Essay on Experience Authentic Italian Cuisine: Its Evolving History & Global Impact

Introduction

Italian cuisine refers to classic Italian food. The Italian food has progressed through epochs of socioeconomic evolution, with its foundation spanning from ancient times. Civilization has immensely modified Italian cuisines, such as the introduction of tomatoes, potatoes, maize, capsicums, and sugar beet (Soler, pp. 29-57). The Italian menu remains regionally diverse and preferred across the globe. Most cuisines around the world borrow from Italian cuisine. Italian chefs depend mainly on the quality of the ingredients instead of intensive preparation. Spices and saucers differ by county. Globalization has seen widespread sharing of food recipes. The purpose of this paper entails an examination of Italian cuisine and its influence across the globe.

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Background Information

Aspects such as political upheavals, the culture of neighboring nations, various influential cooks, and the discovery of the New World has impacted on the Italian cuisine. Italian dishes began improving after the collapse of the Roman Empire (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). Various kingdoms started to form and strengthen their cultures, like enhanced cooking methods and recipes. Multiple cities in Italy have different cuisines, such as Milan boasts of risottos, Naples claims pizzas, and Bologna brags of tortellini.

Ingredients

Italian cuisine contains several different components, such as fruits, sauces, vegetables, and meat, among others. The Northern part of the country uses ingredients, such as fish, rice, sausages, various cheese, potatoes, maize, and pork (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). Entire Italy has pasta dishes. It is also noticeable that Italians prefer fresh and finely tested and flavored ingredients. Northern Italy incorporates risotto and polenta with stuffed pasta. Ligurian recipes consist of numerous kinds of fish and seafood.

Central Italian customary meals contain spices. These spices include pecorino cheese, meat, tomatoes, and fish. For example, the people of Tuscany serves pasta with meat sauce and game meat. Whereas, Southern Italy's ingredients include tomatoes, olives and olive oil, artichokes, ricotta cheese, eggplants, fish, peppers, oranges, zucchini, and capers (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). The Italian cuisine entails various pasta-like noodles in diverse lengths, shapes, and widths. Pasta refers to menus in which pasta foodstuffs contain a crucial component. There exist two categories of pasta, namely fresh and dried pasta.

Regional Distinction

Every region has its unique spheres in which the variations in Italian cuisine can originate from a neighboring nation like Austria or France, economics, and the distance from the sea or mountains. Seasons also influence Italian foods since some of the ingredients originate from fresh foodstuffs. The cuisine of Abruzzo and Molise consists of pasta, vegetables, and meat. The Abruzzo and Molise foods contain chili peppers (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). The Molise and Abruzzo foods have lamb dishes served with pasta due to the culture of shepherding in Abruzzo and Molise. Additional ingredients in Abruzzo's cuisine include wild mushrooms, garlic, and rosemary.

Another Italian foodstuff called Apulia contains ingredients like tomatoes, wheat, bell peppers, zucchini, spinach, endive, broccoli, potatoes, eggplants, beans, cauliflower, fennel, chickpeas, lentils, and cheese (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). Apulia obtains its flavor from the plentiful seafood and fish from the nearby sea, particularly mussels and oysters. Local desserts include doughnuts and zeppola. Apulian prepare a traditional rose-shaped pastry commonly referred to as carpellate. Basilicata cuisine has its roots in rural traditions that cherish cheap ingredients. Pork forms a fundamental part of the recipe used in the cooking of sausages. Mutton, lamb, and wild boar get incorporated in the cuisine (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). Basilicate cuisine also entails the sale of mineral waters distilled from springs found in the volcanic basin of the Vulture region.

Besides, Calabria cuisine has its menu influenced by the history of the French regime that impacted on the language and culinary techniques and naming of dishes. Calabria pizza has a Neapolitan-based framework spiced with fresh tomatoes and cheese (Naccarato, Zachary & Elgin, pp. 99-105). Other regional cuisines include Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Lazio, Lombardy, Marche, and Piedmont, among others that have their foundation from the environmental and agricultural settings of their region.

Americanization of Italian Food

Immigrants introduced new cuisine in American dishes, some of which the Americans initially considered low-class economical diets and mostly overruled. Since most American restaurants' main objective involves maximizing profits, they have immensely Americanized their cuisine. The love for Italian cuisine by the American population has massively increased over the decades. During the 19th century, the Americans despised foreign Italian foods since only the low-income earners enjoyed Italian dishes (Soler, pp. 29-57). Gradually, the dishes started receiving acceptance. Currently, there exist several Italian restaurants in the entire United States, with a majority of them serving Southern Italian cuisine, such as pizza. Some of the dishes Americanized include Macaroni and cheese, pasta, and garlic bread, among other Italian dishes.

Nostalgic Italian foods have mainly undergone Americanization due to the effort by Italian immigrants to modify their cuisine to satisfy the American tastes (Soler, pp. 29-57). The traditional Italian cuisine contains fresh fruits and vegetables with minimal meat and sometimes ate fish from the sea. Regular Italian pasta had little sauce since they considered sauce as a supplement to the pasta. Besides, Italians do not eat meatballs and spaghetti on one plate as they think of them as different dishes. Nostalgic Italian dishes contained few ingredients but with an emphasis on their quality (Soler, pp. 29-57). The original Italian espresso has less caffeine than American coffee. Hence Italians drink espresso at night-time or with the desert. Unique Italian cuisine consisted of fruits and vegetables that helped in their digestion, such as licorice, anise, and fennel.

Massimo Bottura from Modena in Italy began making foodstuffs that turned him into one of the famous world chefs. His inventions earned him global recognition and increased the reputation of his restaurant, Francescana (Marchetti, 2018). The dishes Bottura created placed Italy on the map for tourists who loved to eat spaghetti and meatballs. Bottura remains one of the few Italian cooks who have reviewed, refined, concentrated, and with unswerving esteem, renovated the cuisines of their traditional dishes (Soler, pp. 29-57). The contemporary Italian chefs put more effort into innovations, use social media platforms, and travel around the world, sharing their ideas, inventions, and techniques.

Conclusion

Italian food has progressed through the years incorporating various cultures and rituals to create the best dishes favored by many people across the globe. A traditional Italian cuisine begins with a big meal of antipasti that contains vegetables majorly like mushrooms, pepperoncini, and artichoke hearts coupled with a variety of cured meats. After that, a pasta plate follows with light proteins. The present chefs have reinvented traditional meals, especially in America, where most classic Italian dishes have undergone Americanization. Tourists across the world visit restaurants offering Italian delicacies.

Works Cited

Marchetti, Silvia. Massimo Bottura: The chef who reinvented classic Italian cuisine, 2018. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/chef-massimo-bottura-culinary-journeys/index.html

Naccarato, Peter, Zachary Nowak, and Elgin K. Eckert, eds. Representing Italy through food. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017. 99-105. Retrieved from https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/representing-italy-through-food-9781474280419/

Soler, Nieves Pascual. "Authentic Chef-Heroes." Food and Masculinity in Contemporary Autobiographies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018. 29-57. Retrieved from https://www.dariocecchini.com/en/antica-macelleria-cecchini/philosophy/#filo