Cactus Language Blog

Buon appetito! Why Italian meal times are such a special occasion

Posted by simonager under Italian, Learning a language

In Italy people live to eat whereas in some other nations, such as the UK, people tend to eat to live. Food is taken seriously in Italy and meals are social occasions which can last several hours as the food and drink is enjoyed at a leisurely pace.

Every region and many towns have their own specialities, as well as different kinds of sausages, cheeses, wines and breads. These distinctive regional styles of cooking developed partly due to the geography of Italy: The country is divided from the rest of Europe by the Alps, and also has mountains running down it’s centre. Each region has a different climate from the hot, dry Mediterranean south to the cooler, wetter mountainous north. Communication and travel between the different regions was fairly difficult until recent times, and the country was a made up of a patchwork competing city states, kingdoms duchies and princedoms until it was unified in 1861. As result the different regions developed strong local identities, including different dialects and languages, and different styles of cooking.

Some Italian culinary traditions date back to the Romans, Greeks and even from the Etruscans. The Romans imported food from all over their empire and beyond, including spices from as far away as China, southeast Asia and India, wheat from Egypt and wine from Greece, Iberia and Gaul. Roman cusine was admired by and influenced later generations long after the fall of Rome and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

During the middle ages in the rich northern Italian cities people were able to afford the expensive ingredients needed for fresh pasta dishes – eggs, cheese, sugar and cream. Meanwhile the cities of Tuscany were becoming rich through trade and banking and developed extravagant new ways of cooking. In the poorer southern parts of Italy relatively cheap dishes based on dry pasta, especially spaghetti, and pizza were developed. These were taken to many other parts of the world through immigration and have become very popular.

Today meals can have up to five courses. The first course or primo usually consists of pasta, soup risotto or other rice dishes, which are popular in northern Italy. There may be serveral types of pasta, which will have less sauce then is common on pasta dishes in the UK and USA. The pasta itself is more important than the sauce.

Meat, poultry or fish are commonly served for the next course or secondo. Side dishes (contorni) of vegetables (verdure), potatoes (patate) or salad (insalata) can also accompany this course. Desserts (dolce) in the form of cheeses (formaggio), fruit (frutta) often finish off a meal, after which coffee (cafe), wines (vini), liqueurs (liquore) and digestives (digestivi) may be imbibed.

About the author
Simon Ager runs a company that provides information and advice about languages mainly via the website www.omniglot.com.

Tags:culture, food, Italian, Itlay, tuscany