How is pasta served in northern italy

Piedmont is also home to Gorgonzola cheese. Liguria -- This is the homeland of the seafarers of Genoa, who brought back from the New World many cooking ingredients now taken for granted. What, for instance, would Italian cooking be without tomatoes, potatoes, or peppers? The sea-skirted region is also famous for its seafood, including a shellfish soup called zuppa di datteri, and for pesto, a pasta sauce of ground basil, pine nuts, and olive oil.

To the world of bread, Liguria has contributed focaccia -- flat, delicious, and often topped with herbs or, when eaten as a snack, with cheese and vegetables.

Italy, with the right kind of terrain and the perfect amounts of sun and rainfall, happens to be ideal for growing grapes. Centuries ago, the Etruscans had a hearty wine industry, and the ancient Greeks bolstered it by transplanting their vine cuttings to Italy's southlands. And it was Italy, under the Romans, that first introduced the vine and its possibilities to France and Germany.

Today Italy exports more wine to the rest of the world than any other country does. But there's plenty left at home from which to choose; more than 2, wines are produced in Italy.

Each region has different growing conditions, and so each has its own special wines. Piedmont is the north's premier wine region, known for its heavy reds, including Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, and Grignolino, as well as sparkling white Asti Spumanti. With these vineyards so close at hand, coastal Liguria hasn't developed many notable wines of its own, save the white of Cinque Terre. The Veneto specializes in Valpolicella and Bardolino reds and, among whites, pinot grigio and Soave.

The Trentino adds Tirolese varieties such as Traminer to cabernet, local wines such as Vernatsch, and pinot grigio, bianco, and nero. The Friuli masters the pinot grapes and cabernets as well, though local traditional wines Tocai, Verduzzo, and Malvasia are more unusual. Lombardy is not particularly known for its wines, though the area around Bergamo produces perfectly fine merlot, cabernet, pinot bianco, and pinto grigio, in addition to local Valcalepio; west of Brescia, they bottle an excellent sparkling dry white wine called Franciacorta that, while not as famous as Asti, was the first to gain DOCG status.

Grappa, made from the skins, seeds, vines, and other remnants at the bottom of the pressing barrel, is a fiery digestivo drunk at the end of a meal to help you "digest" those large Italian repasts. An amaro is a bitter liqueur drunk in midafternoon or before or after a meal. DOC Denominazione di Origine Controllata wines are merely those a government board guarantees have come from an official wine-producing area and meet the standard for carrying a certain name on the label. A vino di tavola table wine classification merely means a bottle doesn't fit the preestablished standards and is no reflection of the wine's quality.

In , a new category was added. DOCG the G stands for Garantita -- guaranteed is granted to wines with a certain subjective high quality.

Traditionally, DOCG labels were merely the highest-profile wines that lobbied for the status getting DOC and especially DOCG vastly improves reputations and, therefore, sales, though the costs of annually putting the wine up for testing are high.

Today, there are dozens. The wines have a few extra hoops to jump through to retain their Garantita status. The vineyards need to practice specific growing methods and cannot exceed a certain yield of fruit every year.

The wines are subject to chemical analysis by government agencies. And to qualify in the first place, a wine must have held DOC status for at least 5 years.

Though vino di tavola usually connotes a humble, simple, quaffable house wine from some indeterminate local producer perhaps a local farmer's cooperative or even the restaurant owner's brother-in-law , in the s and s, this "table wine" classification was also co-opted by wine estates that wanted to experiment with grape mixtures and tinker with foreign varietals to create nontraditional but mighty wines.

These highbred "table wines" became known melodramatically as supervini. There's no guarantee of quality with these experimental wines, but most self-respecting producers would never have put on the market a failure or something undrinkable. For instance, Molise is deeply in the South but almost entirely mountainous , except for a thin strip of coastline.

This is reflected in the Cuisine , which is derived from inland farming traditions and largely based on seasonal crops, with pork is the meat of choice. Along the Coast , both in North and South Italy, seafood is a must. Even if Liguria and Tuscany are in the North, the closeness to the sea make them perfect for Olive cultivation. It's not by case that "alla ligure" that is, "in the Ligurian Manner" is a way to serve Fish , cooked in the hoven with potatoes, cherry tomatoes and Olive Oil.

The Italian History and Geography Lesson is finished. We can now talk about serious things such as Pasta! Here are a few examples of the most frequently seen Pasta dishes in each region of Italy.

Val d'Aosta : the mountains and very cold winters results in the hearty cuisine of the Aosta Valley and, in the past, in the lack of wheat: for this reason the traditional Pasta Dish in Val d'Aosta is Fettuccine made with Chestnut Flour and seasoned with rich, dairy sauce with Fontina Cheese , a semisoft cow's cheese with a gentle buttery, nutty flavor.

Piemonte : the traditional Pasta Dish in Piedmont are the famous Agnolotti del Plin , very small ravioli traditionally stuffed with veal and served with a meat-based ragu or butter and sage. Lombardia : along with the Risotto alla milanese , flavoured with saffron , the typical Pasta dishes in Lombardia are the Casoncelli , half moon-shaped pasta stuffed with stuffed with a mixture of bread crumbs, parmesan, garlic, parsley, nutmeg and broth and seasoned with butter and sage.

Trentino : Spaetzle are small pieces of dough cooked in simmering water. The ingredients are just flour, egg and water and are seasoned mostly with a bit of salt and nutmeg. Veneto : Bigoli in Salsa are the Venetian pasta dish par excellence. Bigoli are a type of thick, fresh spaghetti made just with two basic ingredients: whole wheat flour and water, seasoned with an anchovy sauce.

Friuli Venezia Giulia : one of the most famous Pasta dish in Friuli is Lasagne - a long, fresh pasta - with Poppy seeds sauce. Emilia-Romagna : the home of Stuffed Pasta! Cappelletti in Brodo are a kind of stuffed pasta that is hand rolled and filled with a mix of beef, pork and chicken with some parmesan and nutmeg, normally served in Broth. The other traditional Pasta is Tagliatelle - long fresh pasta - with Ragu - tomato sauce with meat. Toscana : Tuscany most famous pasta are the Pici , thick homemade spaghetti, made just with flour and water, dressed with garlicy tomato sauce , and a generous sprinkling of grated pecorino.

While northern Italians love their rich cream sauces, polenta and stuffed meats, people in the south embrace flavors such as tangy tomato sauces, olive oil and fresh steamed seafood. Northern Italian cuisine is characterized by a lesser use of olive oil, pasta and tomato sauce and a heavier reliance on butter or lard , rice, corn for polenta and cheeses for cream sauces.

Pasta in the north is by no means non-existent, but it does have to share time with delicious risotto and polenta. Northern Italian Cuisine is known for rich, creamy sauces, more beef and less pasta — yes, less pasta than found in the South. Colder temperatures and mountainous terrain made for more cattle pastures than crop fields.

What you will find is cheesy, cream based dishes, soups, and stews using root vegetables and oftentimes cured meats. While northern Italy has more influence from the countries it borders up top, southern Italy is influenced by countries like Spain or Greece, rather than Austria or Switzerland. The red sauce that you commonly taste in spaghetti and pizza is called marinara. It originated from Naples, Italy. This thick and watery sauce is made up of tomatoes, Italian herbs, garlic, and olive oil.

Adding more ingredients will transform marinara sauce into puttanesca or arrabbiata.