Italian Cooking

The Universal Cuisine

The European cuisine that appears to be peerless is Italian. Boasting fine, family-friendly dishes like pasta and pizza it is hard to believe that it will ever be surpassed by any other culture’s cuisine. Surprisingly perhaps, Italian cooking is derived from its former peasant population. Pizza is a simple dish made up of ingredients that are cheap and readily available if you live in the gorgeous Mediterranean climate. They are naturally fragrant, colourful and involve little processing beyond simple dough preparation. The very simplicity of the most popular Italian cooking means that children love it, and each dish is easy to adapt to accommodate the widest variation in the individual’s palate.

Different Types of Italian Dishes

Italian coking is an art in itself. Okay, so it’s always easy enough to open a jar of ready-made pasta sauce produce something edible from your microwave oven after a few minutes of zapping, tasting some authentic Italain cooking will soon convince you that it’s worth taking the time to cook an Italian dish from scratch.

Easy Does it

Another appeal of Italian cooking: the ease with which you can create a great-tasting meal. Shopping with an Italian recipe in mind is easy. The ingredients are universally available and inexpensive. Once you’re home, cooking Italian style is an undemanding, relaxing experience. As my mother once remarked, you have to actively try to ruin an Italian meal – this after my father had served us a brittle pizza topped with old cheese and partially defrosted peas. Oh, and the oregano he’d used from our garden infused the whole ensemble with a fragrance normally associated with our dog’s basket. This got my father banned from the kitchen for months, and after noticing the gleam in his eye as he raised his glass and humbly acquiesced to his punishment, I couldn’t help suspecting that this had been his intention all along.

Italian Cooking Across the Board

So, Italian cooking offers even the most challenged amateur cook a host of rewarding culinary adventures without the need to break sweat. And as Italians have spent centuries making an art of picking their way through enormous evening meals, there is a wealth of variety from hors d’oeuvres to desserts from which to choose. Perhaps it’s high time we took a look at some examples:

Appetizers and Salads

Bruschetta is a popular Italian appetizer and is best made with a tangy French baguette, olive oil and tomatoes. Garlic bread, though supreme in its simplicity, can be sublime, especially when accompanied by a side dish of black olives and a crisp wine. If you prefer a light entrée devoid of carbos (perhaps in anticipation of a generously sized main course of pasta) a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella with olive oil and basil will do an admirable job of setting the tone for what is to follow. Simplicity is the essence of Italain cooking.

Revered Main Courses

Italian cooking is at its best with any type of pasta. Neopolitan, Bolognaise, Alfredo, quatro formaggi, carbonara and pasta tutti mare – just the names alone are enough to evoke the gentle rustling of leaves on the edge of an olive grove, an open fire and the chink of wine glasses. As you might expect, all these dishes are easy to prepare from scratch, and are well worth the effort. Although pasta dishes are the first to spring to mind, Italian coking boasts a host of wonderful risottos featuring mushrooms, cheese and meat.

Never Desert before Dessert

The famous tiramisu, it is as hard to make as it looks but believe me once you have made it yourself at home, you will never eat a ready-made one again. Italian desserts also offer a wide range of ice creams and other mouthwatering delicacies to satisfy any sweet tooth.

Drinks

Italian drinks feature the grape as a source of inspiration and elixirs. Typical is ‘grappa’ which can be consumed both before meals as an aperitif and after as a digestive. There isn’t room here to go into detail about the large variety of Italian wines. My father would lift his glass and say, ‘Liquid sunshine.’ My mother would raise hers and say, ‘Bare feet.’ But, I’ll never forget that scene in Jonathan Demme’s masterful ‘Silence of the Lambs’ in which Hannibla Lekter raises explains how he washed down the liver of his psychiatrist with a fine Chianti. You just had to admire his taste.