Imagine Italian food and most people will picture pasta or pizza, spaghetti or sausages. But like most ancient lands, Italy has a diverse cuisine. The regional variations show up nowhere so sharply as the divide between Northern and Southern cuisine. There is overlap, to be sure. But travel north toward the Alps or to the [...]

Sure marinara can be plain old tomato sauce. But there are ways to make it a delightfully stylish topping. Since the name derives from the Italian word for sailor, it’s common to think of marinara as part of seafood dishes. But its use on spaghetti alone is enough to disprove that. Familiar from a million [...]

De Gaulle famously declared once, referring to France: “How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six cheeses?” But Italy is no slouch when it comes to this delectable dairy food. That should be no big surprise, since Italy is a land of many regions and even includes two major islands. The [...]

Best known for pasta-based dishes, there is a category of Italian food that should never be overlooked by those seeking great taste: Italian breads. Bread is an ancient food and nowhere has that fact been more evident than in this sun-drenched land. Come explore some of the many options… Focaccia is perhaps the best known [...]

Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the world. It is eaten in just about every country, and in many of them it’s consumed by the score every year. It is considered one of the basic Italian dishes. But is pizza really Italian? It depends… It is beyond reasonable doubt that pizza did [...]

Think of Italian food and pasta almost always comes to mind first. But there is another staple that has been part of the Italian diet for centuries: gnocchi. Their name in the native tongue – lump – describes their shape, but not their taste. Made from potatoes one might think that taste would be bland [...]

Southern Italian dishes tend to be tomato-based and spicy. Northern ones, by contrast, lean toward creamy and buttery. No better example of the difference can be found than a fine Fettuccine Alfredo, the quintessential northern-style dish. Ironically, the origins of the dish are said to hail from a restaurateur in Rome circa 1920, and Rome [...]

Get ready for a dining adventure. Italian food is being sought. You won’t want to miss out. Before you set sail to seek out culinary perfection, explore an Italian dish. You may prefer the traditional foods that everyone associates with this lovely country. But which tradition? Tomato sauce and pasta – the quintessential Southern Italian [...]

The cuisine of Southern Italy is familiar to the average person. Who hasn’t heard of pizza? Pasta, too, is much more common here than in the dishes of Northern Italy. The distinctive flavor provided by olive oil and tomatoes is also much more likely a part of a dish here than in regions further north. [...]

Risotto is a rice-based Italian dish. But, oh what a delightful taste sensation is masked by that simple description. Naturally, there are dozens of different recipes and each one reflects the region and the individual chef that gave birth to it. Risotto differs from ordinary rice dishes because it does not use the now more-or-less [...]