A guide to how to pick and how to cook one the
world's most popular cuisines
Eating an Italian meal is a ritual: a gathering of food and family to
celebrate traditions
Credits: Adobe Stock
Italian food is not just about pizza and pasta. Within Italy, there
are diverse styles of cooking - South Italy food is dominated by tomatoes,
olive oil and pasta while in North Italy, the most commonly used ingredients
are alpine cheese, meat. While pasta, sauces, and cheeses are staples across
the country, every region has its own unique ingredients and dishes.
It’s a myth that Italian food is all about pizza and pasta, says Amit
Rana, GM Holiday Inn New Delhi, Aero city- a hotel which is about to launch an
Italian restaurant L’Osteria Bella. He says another myth is that
Italian food is primarily about unhealthy or junk food. Says Rana, “It depends
on what you eat. You can have lots of veggies like spinach, beans, peas, even
bottle gourd in your main course dish or even make a complete meal out of soups
and salads. Italian cuisine is very palatable to Indian customers. Ours is not
a bow tie restaurant where you have to put a tuxedo to dine there. Instead,
it’s a casual family focused bright vibrant place to go and enjoy and have a
good time. Even the food will be designed to a local palette. If you give
proper Italian Risotto, the customer in India will say you have given me
uncooked rice. We have to adapt the cuisine according to our Indian customer.”
Eating an Italian meal is much like a ritual: a gathering of food and
family. And most of the culinary traditions are passed down from one generation
to the next.
Aseem Grover who runs a popular Italian café The Big Chill in Delhi shares
that “the primary thing about Italian cuisine is its sheer simplicity. If you
get a good olive oil and a good sea salt, and just a little bit of balsamic
vinegar, that is enough to make an outstanding salad. We make every single
thing fresh from scratch on site.” He says Indians love Italian food and that
is evident from the size of their menu. Says Grover- “We started 22 years ago
now when we had an A4 Sheet printed on one side for the menu. But now we have a
menu more like a telephone directory. Pasta is always a bestseller but then
people love the pizza, grilled food, our bakes, risottos. Plus, we have 15
salads on the menu and one can come and just have a salad menu. Now we find it
very difficult to take things off the menu and people love that variety.”
Get Your Ingredients Right
One of the biggest mistakes people make is not using the right tomato
sauce for their pizza, or the perfect oil for their food. The use of top-notch
ingredients contributes to the overall quality of the food. Italians are crazy
about pasta sauces and pesto is one of the most famous pasta sauces. It’s rare
for Italians to buy their pasta sauces: it is advisable to make them at home as
the recipes are quite simple. If you really want to master your Italian food,
you need to use olive oil and, even better, extra virgin olive oil and you will
soon notice the difference. While olive oil is often used in cooking, higher
quality extra virgin olive oil is used as a garnish to add a peppery flavour.
It is also used as a dip for Italian bread like focaccia or drizzled over
salad. Olives are another great cornerstone of the Italian menu. True balsamic
vinegar is a dark, well-aged vinegar used in marinades and dressings. Garlic is
one of the most popular ingredients throughout the country, especially sautéed
in olive oil to create a flavorful cooking base. Dried mushrooms are another
ubiquitous ingredient in Italian cuisine. Basil is a fragrant green herb with a
smoky, minty taste, and the most popular herb in Italian cooking.
Cheese is an important part. Popular varieties include
Parmigiano-Reggiano from Parma in the Emilia-Romagna region and Grana Padano
from northern Italy. Pecorino are cheeses made from sheep’s milk. A soft cheese
like mozzarella is used to melt over meals, like lasagna and pizza.
Pastas, which is generally a mix of flour, eggs, olive oil, water, and
salt, are a big hit with Indians. Flour is fundamental in Italian cuisine: it’s
used for everything and for this reason it has to be of very high quality.
There are many varieties of pasta based on the shape and the region they are
from. Popular types include spaghetti (long, thin strands of pasta); penne
(tube shapes from Liguria); tagliatelle (thin pasta ribbons from Bologna);
fettuccine (long, flat pasta from Rome); and pappardelle (flat, wide pasta
ribbons from Tuscany).
Tips and Tricks
The heart of Italian food is its ingredients. Take the case of Chef
Vanshika Bhatia, Head Chef and Co-founder OMO Café in Gurugram who gets most of
her ingredients from the hills in Uttarakhand and believes in serving
hyperlocal and hyper seasonal vegetarian Italian food. She shares that they
make their own pastas from the dough and everything else. Some of their
specials at her restaurant include eggless Pastas, roasted cauliflower Aglio
Olio Pepperoncini, mushroom, lime and garlic, mushroom and cauliflower
Bolognese. The pizzas are St. Louis Style Pizzas known for the paper-thin
crispy crust and the tangy sweet sauce which is heavy on oregano and there are
herbed vegetables and bocconcini, wild Mushroom and goat cheese, spinach,
sundried tomato and feta.
Says Chef Bhatia- “Italian cooking is about a lot of fresh ingredients.
The best food I have had was in Italy where I could taste the actual flavour of
the ingredient. Like even if I am having the pasta I can taste the dough, the
tomato, the cheese – everything separately and it all just marries well together
– that is the main thing. It needs to be fresh cooking. You can’t just make it
and keep it. We make fresh pastas almost every day and we don’t dry them
.. we just blanch them and serve them to order. Besides, you need to choose
your tomatoes really carefully – they need to be real plump and they can’t be
too sour or too sweet. Your olive oil needs to be really good.” She alerts that
Indians want overcooked pasta with lots of chilly flakes and fried garlic. “You
have to put in garlic, but it should not be overfried. You can use some olives
and onions as they surely enhance and bring out the flavours of your Italian
dishes. Fresh herbs are much better than dried herbs in a bottle. You can get
fresh leaves such as basil, thyme, and rosemary in your local market such as
INA market in New Delhi. You may start cooking with Pomace olive oil. But you
can dress the final dish with extra virgin olive oil and adding some freshly
crushed pepper on top can be helpful.”
Finally, Italian food focuses more on extracting the most essence of
each ingredient, instead of the spices. Much like Indian food, Italian food is
a culture, not just a cuisine.
|
Ingredient |
Price
Range (Rs) |
|
Pasta |
138-200 per kg |
|
Cheese |
345-500 per kg |
|
Maida Flour |
20-45 per kg |
|
Olive
Oil |
250-500 per kg |
|
Oregano
and Mixed Herbs |
199 for
60 g |
|
Italian
Tomato Puree |
125-
365 for 690g |
|
Pasta
Sauce |
170-250
for 385 g |
|
Olives |
150-400 per kg |
|
Balsamic
Vinegar |
99 for
100 ml |
Source: Market Research
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