The cuisine of Italy is not just pizza, pasta and gelato. It’s so much more

I’ve known Italy my whole life and have loved it for just as long. You could say it’s an obsession, which I’ve indulged by slowly eating my way through the entire country. My fourth book, Mangia, is the mouth-watering culmination of this journey, more than 40 years in the making. It’s a distillation of a lifetime’s worth of meals and conversations with chefs, vintners, olive growers, cheesemakers, caper farmers, fishermen, restaurateurs, culinary journalists and the many others who work with food, or who just love it.

The truth is, Italy doesn’t have a homogeneous menu or culture: both are regional and dynamic.Credit: Simone Anne / Stocksy United

What better way to understand Italy than through its kitchens? “Mangia” means “eat”, and I guarantee that is exactly what you’ll want to do after diving into this book, which weaves a tale of Italy’s culinary heart. But while people from around the world might arrive here on an empty stomach, ready to overindulge in la cucina italiana, what if I told you an Italian cuisine doesn’t actually exist? That there’s no such thing?

The truth is, Italy doesn’t have a homogeneous menu or culture: both are regional and dynamic. In fact, you could almost describe Italy as 20 different countries in one, each with its own food, customs, dialect and geographic make-up. Their individual cuisines are guided by local seasons, produce, traditions and the constant pull of innovation. But no matter where you are in the country, food in Italy is united in convivialità, the art of being together and sharing special moments.

The cuisine of Italy is not just about pizza, pasta and gelato (although there’s plenty of those to go around). And it’s not just washed down with wine or an Aperol spritz. It’s so much more. For instance, did you know that risotto will never taste as good as it does in the north? That spaghetti is never served with a bolognese sauce? That couscous is a staple dish in parts of Sicily? That the Tuscans bake their bread without salt? That apple strudel is Italian, too, or that tiramisù originated in Veneto?

While art galleries and archaeological sites may dominate Italian itineraries, I’ll bet that long after your trip is over, you won’t recall the height of the Pantheon in Rome or the year that Florence’s Duomo was built. But by gosh will you remember how you felt biting into your first-ever pizza in Naples, licking ricotta off your fingers after devouring a cannolo in Sicily, the saltiness of the guanciale in that Roman carbonara you never wanted to end and the experience of devouring cicchetti sitting on the Venetian lagoon’s edge. Moments like these make me feel alive, privy to an insight into history, heritage and culture.

Yes, food nourishes us. But it’s so much more than that. Food feeds the soul, and memories of it are some of the most powerful. A taste or a scent can take us right back to a moment, and Italy has no end of memories to offer.

When I travel, the experiences that combine food, history, people and culture are the ones that remain with me years later. I’ll never forget watching Luna the dog run through the woods and kick up dirt to find a truffle in the hills of Piedmont. Or the eggplant parmigiana I still make to this day with fried – not baked! – eggplant, because everybody knows fried is better; well, Luca taught me that more than 15 years ago at a cooking class in Amalfi.

In nearby Vietri sul Mare, Patrizia and Alfonso treated me to a wine tasting with views of the vineyards, and I still remember the locally produced cheese and lemon jam we ate. I made my first torta caprese with my friends Holly and Gianluca at Michel’angelo, their cooking school on the isle of Capri. And in Pescara, Rosy taught me to make ravioli teramani and pallotte cacio e ova in her home.

These experiences are the tip of a very delicious iceberg, but the point is, food makes the soul sing. It makes memories. When we travel, it helps us learn about a place. Beautifully, it also helps us learn something about ourselves.

I’ve come to know Italy, not just by travelling around and living here, but through food. I’ve had the good fortune of working in the food sector as a writer and dining at the country’s best restaurants, including those housed in former monasteries, farmhouses and trattorie. I’ve dined on rooftops, on the street, at markets, in homes and on boats. And after all these meals, I can confirm: food is the way to Italy’s heart.

Food makes the soul sing. It makes memories. When we travel, it helps us learn about a place. Beautifully, it also helps us learn something about ourselves.

MARIA PASQUALE

When I write, I try to inspire and guide. Guide you to that heart and inspire you to explore. Basically I want to nurture your curiosity and encourage you to think about what you’re eating, where it came from and how it’s tied to the place you’re in. To me, that’s what food is about: connecting people and places across ages. It’s about the past, the present and even the future.

Each of Italy’s regions feature in this time continuum and I love every single one of them. Perhaps not equally, but I love them unequivocally. I’m often asked about favourites and while I say it’s hard to answer, I then start reeling off a few names. Like Sicily.

As clichéd as it sounds, I’ve never found a place, or a meal, that I didn’t like on this magnetic island, from brioche dipped in granita on the western tip in Trapani to the largest ricotta cannolo of my life in medieval Erice. There’s nothing like the couscous in San Vito Lo Capo, or the Baroque architecture of Noto and Syracuse, visited between trips sailing the Aeolian archipelago eating pane cunzato topped with tomato, mozzarella and capers.

And you’ll never forget diving into the majestic jewel and hot mess that is Palermo, with its arancine and luscious gelato, for the first time. Sicily’s capital is one of the world’s most electric cities, and it has me falling in love more and more with each visit. I continue to travel around Italy, and the world, but I just keep coming back to Sicily, with its distinct identity of contrast and diversity.

This region has a long history that’s both regal and corrupt: it was once a kingdom and it’s no secret that it’s been a mafia stronghold. But it’s this mixed past, if anything, that gives Sicily so much character and soul, which is reflected beautifully in the variety and depth of its cuisine. Yes, eating is a way of life in Italy, but it seems that the Sicilians, with their fiery passion, take it a little more seriously.

Then there’s my motherland and fatherland, Abruzzo. From valleys to lakes to the sea, Abruzzo’s landscape has a bit of everything, but, in general, think mountains: lots of them. Even in summer, the slightly snow-capped peaks of the Gran Sasso and the national parks of Abruzzo and Maiella can be seen from the Peligna Valley area, which is where my parents were born; in Prezza, to be precise. It’s a small, beautiful town etched into a mountain, and it’s where my love affair with Italy began.

Mum had emigrated to Australia in 1957 and Dad in 1968, and I was born in Melbourne in 1979. But it was as a six-year-old in 1985, during a family trip to Italy, when my first memories of the country were made. My recollections of Prezza and other small Italian towns in summer were of religious festivals and fireworks, eating gelato at my uncle’s bar, stealing sips of my nonno’s homemade wine and rolling small gnocchi on a wooden board with my nonna. I’ve always cherished those memories. They were the beginning of my obsession with Italy and my special bond with Abruzzo.

Then there’s one of my favourite northern regions, Piedmont. In Australia as a teen, I took geography classes that positioned Turin as a dull, grey city in Italy’s industrial north. “Industrial” never really sounds that sexy, so it didn’t seem like much of a contender for my bucket list. Boy, was I wrong. It is one of the country’s most beautiful, refined cities. Historical museums and galleries are housed in Baroque-style buildings reminiscent of Paris or Vienna. The city’s grand squares, elegant shopping arcades and cobbled streets offer glimpses of the surrounding snow-capped Alps, adding to the charming ambience. There are bustling cafes where you sit and indulge, bars full of locals with bold red wines in hand at aperitivo hour and restaurants serving up traditional Piedmontese fare.

Parts of the elegant, mountain-filled north couldn’t be further removed from parts of the loud, gritty south. And that’s the beauty of Italy. Its differences, its contrasts and contradictions. You’ll find all of this in your travels and in your eats, too. And beyond the iconic pizza and pasta, expect to find countless street foods and flatbreads, grains and legumes, cured meats and sweets and pastries. Italy’s kitchens transcend borders, sharing history, tradition, innovation and lessons in art, sustainability and transformation. Food is nourishment, yes, but it also provokes thought, feeds curiosity and inspires new ideas.

For Italians, eating is one of the great pleasures of life and their enthusiasm is wildly contagious. It’s a country whose love language, without a doubt, always has been, and always will be, food.

Mangia (Smith St Books) by Maria Pasquale is out October 29.

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