best American Food Writing 2023 For research into how food shapes our culture.
Italy’s gastronomic culture is defined by its relentless focus on the intersection of food and local identity, and while it is highly regarded around the world, it is also an extremely insular culture. After all, companyism might be less charitably translated as “localism,” a kind of defensive narrow-mindedness that is hostile to outside influence and change.
If you are interested in the pasta making process and pandemic-era pasta content, I recommend Mission Impastable. The Spokeful.
The early months of the pandemic were marked by lockdowns, widespread anxiety, and a nationwide pasta shortage. In this funny and fascinating piece that calls itself the “Bernstein of Bucatini,” I learned why some pasta shapes are especially difficult to find due to manufacturing issues. This piece is a fun, perverse romp that shows the sensual joys of pasta in dark times.
I would like to go a step further and celebrate its natural momentum and individuality. If you boil your bucatini for 50% of the time suggested on the box and cook it perfectly al dente, you’ll experience a texture unlike any other in your natural life. When cooked correctly, bucatini is chewy. These noodles are satisfying to eat. It’s a self-aware noodle. In a time when human social interaction can come at the cost of illness, bucatini offers an alternative: social interaction through pasta.
I really enjoyed this thoughtful personal essay about a young girl’s obsession with Pizza Hut and how food influences her identity. The author questions her intersecting traditions. She’s a mixed-race child of an Indian father and a white mother, a New Yorker who craves Pizza Hut dough fillings more than a “real” dollar slice, and she’s a preteen who longs to eat “white people.” . Her family enjoys soupy dal and potatoes seasoned with cumin and turmeric. This work is also a useful introduction to the history of Italians in America, tracing their path from “other” to mainstream acceptance.
I was half Indian, half white, and all New Yorkers. Using simple assimilation math, going to Pizza Hut with your Indian grandparents in Fort Lee should earn you points for actually eating what the cool kids were eating in the commercials. Ta. But I was still a New Yorker. My ideal sense of self was to be white, but worldly, opinionated, and critical.
I loved this essay about how the author learned to cook during the pandemic and the solace she found in Marcela Hazan’s reassuring and authoritative voice. The work vividly depicts the taste of Italian food (“mellow, gentle, comforting”) and the solace found in cookbooks during a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Before learning to cook, the author thought of cooking as a domestic chore closely tied to traditional notions of femininity and heterosexual marriage. But Hazan, who is widely considered to be the guru of Italian cooking, believes that cooking for herself and her chosen family is a way to survive not just literally but existentially. Teach her that she is an essential element. Reading this essay took me back to her early 2020. When the pandemic spiraled out of control, I found my sense of balance through a brisk morning walk and the comfort of a pot boiling on the stove. I still cook most days. Sometimes that makes me happy. Often it’s a hassle. For me, this beautiful essay evoked the instinctive, physical demands of our appetites and how satisfying them brings not only a sense of culinary satisfaction, but also a sense of peace and well-being.
Thanks to Hazan, I learned that nourishing myself and sharing meals as a family is fundamental. Privileging invention and labor outside the kitchen, but not inside it, plays into patriarchal value distinctions.
Hazan himself was a cook, an educator, and an amazing creative success. She continues to influence many modern chefs. Her fascination with anchovies: “Of all the ingredients used in Italian cooking, nothing produces as intense a flavor as anchovies. It’s a very malleable flavor.” –Alison Roman’s Long Reign I have a feeling that. Her careful ideas about layering flavors and her scientific approach to the kitchen are reflected in Samin Nosrat’s methodology. (He is also credited with starting his obsession with laurel leaves.)
If you want to continue your research into Sicilian cuisine and try out recipes, you might enjoy this salon A work about the author’s love for fatty fish, simple pasta and bright flavors.
My partner and I recently returned from a vacation in Sicily. The island is considered a melting pot of North African, Arab, French, Spanish and other cultures, and for me that was best understood through the food. We enjoyed local dishes such as fried lasagna, cookies made with beef and chocolate, and cremolata, a sorbet-like dessert that originated in Arab cuisine. It was such a pleasure to reminisce about my travels while reading this mouth-watering travel essay that aims to unravel how the history of Italian and Arab cuisine intertwine on this island. What begins as an academic question quickly turns into a catalog of culinary delights as the author explores the island’s rich colonial past through food. He said that the core ingredients of Italian cuisine, such as the durum wheat used to make pasta, arrived on the shores of Sicily, and that he gifted this land with what was known as “cucina”. ” traces its origins to immigrants.
Sicily has had so many conquistadors and all of the mixed cultures to see what is exactly “Italian” and what is “Arab” and what is not like that. There is simply no way to break free of the chains. At some point, ideally after eating a lunch of homemade seafood couscous at Ortigia and sampling the life-changing pistachio ice cream at Bronte’s Cafeteria Luca, I try to separate out the disparate influences. and have to accept the myriad aspects of life. Sicily has been influenced by Arab culture in some way. It’s deep and palpable and meaningful, but it’s also a cloud of influence as dense and intangible as the lemon gelato sky that greeted me upon arrival.
Claire Egan is a queer freelance writer based in Dublin. She writes about food (among other things) in her newsletter and is working on her first book.
Editor: carolyn wells
Copy editor: Christa Stevens