...Italy (Never tell an Italian that their bread is rubbish)

Eating with new friends in Turin (shortly after ´bread-gate`)

There are millions of books waxing lyrical on Italian food and pages upon pages analysing 'why Italians love food'. Quite frankly, I've spent over two months in this country and I can't really say that Italians love food more than any other nation I've had the pleasure of eating in. And I include Briton in that. What I have observed and feel I can confidently say is Italians seem to take food and drink more seriously than most cultures. And I would like to use this post to illustrate this point. And tell you some other random stuff I discovered.

Firstly, the title of this blog refers to an occasion where Finn announced to a table of Italians that he thought that Italian bread wasn't very good. The jaws dropping around the table suggested he had made a big mistake. You do not criticise their food it would seem. When we later pointed out that someone at the table had agreed, we were told ´Yes but he can be a real sh*t sometimes`! Excuses and then recommendations were made for where to find 'good' bread. (We never found it).

In a small town near where we were staying in Emilia Romagna, we were advised that we could take any wild mushrooms we found to a man at the council offices who would identify them for us. If he wasn't available then the mayor could do it instead.

Wild mushrooms

When residents of Modena, a large town in the north famous for its Balsamic vinegar, heard the church bells warning of American bombers during World War Two, they fled with their cherished possessions including small kegs of the prized vinegar.

You can buy lasagne hot from vending machines (Finn thinks this says the opposite to my point about Italians being serious about food but to me, it suggests they think 'well if you want a cheap and quick fix then have a lasagne rather than a Mars bar).

Lasagne vending machines

To cook Florentine T-bone steak, you are advised by cook books to follow the rules of the 'Association of the Florentine T-bone Steak Academy'.

A sign in a Florentine butcher

You can buy dried pasta in vending machines.

Women in Umbria are advised to eat a chicken everyday for forty days after giving birth. In another region it's chickpeas.

Many bars do 'aperitivo' where you buy a drink and get access to a buffet. However, whereas in Britain we'd just get scotch eggs and sausage rolls (though I'm not complaining), here we tucked into plates of lasagne and pasta.

Good balsamic vinegar makes everything taste glorious. Including ice cream. And bland lasagne which is made even more tasteless by racist waiters.

This post is the last for Italy. It has been difficult to decide what I should write about as we really have eaten some very tasty things. Earl grey and chocolate ice cream, small calzones bursting with mozzarella and Parma ham, 50 year old balsamic vinegar, homemade cheese, a meal where every course was based on mushrooms, rich and thick hot chocolate. We've had memorable experiences too. Discovering the farm where we were working had a room where they made balsamic vinegar, dipping Tuscan biscuits into Cuban rum, learning how to make pasta, eating homemade pizza with a family on a Saturday night in their living room which they'd turned into a cinema for the night, having to describe to a table of new friends exactly how our meal tasted, cooking over an open fire, watching Finn's face slowly turn black from the squid-ink pasta he was eating. Italians (and ex-pats!), I am eternally grateful for what you have taught me about food and hope you will eventually forgive us for thinking (and telling you) your bread is a bit rubbish. But really, everything else is pretty frickin wonderful. Good job.

Making pasta

We've got three weeks until we catch our home-bound train from Paris. I guess we might as well go and see what they eat in Slovenia...