A note on food in Italy

Before we leave Italy too far behind, some reflections on food there . . .

Buying local ingredients and cooking with them is one of the pleasures of any trip for me, and Italy was a country I'd been looking forward to, a lot, and it certainly didn't disappoint.  I've made some mention of new foodie discoveries in my blog entries (as well as a bit of surreptitious editing on Mr B's entries!) and here are some more thoughts for those interested :)

Shopping and eating in Italy seems firmly defined by its regions.  Each one has its own distinctive dishes, produce, fresh fruit and vegetables but unlike other countries, some of those won't be available in the next region, which threw our menu planning once or twice! In Liguria, pesto and fresh pasta were everywhere, along with pasta sauces, such as liver or artichoke.  There too, were mountains of amazing and unfamiliar greens, such as agretti (similar in appearance to a feathery samphire, tastes a bit like spinach) and a bitter leafy green, cicoria, which looks like dark green dandelion leaves and was delicious lightly boiled. I tried steaming the first batch but the taste was too bitter.  I guessed these two were early season veg as we only saw them a couple of times but was proved wrong on the latter, as much further south, in Puglia in July, cicoria surfaced again in a campsite shop and we discovered it's a speciality of the region, served with fava beans!

Back in Liguria in May, the staples were masses of chard and spinach, sold in big bunches fastened by raffia or elastic. In Tuscany, things changed again and we found the most difficult thing was buying good bread, but the porchetta was delicious, as were the fennel flavoured sausages, and the range of pulses and grains was vast, including one called farro dicocco, a type of spelt I think, delicious lightly boiled and served as a salad with tomatoes.  In Lazio, a favourite vegetable was a variety of courgette (a Roma?) with a pale green ridged surface and firm flavoursome flesh - we've not seen it since!  And we discovered the suppli, a round tomatoey cousin of Sicily's rice based snack, arancini. Driving into Campania we  hit the start of the tomato season in earnest, with delicious cherry tomatoes in the shape of tiny lemons plus crates and crates of fennel, which we saw being harvested from plots of land dotted around between the houses in the urban sprawl of Pompeii. Here too is the home of buffalo mozzarella, which is delicious and fresh tasting, unlike the long life versions we get back at home. There we also saw the huge thick skinned lemons famous in the region, and the unavoidable Limoncello liqueur!

As we drove on to Calabria and Basilicata, the weather began to heat up and roadside stalls were piled high with cherries and melons plus strings of elongated red onions and garlic alongside the tomatoes.  Here too we saw more citrus than anywhere else apart from the north. The aubergines here are quite different, either long and slim, or almost spherical, with violet skins and creamy white flesh with a firm texture.

The only thing we missed on our travels down the west coast was fresh fish, up until right down south at our last campsite, where we ate locally caught fish in the campsite restaurant.  Later, on Sicily, it seemed more readily available. Reading up on this later, it's because, as with fruit and vegetables, the Italians import very little fish.  On Sicily, we enjoyed locally caught bream, sold from a van on the campsite, which was delicious and the fish man visited several times a week too.  The food on the island is pretty amazing generally, all so fresh and the most fabulous fruit; when we were there in June there were cherries, peaches, huge apricots, early figs from Messina and melons. The island has some very fertile volcanic soil and intensive polytunnel farming, so I imagine it produces much of what it needs and food miles are low.  Palermo was a revelation, not only the produce available but the sheer freshness of everything, and the cost, so cheap!  We were there for the day so bought very little, but were inspired to try unfamiliar ingredients we'd seen, including salted ricotta whilst still on the island.  Even the nibbles were new, including lupines, a brined broad bean which I found highly addictive.

The majority of produce we've seen is Italian and here you buy with the seasons, which is the best way to shop.  There was probably no better province to leave from than Puglia, which produces some 75% of Italy's fresh produce and a great deal of olive oil. Here again the produce was fantastic, so loaded up with fruit, tomatoes and weird and wonderful cucumber varieties, we headed north to the border.

J.