Pasta. Pizza. Yawn. Today, we are so exposed to ‘Italian’ food on the high street that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Italy has a far richer edible heritage than tomato sauces and bland, made-over pastas. Perhaps the key to understanding the real beauty of Italian food is to learn about the strong – and widely differing – regional heritages.
In the North of the country, close to the rest of Europe, the pizza has achieved near hegemony. Purely a Napolitan and Roman tradition this basic bread and tomato recipe is nearly ubiquitous. Alongside the bland, heavy, cheese-laden pasta dishes that line up for our attention on supermarket shelves has frogmarched over our perceptions of Italian food, despite its most common incarnation having more in common with the kitchens of Manhattan than the simple rustic traditions of Italian food.
The really interesting side avenues of Italian food are to be found in the South of the country – where the proximity of Africa and a tradition rooted in overt poverty has resulted in an exciting clash of flavours and styles a world away from what you might expect.
