Many people may disagree that Italian food is simple. After all, it is not surprising that Italians eat a meal for four or five hours. How can it be simple? This sentence has two meanings. First, although it can be seen everywhere in North America, Italian food has lost its local "taste of time" which is integrated with the "slow life" in North America. The menu is greatly simplified. It is no longer like eating four or five dishes, nor is it like drinking at every meal in Italy. It's really easy to taste slowly.
The second layer means comparison with French food. The most important ingredients used in Italian cuisine are seasonal, fresh and adapted to local conditions, and do not pursue luxury; In practice, try to keep the original flavor and don't decorate it too much. An Italian colleague who knows how to eat well once told me that if the price of an Italian restaurant is too expensive, you can't eat authentic Italian food. In fact, in the list of "Best Italian Cuisine" in North America, high-end restaurants are rarely seen, and more are family-style small shops. From this point of view, compared with French cuisine's exquisite cooking skills and luxurious ingredients, Italian cuisine deserves a word "Jane".
1. appetizers and salads
In Italian restaurants in North America, appetizers are sometimes written as English appetizers and sometimes as Italian appetizers.
Italian bread is indispensable for a special appetizer. The original meaning of this word is "grilled charcoal", which is a classic snack in Italian food composed of bread and ingredients. Bread is generally made of dough naturally fermented, dark in color, obliquely cut into small pieces, baked with garlic and olive oil, and topped with cold dishes made of chopped tomatoes, cheese and other ingredients.
In North America, tomatoes, basil, mozzarella cheese, onions and garlic are the most popular spices. This cold dish is so famous that it even usurps the role of master. In a supermarket in North America, it can be sold in a bottle marked bruschetta without bread. However, in authentic Italian restaurants, you will also find Italian bread with various cold dishes.
Speaking of mozzarella cheese, it is the soul of Italian cuisine, and it is indispensable for many dishes. In the appetizer, mozzarella alone can support half of the country, and some restaurants even use this as a signboard, calling it mozzarella cheese bar.
Fresh mozzarella cheese has not been pressed, and its texture is soft, moist and elastic. Authentic mozzarella cheese must be eaten on the same day and cannot be preserved for a long time. As an appetizer, the master kneaded it into a small ball with simple seasoning. The best way to reflect the taste is to add the above spices such as olive oil (olive oil), sea salt (sea salt) and balsamic vinegar (basamik black vinegar) without side dishes. A little more complicated, it can be served with jam (jam), nuts (nuts), ham (cured meat), smoked salmon and other cold foods with heavier meat.
The smoked ham used in this deluxe edition, together with salami (Italian air-dried sausage), constitutes another major Italian appetizer-cold cuts. Smoked ham is a kind of dry-cured ham, cut into translucent pink slices and eaten raw. The so-called dry curing is similar to curing bacon in Jiangnan area. The meat was coated with salt and then dried. In contrast, wet curing is similar to Sichuan sausage bacon. Soak the meat in the sauce for a few days, and then hang it to dry. Salami is a fermented and air-dried sausage, which is also eaten raw, but it is cut differently-ham slices are long strips, while salami is cut into circles.
The same cold meat appetizer also has a delicious carpaccio, also from Italy-raw meat. The most traditional carpaccio is made of raw beef, sliced with fine beef tenderloin and seasoned with lemon juice and olive oil, similar to raw beef sashimi in Japanese meals. Now, carpaccio can also be raw fish, more like Japanese sashimi.
Like American restaurants, Italian appetizers also need fried food, and the most Mediterranean flavor is Calamari fried squid (crispy fried squid). Fritti is Italian, equivalent to frying in English, which means frying. You can also see a variety of Fritti dishes in the menu.
Salad is called Insalate in Italian. Some restaurants will be written as a separate category on the menu, while others will be mixed with appetizers. The most Italian salad on the North American menu is Insalate Caprese, which is named after Capri, an island in southern Italy. As I mentioned when talking about pizza, Italy's favorite Margherita pizza stuffing is made up of red, white and green tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil. Caprese salad also mainly uses these three raw materials, and then it is mixed with juice prepared by simple seasonings such as olive oil.
You may find that I mentioned olive oil repeatedly when introducing appetizers, because olive oil really plays an important role in Italian cuisine. In many Italian restaurants, the bread provided free of charge before meals is not accompanied by butter like ordinary restaurants, but with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
2. soup
Most of the time, the first dish in North American spoken language refers to appetizers, but on the menu of Italian restaurants, primo is often followed by appetizers. According to Italian tradition, primo can be soup or starchy dishes such as spaghetti, but generally there is no big fish and big meat, because it is a secondo dish.
Most Italian restaurants in North America don't have many choices of soups, so they may not be listed separately on the menu. They are often put in primo, and even some restaurants put them in appetizers. If written separately, it may be zuppa in Italian or soup in English.
Italian wedding soup is one of the most common soup dishes in North America, with Italian meatballs as the main ingredient and vegetables as the auxiliary material. However, in Italian restaurants advertised as "authentic", this soup does not appear on the menu, but seemingly inconspicuous home-cooked soup such as minestra di pomodoro, which is worth a try. Like other Italian dishes, the tomatoes used in this soup called pomodoro must be carefully selected high-quality varieties, grow naturally, and then cooked by the boss or chef's unique secret recipe. It's definitely not the tomatoes sold in the supermarket that can be used to make up the number.
The words "minestra" or "minestrone" and "pomodoro" on the menu do not appear in the name of the dish, but this soup is probably made of tomatoes. In addition, most Munsteron soups add a little beans or smaller pasta.
Margherita (Margaret Pizza) and Insalate Caprese (Cabri Salad) are both indispensable to the green herb basil, which represents the Italian flag, and soup is also indispensable. Especially the common cold soup in summer, Spanish cold soup is the most classic. This soup originated in Spain, but the Italian version has its own inherent collocation, tomatoes are indispensable, and basil is also an important symbol different from the original Spanish version.
Many restaurants also serve "Japanese soup", written in Italian by Zuppa Del Giorno.
3. spaghetti and rice
In Chinese, spaghetti is often translated into hollow powder. In fact, many pasta dishes are solid, and some are even stuffed like wonton jiaozi. It is better to translate them into spaghetti or spaghetti.
Pasta is the general term for pasta. Although it is also primo, it is often listed separately in Italian restaurants in North America.
Spaghetti comes in various shapes. Just like a knife worker in China, shredding, slicing and dicing, the size, thickness and length are not only for beauty, but also have their own functions in cooking technology. The same is true of spaghetti. Delicate Italians, different shapes of spaghetti must be matched with different sauces.
Long spaghetti looks like noodles in China. There are many kinds of pasta with different names and different lengths and thicknesses. It's a bit like eating Lamian Noodles in Lanzhou. From coarse to fine, there are different names such as coarse, fine, fine and capillary. According to the shape, there are also big width, wide width, leek leaves and buckwheat.
Pasta is the most common strip pasta, which is slender, rod-shaped and yellow all over. Generally speaking, spaghetti is served with ketchup. Every Italian restaurant uses fresh tomatoes as its own sauce, which is nothing compared with the tomato sauce made of greenhouse tomatoes and chemicals in the United States.
Tomato sauce is vegetarian by default, and the delicious sauce itself is eaten. Of course, you can also add meat sauce. For example, meat sauce is a kind of sauce fried with minced meat or beef in tomato sauce. You can also add pepperoni (Italian sausage) or meatballs (meatballs) to people who like meat. After the noodles are served, the waiter will sprinkle some freshly ground cheese on them according to the requirements of the guests.
Vermicelli is similar to spaghetti, but slightly thicker. According to the industry standard set by the National Pasta Association of the United States, the diameter of vermicelli is 2.08 ~ 2. 14 mm, while the diameter of spaghetti is1.92 ~ 2.00 mm. These two kinds of noodles are eaten in the same way.
Another common noodle similar to spaghetti is flat noodles. Unlike spaghetti sticks, flat noodles are flat. The food is different, too Spaghetti is mostly red sauce based on tomato sauce, while flat noodles are often served with seafood. Clam flat noodles are a refreshing pasta. Generally, there is not much cream or butter, only olive oil and some herbs are used for seasoning, and all fresh clams are used to make it colorful.
Of course, spaghetti can do without ketchup. There are two kinds of white sauce, one is thick cream sauce, the other is vodka sauce or white wine sauce based on wine.
Carbonara is an Italian noodle with white sauce. Add eggs, bacon and cheese to spaghetti. Carbonara can also be made of lasagna.
In fact, the most common practice in North American restaurants is to use Alfredo sauce, which is also a kind of white sauce, stir-fry with Parmesan cheese and butter, and generally add white meat, such as chicken, shrimp or other seafood.
These white sauces can also be mixed with red ketchup in a half-to-half ratio to make pink sauces with richer flavor.
Eating these long spaghetti is a bit challenging. You can pick your head with a fork and put it in your mouth at home, but eating it in public is a bit indecent. The unsightly way to eat noodles is to wrap noodles around a fork and put them in your mouth. Some restaurants will give you a spoon when serving spaghetti. At this time, you can hold the fork in your right hand and the spoon in your left hand, which is a little easier to operate.
The most basic hollow pasta is penne, which is cylindrical and close to the pen cap. Macaroni is a curved tube. These two kinds of noodles are also omnipotent, and any ingredients can be used. Macaroni is a thick tube, as thick as a small natural gas rubber tube, usually accompanied by heavy tomato sauce.
The most common special-shaped pasta is bow tie and bow, and there are two kinds. The younger Italian name is fafalle, and the older one is farfalloni. Conchiglie is a conch. Sometimes tomato juice is added to noodles to make them red, cuttlefish juice is added to noodles to make them black, or spinach juice is added to noodles to make them green. This kind of thread is called rotini, which is sometimes called bottle opener in restaurants in North America.
There are several kinds of pasta with fillings, which are actually not noodles, like wonton. The most common is wonton, which is square and flat with cheese, mushrooms or minced meat in the middle. Jiaozi, shaped like a dumpling in the south of the Yangtze River, is more stereoscopic than the flattening of dumplings.
Another kind of pasta with stuffing is dumplings, which are stuffed with mashed potatoes. After cooking, add heavy cream and stir fry. You can also add cheese after cooking and bake it in a baking tray.
Lasagne is also baked. Very wide and wide dough, layered meat sauce and cheese, baked very fragrant. The lasagna in North America is mostly seasoned with tomato sauce, with little white juice.
Besides spaghetti, primo also has risotto. This is rice, which is sometimes translated into Italian stew or risotto in Chinese. Personally, I think neither translation is accurate, because the cooking method it uses is neither stew nor stew, but a method that is not found in Chinese food. This kind of rice is cooked with raw rice and a little water and milk. In the process of cooking, all kinds of cheese, milk and spices are constantly added and cooked for a long time with low fire.
Many friends who are used to eating China rice feel uncomfortable eating rissoto, but actually it takes a lot of time to make rissoto. Once, we cooked together at a colleague's house, and this risotto was cooked for two or three hours-but it was still a little poor by China's standards.
Some restaurants take rissoto as their specialty, and they will have a huge cheese in the shape of a car tire. This kind of cheese is called Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is Parmesan cheese. It is named after the place of origin. In this kind of restaurant, Risoto will push a cheese wheel in front of the guests before serving, light it with alcohol in the middle, and then put Risoto in and stir it again to make it absorb the flavor of cheese again. However, personally, this practice is more ornamental than the impact on the taste.
Step 4: Main course
The Main course in the English menu is written as main, and Italian restaurants may also be written as Secondo course according to Italian customs. Generally speaking, it is meat, or it may be vegetarian, and the cheese is thick.
Besides the usual steaks, mutton and chicken, Italian restaurants also like veal very much. Veal is the meat of a calf born within 22 weeks, usually a male cow. Cows can't produce milk and have no economic value, so veal is very cheap in European history, so there is a tradition of using veal in French cuisine and Italian cuisine. Of course, veal is more expensive than ordinary beef today.
Veal meat is tender, but it tends to get old when roasted or fried because of its low fat content. Therefore, when making veal, it is often necessary to beat the muscles with tools in advance, and then wrap them with starch or bread crumbs to ensure the taste. The famous veal in Italian food? Parmesan cheese (veal parmesan cheese) is a typical example. This dish is made by wrapping veal with bread crumbs, frying it in oil, putting it in a baking tray, sprinkling cheese, onion, tomato and other seasonings, and baking.
Similarly, you can also make chicken parmesan cheese or use the Italian name Pollolla Parmigiana. If there is neither chicken nor veal in the name of the dish, but Parmesan cheese is a kind of roasted eggplant, it is also roasted with cheese and seasoning after frying, and the taste will never be lost to the meat dish of the same name. In an Italian restaurant, you can't go wrong in ordering any of these three Parma-style baked dishes.
In addition to Parma, veal and chicken also have Milanese cuisine, called veal Milanese cuisine (Milan-style veal steak) or Pollo Alla Milanese (Milan-style chicken chops). Milan style is also fried with bread crumbs, but it is no longer put in the oven and seasoned with tomatoes. Only with lemon, for guests to juice, sprinkle on it to add fragrance and relieve boredom.
The main course of North American restaurants is accompanied by side dishes, usually potatoes and vegetables. The side dish of an Italian restaurant is called contorni.
5. Dessert and coffee
According to the Italian way of eating, after dinner, the food is removed and everyone continues to drink. At this time, the wine is served with Formaggi e frutta (cheese and fruit platter). Italian restaurants in North America have basically omitted this link.
But dessert is indispensable. Italian name is Dolci. The most famous Italian dessert is Tiramisu. Finger-shaped biscuits are soaked in rum and coffee, covered with a sauce mixed with cream, eggs and cheese, and finally sprinkled with cocoa powder. In North America, many Tiramisu have replaced lady finger with cakes. In order to legally sell them to minors, they often don't add rum, but I personally prefer the kind with strong wine flavor.
Italian ice cream is a unique Italian ice cream. The most important thing is that the raw materials such as fruits must be fresh. Small shops selling gelato are very common on the streets of Italy, and there are often dozens of varieties. There are few such shops in North America, but some Italian restaurants will put several flavors of gelato on the menu.
Eating dessert and drinking coffee are two different things for real Italians. Coffee in the restaurant is served after dessert. In North America. Coffee is usually served with dessert. Italian restaurants in North America certainly serve a large cup of American coffee, and of course there is milk and sugar on the table. But a real Italian must drink espresso after a meal, and it must be without milk. As for cappuccino and latte, Italian restaurants in North America will provide them, but Italians only drink them before eating in the morning.