Easy Italian Recipes

Italy's strong religious past has resulted in many festival foods which are only made at certain times of year, and many of these traditions are still alive today. The shop windows in Siena at Christmas heave with panforte, while the Sicilians hang marzipan fruits from their trees. Ligurians picnic on Easter Monday with their traditional Easter tart - Torta Pasqualina.
Carnevale has pre-Christian origins and was celebrated by the ancient Romans. This is the time just before Lent when fatty foods such as Frittelle are eaten with relish. The English equivalent is Pancake Day, which some of us still celebrate with races. All over Italy, towns hold processions of children and adults in costume, but none more so than Venice and Viareggio, where the party atmosphere can last for days.

Sagre are food festivals that celebrate the ripening or harvest of a particular food from a particular place. The origins of the sagre are sometimes religious, sometimes pagan or sometimes a mix of the two. I suppose they are the equivalent of us wassailing apple trees in Britain. Families and friends, old and young unite at this time to socialise, eat and celebrate. It could be the start of hunting for wild boar or the peak of the porcini mushroom season. Typical of this kind of event is a chestnut festival I attended in a sports pavilion in Tuscany, with long tables and stalls selling whole chestnuts, chestnut flour, chestnut liqueur and so on, and serving a delicious menu of chestnut pasta, polenta and porcini.

At a festa, a festival celebrating a saint's day or a national holiday, food is sometimes made to raise money for a local cause. There are also political celebrations, such as the annual Festa dell'Unita held in most towns all over Italy. This celebration of the left-wing party with concerts, debates and stalls is peculiarly Italian. Food, naturally, is one of the key elements, and often people enjoy both local and ethnic dishes, such as Indian and Chinese. Frequently, there is a strong link with ethical trade organisations, so people can not only eat 'green' food but also buy it.

Local and Seasonal Food

To cook Italian means using mainly local ingredients and following traditions learnt from previous generations that define the characteristics of the region. Italy has been living a food renaissance recently, led by movements such us the Slow Food organisation, which began as a reaction to a McDonald's opening by the famous Spanish Steps in Rome. The Slow Food movement has created the Ark of Taste, with the sole purpose of saving artisan foods and promoting ingredients from specific areas, such as Lardo di Colonnata or the balsamic vinegar of Modena.

DOP (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta) or Protected Designation of Origin certification has also been vital in preventing the otherwise inevitable degradation of regional products. Because of this legislation, no chilli can be added to Parmigiano-Reggiano, for instance, and you won't find a cumin seed spicing up a leg of Parma Ham. Local food isn't just for tourists; it is eaten by everyone, though it might be packaged differently for visitors to the region. On a trip to Bergamo I found the windows of the delis crammed with plin (a type of pasta) and gnocchi all'ortica (nettle gnocchi) - the pasta was sold loose by weight for the locals, whereas it was done up in pretty packages tied with raffia for the tourists.

Many Italians grow their own vegetables wherever they can, and if they don't have their own garden will have an orto, or allotment, yielding fresh produce. Most people also raise basil, rosemary and thyme plants. Italians in general are still forced to live with the seasons, since you won't find imported food at the weekly or daily markets. So they set great store by drying and preserving foods to eat during the rest of the year. You cannot get a fresh chilli for love nor money outside late summer, for example, so many people grow them in pots on their balconies, then dry them on the windowsills when they are ripe.

Supermarkets are less faithful to local suppliers and seasonal produce. Avocados, for instance, are not indigenous to Italy but are now available in supermarkets and have become more widely used in cooking (see Scallops Wrapped in Pancetta with Avocado Sauce). Even so, Italians generally still buy seasonal produce, because they know this is the way to get the best flavour from food. They will pick over fruit and vegetables in the markets with great attention - and not only in the markets, but in supermarkets, too, using the disposable plastic gloves that are compulsory if you want to touch the food. I once spent ages picking out peppers in a market in Puglia to help a local woman who was teaching me how to make a dish, only to find later that when my back was turned she had put them all back and selected smaller, tighter ones, muttering in dialect about English women not knowing their peppers from their elbows.

In different parts of Italy, farmers are raising animal breeds that had at one time almost disappeared. There is also an association - Associazione Nazionale Formaggi Sotto it Cielo - which is trying to encourage people to use meat and dairy products made from cattle that are allowed to roam free, sotto it cielo, 'under the sky', rather than being confined to barns.