Before I left for my two months travelling all over Italy, I thought Italian food was great. Now I love it. Even on my tiny budget – supermarkets, pizzas and student’s pasta offerings – I was spoiled. Here’s a little insight into some of the things I can remember eating.
Breakfast was the hardest meal of the day for me, and the most different from my normal bowl of cereal. Italian breakfast is basically just a coffee, perhaps with a couple of little biscuits or a cream filled croissant. You can grab breakfast in bars (different to the English meaning of bars), where it’s usually cheaper to drink your coffee standing at the counter than sit. I liked how the coffee is served at drinking temperature.
You’ll notice when it’s lunchtime in Italy because the whole town will have shut down for la pausa. This is more common in the south and caught me out many times. During this lunchbreak, which lasts several hours, Italians often go home and have a proper lunch. However, I was travelling so I usually got a panino or another snack like a slice of pizza or foccacia. Even the cafe at Catania train station will close for la pausa – I found this out whilst waiting hungrily for the left luggage to reopen, as it too had closed.
Panini are delicious, with soft, floury ciabatta bread and yummy filling. A common choice for me was tomato, mozzarella and proscuitto, the ingredients of which all taste so much better in Italy. Italian tomatoes taste a lot juicier and come in a wider range of shapes and sizes than in Britain. Proscuitto (cured ham) was one of my favourite foods while I was travelling, especially in panini and on pizza.
Italian wine is fantastic. Not only is it always delicious – you don’t seem to get bad wines – it’s very very cheap. I saw bottles for less than 1€. I even took a bottle to a party that cost 2€ for 1.75l and a thirty-something Italian lady said it was good wine! And she was right. I was told grapes from Tuscany and Puglia are particularly tasty, and Sicilian wines are deliciously fruity. I bought myself back a bottle of chianti. Surprisingly though, Italians seem to drink beer all the time. Even the girls. Every town seems to have a place where the students go, buy overpriced beer from the shops with fridges and drink it outside in a piazza. I enjoyed going to these places with my hosts: they have a warm, friendly atmosphere, often with people playing musical instruments.
For dinner, Italians eat a lot. There are so many courses: aperitivo, antipasto, primo piatto, secondo piatto, contorno, dolce, frutta con formaggio, digestivo, caffè. I didn’t have them all – the most I had was a set menu in Rome with Tom and Fran and an excellent cheap canteen in Genova with Veerle.
I went for aperitivo often, as it’s a cheap way to eat a lot. Meant as a pre-dinner drink, usually spritz, many bars offer a complimentary buffet with the purchase of a beverage around 5-7pm. The food is typically cheap and filling, for example rice, pasta and bread. I didn’t have antipasto very often, although my first hosts did do it for me a couple of times. Cold meats, bread or maybe bruschetta. It’s normal in Italian restaurants for bread and service to be added to the cost of the bill, so you’re not expected to tip.
Next up is the first course, il primo piatto. This is usually pasta, soup or risotto. When my hosts cooked for me, they’d usually just cook me pasta and not bother with the other courses. Pasta with tomato and mozzarella was the most common, but I also ate a lot of courgette and aubergine with my pasta. I didn’t have meat in pasta, apart from inside tortellini. I guess traditionally this is saved for the second course, il secondo piatto, which is basically meat. Contorno is a side to go with your meat, for example salad or some vegetables. In Rome with Tom and Fran, we found a wonderful restaurant that made amazing salads. My salad of prawns, melon, tomato, beans, rocket and sweetcorn was delicious.
And now we start with the desserts. At a party I had some very nice homemade tiramisu, but I didn’t have many dolce. I went for gelato a few times, almost always after dinner: gelaterias seem to do their best business after dark. Viagra gelato in Rome was fun, but in the heat of the day, my the blue ice cream made a melty mess. I also had a delicious granita in Catania and have since bought a recipe book for gelato and granita. After the dolce, fruits and cheeses can be served, followed by a digestivo such as grappa or limoncello, and finally we end the day where we began – with a coffee.
