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The real taste of Italy: foods and dishes

Italy is charming, like a truly beautiful girl. She is noisy, always laughing, lively, with a fiery heart. The temperament dissolved in landscapes, architecture, art and, most importantly, in the national cuisine makes Italy special. This is why I love her.

If earlier this country attracted me to the colorfulness of the locals, now I go to Italy because of the food. After all, the sun spilled there and human hands create the best products in the world.

I never name my favorite foods because there aren’t any. I believe that every taste is beautiful in its own way, you just need to let it open properly. But now I will make an exception and tell you what I love most about Italy. Let’s put it this way: this is my personal TOP, which today just drives me crazy with its taste.

Mozzarella di buffalo is an incredibly tender cheese made from the milk of buffaloes, which are massaged and include Mozart. Tomatoes. I just adore them, in Italy they are fragrant, rich, sugary sweet. Prosciutto is an Italian ham, often cured. There is prosciutto cotton – boiled ham, which is first smoked a little, so I love it.

Mortadella – simply divine – is a Bologna boiled sausage, in which pistachios, peppers, wine, garlic can be added. Each manufacturer has its own recipe, but spicy, with a rich herbal aroma, dried myrtle berries are a must.

And, of course, gorgonzola, the one that is real, stinks for many. When you add it to a dish, you never know how it will play and how those who try it will react to it. For some it is a weapon of mass destruction, for others it is the food of the gods.

I don’t know how it works. By the way, I started to crumble gorgonzola into oatmeal, which made me love this porridge. I really like it when you can catch rich pieces of salty cheese among a neutral homogeneous mass. It’s like a flavor bomb.

Among all countries, I would not say that Italy is the best in seafood. But octopus (polo in Italian) cooked in wine or with lime/lemon juice is amazing. If I come to Italy, I eat them all the time.

For me, Italy is a gastronomic dream. I think that every person who is in love with gastronomy, if he travels, should spend 40% of his time in Italy. A friend of mine said that he only goes to Italy to eat. God, when I heard this, I understood why I was going to this country. Here is the Michelin Guide, which lists the best restaurants in the world.

marked with stars. You should go to restaurants that have an honorary three stars first of all, because they are a gastronomic standard and the pride of the country in which they are located. So, I would give Italy three stars and write down in the Michelin guide not its individual establishments, but the whole country, because it brings real gastronomic pleasure.

Italy is not only pizza, pasta and capers. No, in no case can several dishes be singled out as the only representatives of one country. The cuisine of Italy is gradually changing as you move from the north to the south. Each region has its own special dish.

While in Sicily, you should definitely try arancini – fried rice balls stuffed with either meat or mozzarella with tomato sauce and herbs. In Naples, don’t forget to eat Neapolitan pizza baked in a wood-fired oven. If you go to Modena, then buy vinegar (balsamic made from aged grape must), it is the best there – thick, sweet and sour, ideal for salad dressing and somehow unusually tasty in combination with homemade Italian ice cream.

In Tuscany, don’t forget to drink a glass of dry red Chianti and still try the polo (octopus), which I like. There is also a thick rustic tomato soup (Pippa al Pomodoro) in Tuscany, to which dry three-day bread is added – here it is still very tasty.

It’s like a vegetable stew with olive oil, herbs, chicken or beef broth and bread. Oh, and I almost forgot about the Florentine steak, where under the almost charred crust hides the most tender, melting red meat in your mouth. This steak is not marinated before cooking, the piece is only sprinkled with salt and pepper after it is fried over a fire.

When you are in Parma, don’t miss the Parmesan and Prosciutto di Parma – Parma ham, one of the best – there is only meat and sea salt. In Milan, cult dishes are risotto Milanese (risotto with saffron) and cutlet Milanese (similar to schnitzel, which is the subject of dispute between Italians and Austrians). I want to say that this list is far from complete, because each city has its own gastronomic treasure.

The last time I was in Italy was on a yacht tour organized by the guys from Fleet5. I would call it an adult camp. 7 people who are completely unfamiliar to each other live together for 7 days, like a big family, communicate, somehow make friends, joke, laugh, walk until 5 in the morning, drink Prosecco, then, having packed their bags, tearfully say goodbye and leave. The captain plays the role of leader.

And also a yacht tour is a real gastronomic journey in which we stopped in every Italian city, tried local dishes, and then I chose the best products in the markets and cooked them on the yacht for the whole company. I mixed salad mix with spicy radicchio (Italian chicory), Dorr Blue cheese, peaches and dressed everything with lemon juice and olive oil.  I especially enjoyed grilling orate fish along with baby garlic, basil, lime, fennel and fresh peppers.

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