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The cooking

The cooking is the most important part of the Italian culture. Known all over the world, it is loved and imitated at whichever latitude. It is the richest, nourishing and healthy cooking handed on from centuries through the familiar life. It is above all of peasant origin, close to our earth and to its seasonal products, it is a genuine cooking which uses natural ingredients.
It is rich of just unique plate of pasta coupled with vegetables, greens, legumes, all ingredients connected with our local traditions, but also with a consistent variety of meats, excellent fish coming from the seas of our peninsula, of ancient and various cheeses and of excellent cakes. But on our table the main plate is the "first one", in all its varieties, from dried pasta or in broth, to the soups, several types of pottages and vegetable soups, to rice, to timbales.

The most diffused traditional plates, that derive from the poor peasant cooking and not, as time go by have created true and real "specialties". From the soups made up of stale bread and vegetables, like ribollita or the acquacotta from Tuscany, to the many recipes that even using simple ingredients have become "classic" of the Italian cooking. In fact, the good quality of our plates depends above all just on the combination of savours and aromas, baking times and balance between the ingredients, "creative" abilities, accuracy of the preparation and passion. Also with regional differences, this cooking maintains its traditional plates in all the territory.

Some indications on the Italian meal
You can start with an appetizer, and after being cheered up by the Mediterranean savours of vegetables, salt porks, sauces, salads, pies, sea fruits etc, you can continue with a first dish of pasta (just try the hand made one) flavoured in the most varied ways, or with a rice plate. Therefore pass to second plate, made of meat or fish, accompanied with vegetables and then an excellent cheese. And you could stop here. But, you know, for the cake you always find a place.

Italian cooking and recipes

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Inns and Taverns

In Italian restaurant field, the inns are the typical premises where to taste the specialties of regional cooking. The prices generally are cheap in comparison with restaurants. The plates, that vary according to the day of the week and the season, are often prepared with genuine products and are often of high-quality. The service is simple and familiar but very accurate.
The Slowfood Arcigola, the oenogastronomic national association that gathers the Italian conaisseurs and organizes important manifestations, has promoted the regional cooking and favoured the renewal of inns and taverns following a precise philosophy: to support the taste putting aside the haste.

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Restaurants

There are various types and categories of restaurants: from the cheapest snack bar/self-service, where it is possible to find already ready plates at sight, to premises with expensive service and equipment, but "not always accessible" for young people's pockets . The latter offer a wide choice through a menu where the price for each plate is indicated, or just a proposal at fixed price for lunch. Before entering it is better to have a look at the menu generally exposed at the entrance. In restaurants the price of the chosen plates on the menu has always to be added to the cover (the use of plates, cutlery, glasses and bread) and service; both are indicated on the menu.
The timetables, more flexible in the centre and south of Italy, usually go from 12 to 14.30 for lunch and from 19.00 to 22.30 for supper.

Pizzerias

From the classic "Margherita" to the "4 stagioni" passing to pizza with gorgonzola and walnuts or with the trevigiana: there is no limit to the fantasy as regards the stuffing of the most famous national plates. In pizzerias you don't find just pizza: they are often also inns and it is therefore possible to find a menu for choosing other plates.

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Bars, paninotecas and wine cellars

For a fast snack it is possible to eat something also in the bars and some time also in the wine cellars. You can choose not only among an incredible variety of sandwiches, of focaccine (white stuffed pizza), tramezzini - "sandwiches" (small slices of stuffed pancarrè) and toast, but also between delicious warm plates at cheap prices.
In bars two Italian rituals are celebrated, the one of the coffee and the one of the aperitif. At every hour of the day people drink an express or spotted coffee (with a little warm or cold milk); narrow (more concentrated) or long (less concentrated).
At lunchtime or supper people go to bars to drink an aperitif: a wine glass, a branded aperitif or "of the house" (a alcoholic or analcoholic cocktail prepared by the barman). Meanwhile you can taste the several "stuzzichini" ("snacks") made up of specialties of the house (pizzette, cheeses, salt porks, olives), sometimes so abundant to become a true and real snack. They are usually open from 7.00 to 20.30. In summer and in some premises during the evening it is possible to listen to music also until midnight.
The wine cellars have taken the place of the old "bottiglierie" (wine shops) where it was possible to drink the local wine "mescita " namely with glass, accompanying it with very simple food. There are still some exemplaries of bottiglierie in the cities of province or in the countries. The wine cellars are the modern and metropolitan version: you can drink good wine from bottles offered to be tasted, you can often eat "saucers" of typical food of the place or sandwiches stuffed with salt porks and cheeses. They are another place where to meet for an aperitif.

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Rosticcerias (Cook Shops)

They offer typical local savours to taste on place or to take away such as pizza "by the slice" or "by the meter" (namely in pieces) stuffed in many ways, portions of farinata (flour of ceci, water and salt cooked in big tins), focacce flavored with oil and aromas such as the rosemary. You can find also varied foods already cooked, like roasted chickens with potatoes, the sicilian "arancini", meatballs of rice with gravy of tomatoes and mozzarella (or "supplì al telefono" in Rome).
 
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