Impressions of Italy (Part 3)

Part 4: The Food of Italy

Taking a break from the scenery…let’s move on to food.

I went with my belly thrown wide open to what Italy had to offer. Generally, I wasn’t disappointed.

It begins almost from the moment you step into one of Rome’s main gateways – the Termini station, the hub for trains, busses and the airport shuttle.

I’ve heard a lot about Italy’s hot chocolate - cioccolato calda in Italian. At an ordinary cafe/bar place inside Termini (next to the bookshop), we stumbled upon the best one of our entire trip.

Looks like quicksand. The spoon pretty much sits on the surface, sinking only at snail's pace. Despite the apparent viscosity it's suprisingly light going down, with a hint of orange. Yummers!!!

Italians have, as the Europeans do, very light breakfasts. A capuccino and a brioche (a sweet pastry, often croissants, filled bun/horn thingy, flat mickey-mouse-head shaped crispy thing, tart etc) is standard.

The chocolate croissants in some places seem to have half a bottle of Nutella in them. Divine. Only eighty cents (euro)

Us Asians being used to nasi lemak as the day's starter, had sandwiches for our first breakfast.Missing from the pic is the giant coffee gelato we had immediately after. For breakfast. Oh yes.

Called panino(plural = panini) or tramezzini depending on the bread used, there's a huge variety of filling that revolve around pork. No, Italy is certainly not a very halal place, gastronomically speaking.

Babi, what do they call you, let me count the ways - pancetta, proscuito, parma, porchetta, arista, maiale, snowie...

Top picture: Ham and buffalo mozarella with rocket leaf. Good combo!

Bottom: Ham and melon. Surprisingly good combo.

Both eaten as starters. Further below there's a picture of a plateful of porky ribbons behind some pasta. Salumi mista, mixed salami. The pasta sauce is pesto, Ligurian/Genoese style. The pasta is called trofie and is the common form eaten in Liguria. Looks like worms.

One thing to be said about Italian pork products. VERY strong smell. Sometimes, it tastes as though you've just bit a live, unwashed pig.

Moving on to the definitive icon of Italian food, for non-Italians at least, the pizza.

It can be eaten whole as a meal or in slices as a snack. As snacks, you usually get the form that looks like the middle ground between the "Pan" pizzas and thin crust type we get in our part of the world. But despite it's "fluffiness" the pizza base is usually crispy (therefore "fat & crispy"??).

See the bottom right and top left pictures in the collage below. Toppings shown for bottom right are - (1)aubergine & tomato, (2)tomato & funghi and (3)zuchinni. For top left - (1)pesto and (2)tomato & basil.

The best pizza of the trip is at top right. This is from Da Baffeto, a tiny pizzeria on Via Governo Vecchio in Rome. Toppings - right to left, clockwise - (1)four cheeses (don't try if you hate blue cheese), (2) artichokes, onions, sausage, egg & funghi and (3)onions & funghi.



The place gets packed pretty quickly by locals as well as the type of tourists who don't come by the busload (those get dropped off at places with "tourist menus") nor follow moving flags around. Not only did we have to queue to get in, we waited an HOUR before our orders finally arrived, BOTH times we went. BUT by all that is tasty and fattening in this world, was it EVER worth the wait. The best wood-fired pizza I've ever eaten in my life (counting the gorgeous ones in Australia). The smoky crispness, the fresh ingredients, the bursting flavour...dare I say it...better than sex? *fans self*

As you can see, it's served unceremoniously on flat metal plates, much like those in our banana leaf/nasi kandar shops. Best eaten folded over and with bare hands, imo.


Coming in a close second is the pizza we had at a tiny town with a big name - Bastardo, in Umbria. The pizza pictured at bottom left is named after Mount Vesuvius, -the volcano that literally dusted Pompeii- presumably because of the runny egg yolk in the middle fields of ham and funghi. Another of the wood-fired variety; the only way that pizzas ought to be made, I'd say.

These are not all of the food pictures we took, obviously. But it'll do for now. Getting gastric just looking at it all again. :)