What IS it about italian food?

[ptumbi]

I've just read another article from a well-known chef who is spouting one of the wonders of the known world that is Italian food. I get it, it's (supposed to be) healthy and lovely and full of sunshine and goodness...

BUT - is it? I Low-carb, and don't eat pasta, bread, pizza. In fact, when cooking for my young kids, I realised that pasta is generally flour and water pap. Mixed with oil, or cream, or meat sauces. It is that 'golden' ratio of carbs and fat that our bodies look for (hence doughnuts, cheese sandwiches etc being so delicious) but it's not actually very good for you!

This Chef was invited (of course) to an authentic 3-course lunch at an authentic rural family's smallholding, and fed in the sunshine surrounded by screaming happy children running about. Idyllic, yes? And of course there was the obligatory 'nonna' sitting next to her, smiling and making 'mmmm' noises.

I went to Naples last year, looking forward to the food (I don't low-carb on holiday). I had an 'authentic' Neapolitan Pizza which was basically a hard base, covered in watery tomato goop, and with a few Basil leaves chucked on top. Yummy. Not.

Everywhere we ate, the food was bog-standard - in fact we get better 'Italian' in the UK.

'Italian' food is vastly overrated. IMHO.

Although I low carb, and will argue staunchly italian cuisine isn't just pasta and pizza, (which is a ludicrous thought) the best meal I ever ate was a seafood linguine in a tiny restaurant in Italy, all garlicky olive oil goodness. Yum.

I love eating out in Italy. Generally eat shellfish /fish / meat and roasted veg/ salad. Will have seafood pasta or pasta with clams once in a 10 day break, plus eat bits of the kids pizza, might have a take away pizza one night only. Or home made pasta parcels make great starter.

You can buy amazing diced tuna in the supermarket which i mix with tomato avocado and spring onions plus drizzle olive oil. Oooh or buy ready made veal done milanese style, fabby easy for self catered home cooked meals.

Had bad pizza twice in Italy, both times when i came out of the Vatican with famished friends and went into a tourist trap.

Cant imagine how you managed to miss all the great restaurants in naples. Throw a rock in Italy and you hit amazing eateries. Were you going to shitty touristy places and shopping centres?

Oh also the bread, and the wine, and the olive oil. One of my fave things to do in Italy is go buy a good bottle of wine direct from the vineyard. Again it depends where you are but i usually end up with the award winning stuff and its never as expensive as it would be at home.

Plus the restauranteurs are so lovely to us, and sometimes feed you nice things in between courses or leave a bottle of liqueur on the table at the end of the meal.

Ive lost count of memorable meals ive eaten in italy. Lobster spaghetti was a highlight, or one of my friends got married on the amalfi coast and their wedding food was to die for. Or we had amazing home made pasta starter in a little place off a main road near lake Garda, or discovered pistachio icecream afogato (shot of espresso chucked over) as the best dessert ever.

I want to go baaaack!

You couldn't be more unreasonable. Italian food is fab. I'd live there in a second if I could.

Sacrilege! Ok, more italian food for me then.

I think some people think italian pizza is going to be like thr heart attack on a plate you get here from the likes of dominoes, but on steroids, , and when they realise it's a very different animal, they are sorely disappointed, because they think that's what pizza is.

A) Carbs aren't bad for you
B) There is much more to Italian food than pasta and pizza. You have being going to too many high street chains.

I guess it's like saying everyone in the UK just eats Fish and Chips or Fry Ups..

I imagine Italian people eat more than just pizza and pasta.

I think people go to Italy with the assumption that pizza is going to be like the American take on it where it's all deep pan/stuffed crust loaded with toppings like we have gotten used to in the UK now.

You can low carb ridiculously easy in Italy. Where on earth were you?

I've been to Italy and there's always fresh fish or seafood and grilled veggies or gorgeous salad on menus.

Low carb made me incredibly depressed.
Whereas eating pasta in the sunshine makes me incredibly happy!
Go figure...

Dulce the only time DH tried a low carb diet he became very depressed quickly too. It was quite scary.

Anyway I agree with the rest Italian food is far from pasta and pizza! So many wonderful dishes

I'm actually going to have to make some pasta know

For therapeutic reasons, obvs

Now*

I think you ate in tourist restaurants. Italian food generally really does taste good and the places to go are where the locals eat - often, especially in the south, somewhere you need to speak Italian to be able to order.

I'm eating pasta right now. It's delicious.

I'd maybe do a bit more research before you slag off a whole countries cuisine - what like actually go to Italy frequently, visit widely, and eat many many dishes? That sort of research? Yep, done that. And the Pizza I ate in Naples was, like a PP from one of the 'original' Neapolitan pizza makers [ hmm]. Was awful.
We then went Island hopping in the Bay of Naples, and along the coast - all restuarants pushed Pizza and Pasta (Dirt-Cheap ingredients, big markup?) and the meat and fish was expensive and ordinary.

Italian food is based on good quality ingredients cooked simply - like Spanish food? Portugese food? British food (as made in my own kitchen)? Why is Italian food the world standard, when many many other cultures make food just as good and simply?

Italian is not a night mare for low carb it's one of the best cuisines for it actually. As it's all meat, fish, salads, vegetables, sea food It's patently not all meat, fish etc. Any Italian restuarant you go to, here, there or anywhere, the menu is 90% made up of Pasta, Pizzas, bread, Icecream, Cake... I can eat good simply cooked meat, fish, veg, seafood in many restaurants. Why is Italian food the 'best'?

Why don't these chefs go to Greece and rave about 'simple food, cooked simply'? I ate low-carb and very very well all over Greece and specifically Crete. And also in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Australia, China, Vietnam....

And I agree that Low-carbing is not for everyone. I eat meat, fish, a lot of veg and salad. I just don't eat potatoes, wheat (Bread, pizza, cake, biscuits...it really bloats me), much fruit or sugar. I eat full-fat dairy. I don't get hungry and I don't need to snack. My weight maintains itself.

I love Italian food. Yes, it is hard to eat low-carb but I just do carb-cycling instead, so pasta is on the menu the day before a run is scheduled in our exercise programme.

The best pizza I ever had was from a supermarket in Rome, it had a courgette and courgette flower topping, no cheese or tomato.

The favourite meal of both Luciano Pavarotti and Audrey Hepburn was Spaghetti Pomodoro, so just good spaghetti in a simple but well-cooked tomato sauce. It's my favourite too so I consider myself in good company.

I love Italy and Italian food. You have to look harder to find great food in the busy touristy places. I haven't been to Naples, but I'd imagine it's very touristy as it's so close to Vesuvius.

I come from a part of India where we eat the equivalent of pasta made from from largely gluten free flours. I was making Indian pastas as a child long before I learned how to make Italian pastas but I tend to agree - there is nothing necessarily healthy about Italian pasta. But there isn’t meant to be - italians serve it as a small accompaniement to a meal / or a course. The main event in an Italian meal is always the meat and vegetables and those tend to be very healthily cooked.

It’s often the opposite in Indian meals - the carbs are the main event. Which is why a lot of Indian diabetics struggle.

We go to Northern Italy every year and I only have pasta a few times and pizza hardly ever. Plenty of risotto, fish, seafood,salads...
Pasta and pizza are eaten more in Southern Italy as it's cheaper good (still delicious though!)
I think you had an unlucky experience, probably in a tourist trap. Don't dismiss the wonders of Italian food just because of that.

Your body needs carbs. Carbs are energy.

Like everywhere else, Italy has crap restaurants and great restaurants. It's not some kind of foodie utopia. Local people will know the best places to eat and the places to avoid, just as here. Wherever Italian people emigrate, the food evolves. Although i have to say the pizza I had in Venice and the pizza I had in Brooklyn had more in common than they have with any ive had in Britain.

I’ve always understood it to be a Mediterranean diet, rather than Italian.

Certainly when my DP had a heart attack a few years ago the advice was to try as much as possible to follow a Mediterranean diet.

Wikipedia says this:
The Mediterranean diet is a diet inspired by the eating habits of Greece, Southern Italy, and Spain in the 1940s and 1950s.
The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and low consumption of non-fish meat products.

So is that what they really are referring to I wonder?

howdoyouall - I wasn't basing my experience of Italian food on one unlucky meal! I've travelled and eaten widely all over Italy, and Europe (and the world) and based my post on the fact that 'chefs' seem to all think that Italian food is the best. When it isn't. An authentic Italian household, flanked by the fearsome 'nonnas', a meal of Pasta, salad, meat and veg and cake/gelato is tiresomely reported as being unbelievable, unforgettable. Any meal, eaten in the sunshine outside with good ingredients, cooked simply, could be 'unforgettable' anywhere in the world.

Italian Is not the world standard. 'Italian' can be cheap ingredients (flour and water pasta) cooked with watery tomatoes and sub-par meat or fish, as I found all over italy.

The 'wonders of Italian food' are found all over the world! They Italians don't have the monopoly on good meat, fish, veg, oil etc cooked simply and well, that everyone thinks they have.

So during your extensive travels around Italy you didn't have one excellent Italian meal? I find that so hard to believe.....I suspect you didn't want to enjoy the food anyway.

It's okay if Italian isn't your favourite but for lots of people it is....no need to act all superior about it. I love Italian where as my DH can be a bit 'meh' about it but even he has appreciated the amazing food we've eaten while on holiday in Italy.

Your body needs carbs. Carbs are energy. - so are Fats, and these are necessary for nerve/brain activity. LOW carbing is just that - it's not ZERO carb. I don't eat high carb foods - I don't eat wheat (I get crazily bloated) or refined sugar, rice or potatoes. Most meals use these high-carb elements to 'pad' the meals out - yorkshires, potatoes, rice, pasta, bread; all just low-nutrient padding. Tasty, and cheap, but not healthy eating.

I eat legumes (med-carb) occasionally, and low-to-med-carb veg like carrots and peppers, tomatoes. I eat high-fat for energy. And meat/fish/eggs for protein. All high-nutrients. And more satisfying than pappy flour-and-water, and keeps me fuller for longer.

My weight is stable, my body size 10. I exercise in a fasted state. I have lost the 'love-handles'. I don't get hungry, and I don't snack. I could never go back to high-carb.

Blimey op calm down.

And nonna is just Italian for grandmother. They are not any more fearsome than any other nationality.

You're starting to sound deranged.