One Thing North Americans Don't Get About Italian Food
Each cuisine in the world is invariably built on its own concept - Indian cuisine’s is richness, French cuisine’s is sophistication. And if you take a look at Italian cuisine you can’t help but notice that its core idea is essence.
First off, everybody knows that there is no such a thing as a national Italian cuisine. Through centuries Italian recipes have been constructed on seasonal ingredients which vary a great deal in each Italian region. Broadly speaking, you get dairy and meat or cured meat based ingredients in inland areas, and rich seafood along the stunning Italian coastline.
Given the outstanding quality of these ingredients, Italians have never had a choice when they come up with a recipe - they must try their best to bring out the intrinsic qualities of these ingredients.
Take the carbonara pasta recipe. The main idea of this dish is to give eggs, guanciale and pecorino an opportunity to better themselves, so to speak. They are blended in a flavor-enhancing and ingredient-exalting recipe meant to create that unique dish we all love.
Pasta e vongole - clam pasta - is no different. The only purpose of this course is to boost the mouth-whetting taste of vongole veraci. The extra virgin olive oil, the garlic, the pasta and parsley are put there just in pursuit of this main purpose.
If you add butter, cream or olives to any of these dishes, no doubt you are being extraordinarily creative. But what your creativity is also doing is spoiling the essence of this dish.
Perhaps next time they turn on their burner, North Americans should remind themselves of this - Italian cuisine’s core concept is essence. It strives to bring the food essence out by masterfully combining it in recipes steeped in centuries of culinary history.
