Italian cuisine truly comes with limitless variety. You cannot easily say which Italian food is the best. With a lot of Italian recipes available online, you can buy all the required ingredients from an Italian Food Online Store and make your favorite Italian dish at home. However, why should you make Italian pasta in your kitchen when you are visiting Italy this weekend. Once there, you will want to feast your taste buds on all the popular and some local Italian dishes.
You have enjoyed Italian dishes in America. Are not you curious to know how the taste of local Italian pizza differs from what you eat in your home country?
Experts in Italian cuisine such as UltimaCucina, add a special touch to their recipes while embodying the true Italian experience.
Following are the Italian dishes you must try during your visit:
1. Pizza
Born in Naples, pizza quickly became popular and even a symbol of national unity. The simplest and the most popular pizza Margherita was also born in Naples.
It would be in your best interest to visit that part of the country and taste the real Neapolitan pizza without many useless ingredients. In addition to Naples, other regions such as Italian Riviera and Palermo are also known for their pizzas.
2. Baked Lasagna
Bolognese sauce, also known as Bolognese, is often accompanied by fresh pasta. Bologna, the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region, is known for the richest and attractive regional kitchens. This city is also known for ‘ragu’. This sauce goes to season fresh pasta like tagliatelle or classic tortellini. Baked lasagna is made using the meat sauce as the base, which is layered with noodles and cheese.
3. Spaghetti Carbonara
This is one of the most famous dishes in the country. Rome is known for carbonara and spaghetti. The modern spaghetti carbonara recipes are a little different from traditional recipes using bacon, milk cream and cheese, powdered egg, and several other foods.
Modern recipes use guanciale at the place of cheese, egg yolk, bacon.
4. Pesto
The origin of this sauce is uncertain and confused. However, it is much older than its written evidence at the end of the 19th century. The modern recipe brings you the goodness of ingredients including Ligurian basil, vessalico garlic, extra virgin olive oil, coarse salt, grated Sardinian pecorino cheese, and parmesan cheese, and Italian pine nuts. This sauce is a condiment of pasta.
5. Ravioli, Tortellini and Agnolotti
Every region in the country has its own traditional cuisine. Each traditional cuisine has more than one stuffed pasta recipe with the most varied fillings.
Tortellini is disputed between Bologna and Modena. They are filled with pork, mortadella, and raw ham. You will love to consume them in meat broth.
Agnolotti del plin are stuffed with mixed vegetables and meats.
Ravioli filling is meat cooked in tomato sauce, borage, and chard.
6. The Focaccia
It is a mixture of flour, water, salt, and yeast. Extra virgin olive oil is used to give the final touch. You should also try the following classic variants:
- The Genovese focaccia
- The focaccia di recco
- Focaccia with onions
- The Florentine Schiacciata
- Bari focaccia
- The Messina focaccia
7. Risotto
Rice is favorite in the North. Rice first appeared in the deep south. When it comes to risotto, you can be flexible with ingredients. Risotto may make you think of the “Milanese risotto”. However, different variations of risotto are enjoyed in different regions.
Following are some other Italian foods you cannot miss:
- Polenta
- The Minestrone
- Fiorentina
- Fritto Misto
- White Truffle
- Anchovy (or Alice)
- Stoccafisso e Baccalà
- Tiramisu
You can also buy Italian food online. If you are going to spend a couple of weeks there, why don’t you learn a few of these recipes? Find an Italian food online store for Italian groceries online, shop the required ingredients, and make something Italian on your own.
Once you are back, you can buy ingredients from an Italian food online store and make your favorite Italian dishes at home.
8. Bottarga
The description of bottarga should be – smoked eggs from the rat of the sea. However, we suggest you continue reading because this was just a rough description. A better description would probably be “Sicilian Cavier”.
The entire process of preparing Bottarga starts in August and September. In this period, southern Italians take the roe from grey mullets. After they do that, they salt it, press it, and leave it in air dry. Believe it or not, it stays in that way for the whole six months. After that period, they get a hunk of eggs colored in amber and blood oranges. They usually use as the slice over pasta.
9. Lasagna
Well, we are sure that you have heard about lasagna so far many times. If you are a bit older, then you remember that lasagna was the favorite food of Garfield (Cartoon character). Anyway, this is a wide and fiat past noodle. In most cases, Italians bake use layers and put them in the oven. This is the most popular method of preparation.
Indeed, lasagna is popular in all parts of Italy. However, it seems that citizens of the Emilia-Romagna region are its biggest fans. It doesn’t truly matter if people are rich or poor, young or old. They all have a common desire to eat this food as often as possible.
Still, we need to say a couple of words about its history. Today’s lasagna is made with tomatoes always. However, things were not the same before the 16th century. In that period, Italians have explored the New World and that move changed some of their habits. Anyway, before the 16th century, they used ragu when eating lasagna. For instance, the combination of bechamel sauce and mozzarella was the most popular mix.
There is one big difference that we need to highlight here. If you live in the USA, then you know that lasagna usually “swims” into the tomato sauce. Something like that you won’t find in Italy. They use only a small amount of tomato sauce when preparing this food.
10. Fiorentina Steak
Some people like to call it Fiorentine T-Bone Steak. If you hear this name, do not get confused. It refers to the same food. Anyway, we strongly recommend you try it because it covers all the characteristics of Italian tradition. Everything around it is specific. There is a specific cut of meat that comes from the specific cow. Despite that, the way how people create it is specific as well.
Okay, let’s now describe everything we just said. First of all, the mean comes from the Chianina cow that is only raised in Tuscany. When preparing it, you will need to cook it around 5 minutes on each side. In some cases, the cooking may last 7 minutes, but that depends a lot on the thickness. The steak will be cooked from the outside, however, it will remain rare from the inside.
Yet, there are certain variations of Fiorentina steak that you might want to try out. Logically, the first is associated with meat. In some cases, it might happen that Italians do not use Chianina cow meat. Many citizens here will be fine if they have to use some other meat. Yet, they still claim that Chianina cow meat has the best possible taste.
