Italian Food- Friuli Venezia Giulia
The preconceived notion that Italian food consists of about fifteen dishes found at the italian food joints in the U.S is false. In fact, Italion food has a wide variety and varies greatly acroos across the country. The different regional cuisines found in Italy take cues from surounding nations and spice it up with a lit of bit of local creativity to provide the inimitable Italian cuisine. A great example of the fore-said is the cuisine from the region of Fruili-Venezia Giulia
The region has a common border with the formerly Soviet nation of Yugoslavia, and has a lot of customs and traditons (including culinary) in common. The Italian food from this region has a strong Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Slovenian influence. The beer halls in this region show the most apparent influence. Dishes such as Goulash and Viennese sausage are available here, goulash which originally was a Hungarian dish, acquired the distinct Italian taste from this area and can be found in restaurants in and outside of Italy. The dish is very popular in this area, and constitutes a thick beef stew and vegetables available locally such as red peppers and onions. It is thick and the seasoning is done with paprika, and is usually served along with pasta. Another popular dish at the local beer halls is the Bohemian hare.
Pork is the commonly used meat here. It is essential for tourists visiting this region to try the San Daniele del Friuli hams. The hams are the staple food of the locals. The entire region is well known for its sausages and bacon. In fact the local dish named jota which is unique to this area is a dish made with bacon and beans. The pork that is available here is spicy and usually comes off as a shock to the foreigners and tourists not accustomed to this fiery brand of Italian cooking. The pork is usually cooked on a open hearth. It is a part of many dishes.
A lot of other foods are specific to this area. Italian food has a sweeter side to it, an example of it being strudel. A lot of desserts here are based on flour and strudel is the most commom. Another common dish that is found in this region is polenta. It constitutes boiled cornmeal and forms a part of the staple diet of this region, and can be served along with most types of Italian cuisine, including cheese and meat dishes. It is very similar to the American grit. Another Italan staple food that deserves a mention from this region is cheese. The Montasio cheese which is famous the world over comes from this area. If you like Italian cuisine with lot of cheese in it, instead of mozzarella, then this is definetly the area for you. The last dish that requires mention is the brovada. This dish is very unique to this region, and can simply be put as turnips preserved in marc. It is certainly not a dish that most people associate with Italian cuisine, but it definetly is a dish that is very unique to Italy, due to which it forms an very important part of Italian cuisine. The next time you decide to visit a Italian restraunt, try to experiment with the different regional cuisines on offer. Branching out is the key words here.
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The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
Universally acclaimed by the critics, and now available for the first time in paperback, here is an inspiring, wide-ranging, AZ guide to one of the worlds best-loved cuisines. Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much
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(out of 7 reviews)
List Price: $ 17.95
Price: $ 6.99
Review by Ms. Readsalot for The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
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Love this book – answers any question you have about italian cooking, and in such an engaging writing style – this isn’t a boring reference book. I don’t know much about Gillian Riley, but I know she clearly loves what she’s talking about. A beautiful addition to my food book collection – highly recommended!!!!
Review by Robert C. Ross for The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
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Gillian Riley with the help of other contributors has created a comprehensive encyclopedia of Italian food, which is enlivened with mini-essays that display her wit and her erudition. She covers all 20 regions of the mainland, Sicily and Sardinia. She discusses cheeses, sausages, produce, spices, regional dishes, cooking styles, history, cultural influences and important culinary figures, but excludes wine, which would require a volume of its own.
Some pages look like standard encyclopedias, for example, page 322:
Prosciutto (see ham and Parma ham)
Provatura, a pulled buffalo-milk cheese similar to mozzarella
Provola, an aged (or smoked) pulled cheese from the south
Provolone, the same cheese made in the north, where the milk is richer and more abundant
Provola di Floresta, a pulled cheese made from cattle on Mount Etna
Prunes (see plums)
Pudding
Puglia, which continues for several pages.
Essays include:
– A discussion of Futurist painter Marinetti’s attack on pasta for making Italians pacific and listless She points out, as Marinetti never did, that rice was “a patriotic, home-grown food, unlike pasta, which depended on imported grain”.
– Beef Carpaccio was named by Giuseppe Ciprani of Harry’s Bar because the color “reminded Cipriani of the deep reds in the paintings in a stunning exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale in 1963 of Carpaccio, a name to conjure with, which is what everyone has been doing ever since”.
– Pirciati are a long hollow kind of pasta similar to bucatini. Although there are no formal recipes in the book, Gillian illustrates the perfect sauce for pirciati with a delightful restaurant scene from one of Andrea Camilleri’s Commissario Montalbano books, “Il Colore della Notte”. The sauce “burns”, as you can tell from the ingredients: oil, onion, two garlic cloves, two anchovies, a teaspoon of capers, black olives, half a chilli pepper, tomato, basil, black pepper and grated pecorino. “Alternating forks of food with gulps of wine, groans of extreme agony and unbearable bliss … Montalbano even had the courage to mop up the remaining sauce with a piece of bread, wiping his brow from time to time.”
– Cicero, the Roman orator, reportedly gave the family name to chickpeas, whose Latin name is Cicer arietinum (ceci in Italian).
– Mozzarella di bufala is made from the milk of water buffalo not native to the country. They were brought to Italy from Asia during the late Roman Empire — a better legacy than garum, a sauce made by fermenting fish and their entrails.
– The entry for Parmesan runs to more than 2,000 words and includes information on its nutritional value, the region where it is produced, the breed of cow used to produce it (the razza reggiana, or vacche rosse), the role of the cheese maker, the origin of its name, Moliere’s deathbed demand for it, its frequent and lustrous depiction in 16th and 17th century paintings, and the proper method of serving: “One disdains the phallic peppermill, but must always appreciate the attentive grating, at the table, of parmesan over pasta or soup, as magical in its way as shavings of truffles.”
The book includes extensive cross referencing, a thematic index, a general index, a comprehensive bibliography, and a list of suggested further reading.
I would have liked more illustrations, and perhaps some pronunciation guides. Nonetheless, this is an invaluable resource for anyone searching for information on Italian food, and it is enormous fun to read.
Robert C. Ross 2008
Review by Prof. R. Paris for The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
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This is an excellent book, but not for beginners. It requires a considerable level of knowledge, but the amount of information -historical, technical, gastronomic- is truly outstanding. Kudos!
Review by Jackal for The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
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This is a very uneaven book. For a companion to food, the book has too much a historical focus – and unfortunately is always pre-20th century history. It is always as if Italian food in 1925, 1950, 1975, and 2000 does not evolve. I would have loved to get the 20th century history of pasta for instance, but this is not something, in which the author is interested. We are only told that pasta became dominant after the second world war. Period. Naturally, this begs the question ‘Why?’. The author is silent.
One gets the impression that the author loves Italy and travels there on vacation, but doesn’t know any Italians. There is no information about current chefs in Italy, there is nothing about 20th (or 21st) century food trends, etc. The entry on cookbooks only lists Italian cookbooks written by English speaking authors. Where is the information about Italian cookbooks written by Italian speaking authors? My guess is that the author gets all her information from the British Library in London.
The style is similar to Davidson’s “Oxford Companion to Food”, but that is a much more fascinating book because it covers such a broad spectrum. I wish the current author would have teamed up with an Italian who knows ingredients and what has happened in Italy during the last 50 years. That would have created a very interesting book. The current book can not be recommended to people who just like Italian food, but if you are crazy about Italian food, please check it out.
Review by caught_along for The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford Companions)
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This is great. My only issue is that the soft cover over the hard cover arrived slightly damaged from the poor shipping box it comes in.