Mangiare - A lesson in Italian Eating
Tuesday, 27th January 2009
Cactus' Neil Stawarz shares the secrets of true Italian dining...
As we all know, Italians love to eat. We’re all familiar with Italian food, from watching celebrity chefs to eating in high street chain restaurants, and pizza to spaghetti Bolognese, but there is nothing we have in England that can compare to eating all’Italiana.
My last trip to Italy included Sunday lunch with three friends in an agriturismo near Salerno in Campania, and if you want a real taste of Italy, then you simply must go to one.
An agriturismo is a relatively recent addition to Italy’s long list of places to eat after pizzerie, trattorie, ristoranti, man pushing overloaded cart, etc. It is a working farm that has opened its doors to people to come and try the local food and wine that has made Italian cuisine popular worldwide. But these aren’t the tourist traps that you’ll find in places such as Rome, Sorrento and Florence. Agriturismi are family-run affairs, located near small villages in the middle of nowhere, away from busy coastal resorts and overcrowded tourist hotspots, and are a perfect example of the “real” Italy that travellers have been falling in love with for years. They provide quality local produce whilst also providing the perfect opportunity to practice your Italian.
Driving out to one is an experience in itself, especially if you let an Italian take the wheel as we did. Blind corners follow hair-pin bends as you hurtle through the beautiful countryside in true Italian fashion. Well, it is the home of Ferrari after all.
We arrived at one o’clock and leisurely set up camp in the shade of one of the trees in the garden over looking the orchard. We wouldn’t move from our table for another four hours! Four hours dedicated to eating, drinking and another favourite Italian past time, gesticulating wildly whilst talking! I knew that Italian meals were drawn-out affairs but this was something else entirely.
Menus don’t exist in agriturismi. Instead, the food is brought out to you one glorious dish after another until you can’t move even if you wanted to. You are served whatever the owner has decided to cook that day, along with plenty of good quality local wine.
Antipasti, followed by primi followed by secondi, contorni, and dolce, rounded off with the obligatory caffè. Each course offering two, and sometimes three, servings of the various specialities of the day is broken up by long pauses seemingly designed for posing with your sunglasses on and a cigarette nonchalantly lingering on your lips, if the people around us were anything to go by.
We finally saw the finishing line to this meal version of a marathon when the owner brought out a round of sambuca to thankfully aid our weary stomachs work through all the food that we had just consumed.
Four very happy people after four very enjoyable hours. Now that’s what I call a Sunday lunch!
Tags: italian, salerno, agriturismo, cooking
Posted by Laura Harrison under Food and Drink,
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