Italian Food Beyond Pizza and Pasta

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Everybody loves Italian food for pizza and pasta. But this time, I want to map some major regional dishes that beyond the two more stereotypical dishes we associate with Italian cuisine.

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Credits:
Producer – Matthew Li
Production Assistant – Mana Chuabang
Script Supervisor – Louis Govier

Special thanks:
Yusef Iqbal
Yeevonne Lim
Dylan Payne
Brandon Goddard
Kevin Thomas

Timestamps:
0:00 – I love Italy
1:16 – Northern Italian food
4:47 – Central Italian food
7:27 – Southern Italian food

in 2019 I went on a trip that changed my life I went to [Music] Italy to this day it’s still my favorite country I’ve been to in the world the architecture the history the food I love Italy and I thought I knew Italian food before going there but boy was I wrong Italian food is known around the world for pizza and pasta and when I went to Italy for the first time that’s what I expected to eat but when I got there there was so much [Music] more though Italian food is like one of the world’s most popular Cuisines I feel like most people only see half of it I learned a lot when I went to Italy and there’s a lot more for me to learn so in this video I want to explore and map Italian food and just to preface this is a really entrylevel video so if you’re already an expert on Italian food this is probably not for you but I just want to put this Cuisine under a light many people might have never seen [Music] before okay there’s a lot of regions for us to cover here Italy is a very diverse country so to make this a bit more digestible let’s break it down into three parts Northern central and southern Italy starting with with the north we can see a lot of interesting crossovers between Italian food and the history of its neighbors friuli for example was once part of Austria Hungary before it was absorbed into Italy in the 1800s with that this region actually happens to have a lot of similar dishes to that of Slovenia and Austria from kubana a dessert that’s eaten during celebrations and festivals teos which is a dish of heated cheese compacted with potatoes and onions however probably the most defining food for this region is brovada which is like an Italian Sauer crot made with fermented turnips it comes from an ancient tradition to preserve turnips during the winters you probably know this region for Venice which personally I think lives up to the [Music] hyp there’s all kinds of major food from this region like the pandoro which is a sweet bread from Verona for Christmas and a Venetian favorite the chti these are small side dishes topped with all kinds of ingredients from fish tomatoes olives and side note they go really well with Spritz but I can’t talk about venito without mentioning Penta often referred to as Italian grits Penta is a major staple of the country particularly in the north it came to be as a peasant food originally using chickpeas or feral lenta has become so widely eaten today because it’s a cheap versatile comfort food that could be used as a base much like pasta and pizza let’s move across to the other side of Northern Italy next to France this part of the country is the origin of grini the general belief is that this came from a baker in turine during the 17th century the bread stick was invented specifically for this Duke because he had digestive problems and couldn’t eat typical bread but Chini became so popular across the region that Napoleon himself ordered it to be delivered from turine to Paris this part of the country is also where my number one favorite bread is from fuka you might have already seen this bread and know it it’s a spongy flatbread that shares some similarities to Pizza depending on who you ask fuka is an amazing bread with a range of flavors depending on what it’s baked with from tomatoes to even just chunks of salt finally let’s look at Lombardi where we have to mention Roto AR one of the most popular forms of rizoto it’s said that the dish comes from the 1800s where glass makers used saffron to color the stained Windows of Milan’s Duo Cathedral as The Story Goes one of these glass makers got married and at their wedding his friends pranked him by adding saffron into the Roto which accidentally turned out to work really well this rotto also often goes with osuko a dish made with view Shanks and vegetables from Milan that’s also a huge deal here in addition there’s paneton another food from Milan it’s a large loaf of sweet bread that’s primarily eaten for Christmas and New Year’s across the country all right let’s move down to Central Italy starting with the iconic region Amelia Romania if you love pasta this place has some of the from Talia bologan and lasagna but beyond that there’s many other notable dishes from here poman cheese is exclusively made in this region there’s also padina Roman an Italian flatbread that’s often used as a simple sandwich and even the British have their influence on food here with zupa in a layered spongecake dessert that’s inspired by English Trifles of course another iconic region is Tuscany this region is home to a ton of dishes from Italian Steak poretta and farinata a thin pancake made with chickp flour one interesting dish is Papa Al Pomodoro a tusin soup made with stale bread that’s broken down by vegetable stock and tomatoes again another dish made by relatively poor people who were just trying to use whatever ingredients they had and a popular dessert DT from here is the tartufo the Dome shape of this Gelato dessert actually came by accident when a chef ran out of modes for a wedding party and improvised by using his hands one other region I have to mention is Lazio where Rome [Music] is this region is extremely famous for pasta sauces like kabanata but there is a handful of notable food outside of that a really unknown one is Quinto quato a tradition of slow cooking organs into stews or Ragu the sui a fried rice ball is another big deal in Rome and finally there’s the art of cooking artichokes in this region that largely comes from Rome’s historic Jewish Community the preparation of these different artichoke dishes are beautiful and it’s even more shocking to know that they originally come from very poor communities I definitely want to make a video about this someday in Rome so I’ll save more about this another time in Sardinia there’s an interesting variation of pasta I know this video is about food outside of pasta and pizza but I think frula shows how diverse pasta can be it’s a dish that resembles something more like couscous and has been eaten on the island for over a thousand years but probably the most defining food in Sardinia is this a small cake made with ricotta cheese and saffron cream originally it was eaten during Easter and the shape of it resembles the sun reflecting sardinia’s perfect weather going back to the mainland let let’s look at Southern Italy in compania there’s this sandwich which is essentially a fried cheese sandwich as you could guess it started off as a peasant dish in the city of Naples most notable though this region is home to the cap salad another iconic food in Italy one interesting theory on the origin of this is that it was created after World War I as a patriotic symbol to bring the country back together after all this dish is made with the same colors of the Italian flag in bidata there’s chamba a vegetable soup made for the summer and pastis a cow Zone that’s shaped like a half moon to represent female fertility okay next up in Audia is this a tart dessert made with ricotta cheese or custard it’s something that very much resembles pastel da natas in Portugal another familiar looking food is this Italian version of a kebab skewer but finally let’s end it in [Music] Sicily this region has arguably been the most influential to the development of Italian American Cuisine and has some iconic dishes there’s Aran Chini a personal favorite of mine it’s an Italian fried rice ball coated with breadcrumbs and filled with meat and mozzarella cheese another special food in Sicily is this it’s one of the many dishes developed by the working class this time by poor fishermen that made use of cheap sardines stuffing them with herbs nuts and raisins Sicily also has some French influence on its cuisine like with this dish which is meat rode around a filling of vegetables ham and a hard boiled egg finally for dessert there’s two major ones from Sicily the first one is casata this unique looking sponge cake littered with fruits and ricotta cheese this dessert actually dates back to the Arab conquest of Sicily and possibly got its name from Arabic lastly we got to talk about canoli this dessert also dates back to Arab Rule and is believed to have gotten its name from the Arabic word for tubes Arabic Cuisine actually plays a big part in the flavors of canoli and other Mediterranean sweets by introducing ingredients like candied fruits pistachios and cinnamon it’s one of many examples that Italian food is way more diverse Than Just Pizza and Pasta which alone are very diverse Foods themselves [Music] Italy is one of the many Cuisines that feels extremely unique and isolated but as you can see in this video Italian food is influenced by all kinds of cultures around it in fact the idea of Italian food being a unified thing isn’t even 200 years old after all before 1870 this peninsula was a mess of independent states and kingdoms I know this video doesn’t cover everything and I probably butchered a lot of Italian names but but I hope the next time you travel to Italy you’ll try something you’ve never heard of before [Music] [Music]