Italy is a beautiful country with fascinating places to visit along with a rich history to learn about. It also has an exciting culture with unique customs that make it stand out among other Mediterranean countries. One outstanding element that makes Italy a splendid place is its glorious food.
Italian food is one of the best around the world, and there is more to it than just the big P’s. Of course, pasta and pizza are everyone’s favourite, but we ought to say that you may have tasted a different version, not one that resembles that of Italy. Let’s walk together through this delectable list of Italian foods and have our taste buds scream joyfully.
Italy is the original home of pizza, especially the city of Naples, yet everybody around the world enjoys this mouthwatering delicacy. The thing is, the authentic pizza of Italy is a bit different from the ones we eat in different parts of the world. Some differences set Italian pizza from any other pizza apart.
Firstly, Italian pizza has a thinner dough and a crust that rises slightly above it. Also, Italians don’t combine a lot of ingredients, but they use fewer items and fresh ones as well. Canned tomatoes and salsas are not part of Italian food, and pizza is no exception. They use fresh tomatoes along with fewer toppings. Italian pizza doesn’t take a lot of cheese as the American one does. They use their unique mozzarella cheese, mozzarella di bufala, made from buffalos milk.
Pasta is another food you can’t miss on every list of authentic Italian delicacies. People worldwide enjoy this delicious food, but it remains a staple dish in Italian cuisine. However, here’s a fun fact about pasta: although it’s known to the world to be Italian, the Chinese were the first to eat it.
However, Italians are the people who eat pasta the most. There is no room for boredom when it comes to Italian pasta. They eat it in all of its forms and shapes, and they cook it in a lot of different ways. There are more shapes to pasta than you can imagine, and that’s because it’s made from dough you can mould into any shape.
Calzone is one of the prominent Italian food that you should try someday. It originated in Naples, which seems to be the hometown of much Italian food. Calzone is so much like pizza. It’s a dough drenched in salt, garnished with lots of yummy ingredients like mozzarella, meat, ham, ricotta, eggs, and salami.
The dough is then turned over, embracing all of those ingredients and put into the oven until baked to perfection. It’s pizza but folded over to be enjoyed as a sandwich. The name “calzone” means trousers in Italian. This baked dough was given the same name, for you can fold it like a pair of trousers.
La Focaccia is a prevalent Italian food to enjoy around the streets of Italian. It’s a brand-new version of pizza but with some twists and turns, yet it’s similarly delicious. Briefly, la focaccia has a texture that is quite fluffier than traditional pizza, and that’s because it uses more yeast to reach that texture.
It’s a flatbread that people enjoy at any time of the day. However, the ingredients don’t go on top like the pizza but rather within the dough, making it easier to eat on the go. The best part is that la focaccia can be a sweet or savoury delicacy. People are more familiar with delicious fillings, including olives, mixed vegetables, and herbs. However, some prefer having it stuffed with chocolate, cinnamon, or sugar.
Brioche con gelato literally means brioche with ice cream. It’s the Italian version of an ice cream sandwich. This sweet indulgence originated in Sicily and became a popular street food in no time. Sicily is known for its insanely high temperature in summer, so ice creams are everywhere during that season.
We’re also going to disclose an Italian secret you probably shouldn’t know about, but here we go. Brioche con gelato is a famous breakfast option on Sicilian streets. Yes, Italians have ice cream first thing in the morning. They take a quick cup of hot espresso and their favourite ice cream flavour, hugged by a soft bun.
Mozzarella en Carrozza is one of the most famous Italian food to fall in love with, for it resembles the favourite grilled cheese sandwich. However, the difference here is that it only uses mozzarella as the main ingredient without adding other cheeses. This sandwich is a quick delicacy to enjoy, using some mozzarella and two toasts, dipping them in eggs and then frying to golden perfection.
The frying process makes the cheese melt, and that’s the reason behind this sandwich’s naming. Mozzarella en carrozza is Italian for “mozzarella in a carriage”. When you split the sandwich into two halves, the cheese stretches in the middle, and the two bread pieces seem like a horse pulling a carriage behind them.
Pastries are a staple Italian food that people enjoy anytime throughout the day. Not only are stuffed doughs appetising, but they’re also fulfilling and keep you full until the next meal. Panzerotti is another pastry-based Italian food you’ll enjoy if you have a knack for savoury street food.
It’s one of Italy’s most famous street foods, available on almost every corner. Panzerotti is a folded dough into the shape of a half-moon, with delicious fillings in between. It takes mozzarella and tomatoes, yet you can add extra ingredients if you love a flavoursome snack. The dough is then fried until it melts the cheese and blends with the tomatoes for a juicy texture and mouthwatering taste.
Porchetta is a popular Italian food that has its origin in central Italy and is one of the most prominent street foods there. This hearty meal will give you an authentic taste of Italian cuisine, especially if you’re fond of savoury dishes that contain fulfilling pork meat stuffed with many flavoursome ingredients.
Porchetta is a pork roast without bones, making it moist and tender. People add fennel, rosemary, and garlic to the carcass of pork to add a nice flavour. They then grab a delicate roll of ciabatta to add the carcass inside and garnish it with arugula, a dash of mayonnaise, and some caramelised onions.
Panelle is a versatile Italian food that you can have, sweet or savoury. This delicacy is made using chickpeas flours to produce fritters that can embrace many ingredients. It’s also small in size, making it suitable for eating almost anywhere, making it one of the reasons it rapidly became a popular street food.
Around different corners of the Italian streets, you can find street vendors selling panelle. Some are savoury and filled with mixed vegetables, parsley, and olive oil. Others can be sweet, with chocolate spread buzzing from every corner. Sweet ricotta is a prominent flavour used to spruce the fried dough.
Italian food seems to be full of soft buns booming with lots of mouthwatering fillings that keep you full for a long. Lampredotto is yet another finger food that people enjoy on the Italian streets. It also goes by the tripe sandwich, which uses the abomasum, a part of the cow’s stomach.
This little sandwich is made of a soft bun consisting of two types of tripe meats, the dark and the pale, with each shade having its flavour. It also encompasses a dash of salsa over the alternative layers of tripe meat that spices up the flavour.
Italian food has a lot of delicious variety that you can pick up from. We’re optimistic that there will be something that caters to your taste and will give you a unique culinary experience.
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