Ask an italian guy everything

First of all, pasta isn't just pasta. There's the more common one, made with weat, then there's potato one (gnocchi), the one made with eggs, etc, so it's a broad subculture of food.
Pizza isn't anything like american pizza, we don't put sweet shit on it like pineapples, we actually find it disgusting.
"Salami" does not exist. "Salame" is a singular word to describe a kind of food, while "Salumi" is a broader genre of raw meat whose purpose is to end up in sandwiches or to be eaten quickly at a happy hour.
Most of our food is regional and can vary from disgusting things (coda alla vaccinara, which is basically a cow tail) to very tasty shit (vincesgrassi, a variation of lasagna, or crescia, piadina, babbà and other pastries both salty and sweet) but we all have "affettato" in common. That's a word that means "stuff you're supposed to slice" and comprehends kinds of ham, cheese, salumi, soft or dry sausages and all kinds of bread.
My favourite fish dish is just a simple swordfish steak with olive oil and pepper. We fish the swordfish near Sicily's coast, so it's cheap if you go there (10 euros for a top tier steak). We also have various christmas eve recipies, since we only eat fish that day for an old catholic tradition, most of it is pasta with tomato and fish sauce, octopus and pease, and shit like that, but I never bothered to cook it myself because my aunt does it better anyways. Look up how to make "seppie con i piselli" if you want to have a good time.
Already answered that, also, most of italian girls are ugly but only take men way out of their league. They have incredibly high standards, and we italians usually prefer foreign women because they're not that bitchy (polish and german women love the strong italian cock so much)

>I'm not a fan of cooked meat myself
Then what kind of meat are you a fan of?

What's your opinion on polenta?

Don't know what you're talking about.
If you mean the word "bologna", well, it's definetely not food. Bologna is a city, not even known for its sausages, it's actually the city with the world's first University.
If you mean "ragù alla bolognese", which is sauce, you will need prime time tomato sauce from a legit italian store, good sausages and spices and a lot of patience. You have to make the thing boil for like 3 hours or even more, and you can't even leave it there as it needs your attention despite needing to have something to cover your pot when cooking. The result is really good, but you might want to start from a simple tomato + meat and onion sauce that you can do in 5 minutes to practice, unless you want to waste a whole day to eat shit because you fucked up.

As a Sicillian, do you feel like you're dragging down northern Italy with your violent and poorly educated ways?
I'd assume cold cuts

Have you had a sexual experience with a family member? Do you live in a villa?

pic related is a salame called "ciauscolo". It's raw meat, probably pre-cooked in some cases. It's inside a "crescia", kind of jew easter bread that we use in my place to make big sandwiches. It tastes goddamn good with cheese, expecially pecorino.
Well polenta is only good during winter. It's a dish made in the north for northeners, I live in the east coast in the central region, so it's not typical.
Funny story about it, it's so nutrient that my partisan grand-grandad got caught during WW2 because the fascists spread the rumor that his mother was cooking it, and he was starving really bad, so they waited him home.
I think it's best served with mushrooms.

What is the best Italian dish, and why is it vitello tonnato?

That looks tasty as fuck. The bread reminds me of pita-bread.

So what's the name of your region? And what are your favourite recipes from it?

>I live in the east coast in the central region, so it's not typical.

Cool. My mom was born in Molise, I guess it was part of Abruzzo back then, that's the central region right?

I'm not from Sicily, I just love that place, even if it's messy. Greek theater, good food, good looking girls, sea everywhere, best volcano ever.
Lol is that an american stereotype? We don't do that, we're not fond of inbreeding at all, even if some sperglord will fuck his cousin sometimes and get disowned by his parents, but that happens everywhere I guess.
A villa? Mh, well, it's a house in the middle of the countryside, but it's not THAT big. It's just outside a 60k people city and near a huge turistic beach, so I guess it's good, but our houses aren't made of woods, they're made of bricks, so they're relatively safer but they cost more and are smaller than yours. Mine was a school during the 1940's, it was abandoned and mom bought it and made some works to make it viable as a living place.
I've got friends who have real fucking estate tho, sometimes with huge-ass pools or just in the front of the mediterrean sea.

>vitello tonnato
Gosh, Northern Italy has such fucking boring food. It's like I can taste the bad weather.

It's vitello tonnato because my grandma makes it every christmas
I'm from Marche, namely near a city called Jesi. The central region is composed of Toscana, Lazio, Umbria, Abruzzo, Marche. Molise is a literal meme in my country, we joke about its non-existance because it's a small place near the mountains, too south to be center, too north to be proper south.

I thought a villa in italy was just sort of a house where the family lived together?
Would you get disowned for giving your cousin a blowjob?

>Molise is a literal meme in my country, we joke about its non-existance because it's a small place near the mountains, too south to be center, too north to be proper south.

Yeah I know I have cousins back there in Campobasso and Termoli and they always post weird meme images of maps with Molise missing and stuff like that on their FB.

Vitello tonnato is eaten in every region above Napoli, actually, basically in every place where people own cows. If you go south they prefer pig and in Sicily horse meat is pretty common.
In Naples they love "sanguinaccio", which is swine blood and chocolate. I'm not about that at all to be honest.

It's funny I've heard of every single region in your post (and I think all the others in Italy as well), but I'd never heard of Marche before. Is it not very populated?

What you suggest is just disgusting.
And "villa" in italian literally means "big ass estate".
Funny thing, the place where I live is even more obscure than Molise.

It's probably even more populated than Umbria. It's just that no events of historic importance for all our country happened here, since we were vatican property until 1861. Marchigiani were tax operatives for the pope and shit.
We have big time tourism here with Germans, they love it. Mountains and sea are just 40 kms apart from each other, the food is god tier and we have decent beach for foreigners standards (It's not Malta, Puglia nor Sardinia, but we have lots of sandy beaches and a not-too-hot climate)

>Marche
Have you ever been to San Marino?

>sanguinaccio
That sounds insane but also delicious. It's interesting that in South Italy they use chocolate more like a food than just a sweet, it's how it was originally used in South America.

I suppose this is less a culinary question and more of a cultural one: I know there is a distinction between South and North Italy, but is there anything similar between West and East? You are divided by the mountains after all..

For example, here in Scotland the West Coast and the East Coast are quite different places and the people mention it.

Tell us some Marchian specialties!

Yeah, if you have to buy something that costs a lot and you want it cheap you go there, as they don't have IVA (tax on added value, it basically means 25+% of prices are added to goods and go away in taxes. It's fucking damaging and it's a big reason why people are escaping this country still today).

Did you know that where you live shares its name with a famous final fantasy villain?

>unironic AMA thread

Every country has VAT.

Every region is its own. The biggest difference is between north, center and south, but going to another regions, whichever it is, is always a shock for us. Our dialects change in a radius of 2 kms, our food and customs do the same. There's a huge difference even between northeners themselves. People that live near to Germany and Austria are more kind with foreigners, for example, why people in Venice just straight up hate tourists in the first place.
So yeah, obviously since every single shitty village is completely different from the one next to it, there is a difference, but we never talk about east coast and west coast, since it's an unnecessary division when everything is varied on its own.
Cibo Marchigiano? Vincesgrassi, lasgna variation. Olive all'ascolana, fried olives inside a paste. Gnocchetti alla crema, which are basically olive all'ascolana with sweet cream instead of olives. Crescia, the bread I already posted. Ciauscolo, a kind of salame. Filled pidgeon, but it's not very common. Verdicchio dei castelli di Jesi, one of our nation's top white wines. We also have Lacrima, which is our local favourite red wine. Grasciaro is a kind of ratatouille, very good if you like cooked veggies. Pomodori\melanzane\peperoni ripieni, which are tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, cooked and with bread crumbs in them.
There's a lot of other shit I forgot probably.

Don't know the pronunciation of their name.
We're all having fun, so stop being a retard and ask a question, fudgelord
Most of the time it's not as bad as ours tho. Or else we wouldn't buy stuff when abroad to save money. Because we absolutely do. Some guys go to the extent of traveling to Japan to get less taxes on the filming equipment they need.

Wow thanks that list is awesome. Do you have any good videos/youtube channels that show the correct way to make real Italian food? I recall someone (maybe you) posting a channel with a guy who does farming as well as cooking.

>polish and german women love the strong italian cock so much

Hahaha good b8 op

Not really, especially for the stuff I said. What you need is the ingredients, even more than the preparation. If you want to taste italian food the easy way, you go ask for a certain type of salame and cheese, you buy bread and you make a sandwich with them. There's not guarantee that the stores around you won't sell you slimy soft american pasta and cheap sauce. You can try to make olive all'ascolana, but you'll need to know how to dip fry an olive filled with meat. Also, vincestrassi requires chicken's bowels to be made, and it's not everyone's cup of tea, so you can stick with normal lasagna.

Is Espresso/general coffee equipment cheaper there? I find it fascinating how many different brands of machines and grinders you make and they range from basic to top of the line.

I've been looking on ebay.it to find a used coffee grinder but I didn't find as many things as I expected. Is ebay not very popular? I imagined that with so many cafeterie and coffee-drinkers there would be lots of equipment for sale.

>eastern european didn't get the "you got cucked while on vacation in Italy" memo
You'd be surprised how easy it is to win over their women. Unless you're a southener, in that case you'd better never speak with them.

do you like pizza

If you're looking to stuff to keep in your home, a lot of it is decent. It's about the brand of coffee we choose and the way we prepare it more than the equipment we have, we don't think like americans do in terms of preparation. We will go and cook spaghetti on a chinese wok and it will taste good regardless.
But I can't give you much advice, since I suffer from a heart condition and a cup of coffee could literally kill me. I'll drink cappuccino in bars or when mom makes it for me, but only if I absolutely must go on with my day and I haven't slept at all.

I live in the UK and I have some good food markets and a top-tier Italian deli near me so I can get many of the things you mention. (Their deli meat/cheese counter is huge). They make Cassatta which I could eat every single day, with an espresso, until I have diabetes.

Fuck off this is a quality thread

That's a pity. You could try drinking decaf. Technology has progressed to the point where Swiss-Water Decaf coffee (it's a new-ish method) tastes almost exactly the same as normal coffee and so you can buy top quality beans to make it with. I'm not sure what you mean buy "american preparation", most of the world seems to make espresso the same way. The only thing I know is that Americans use less water and more coffee in their shots.

"do you like pizza" is like asking "do you like juice".
There's an infinite amount of possible pizzas.
I like the diavola, I hate the quattro stagioni, not a fan of bianca con cipolla, absolutely love quattro formaggi and marinara, napoli is not my cup of tea, margherita con mozzarella di bufala + fried chips on top of it is the absolute best.
Besides that, every restaurant gives their name to most of their pizza if they're not evergreens like the ones I mentioned, so I can't answer that in a complete way.
Liking pizza is more about liking what you put on it, like pasta.

It's pronounced /mɑːʃ/ so it's different.

What I meant is we have different ways of thinking. We are historically a people of farmers, fishers and artists. We're poor people with culture. So if we have to do something we invent a way, we make it with whatever instrument you put in our hands. Americans are usually people who want their shit to be on point, to have the right machinery every time and some times might even decide to give up on something if they don't have the tools.
So I guess making coffee for them is more about having top-tier equipment while we're more focused on top-tier ingredients and proportions (italian espresso is really tight and black, american espresso is just murky water in comparison)

That sounds good. Try piadina with mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto cotto. If you like spicy stuff put some "nduja" on bread and get the runs for days. Also, cannoli siciliani, babbà.

Whats your view on Paul Pogba going to Manchester United?

Italy is pretty big on cured meats.

I might be one in a million, but I don't like soccer.
I only cheer for my national team when there's a tournament because it's our national sport, but I'm not interested in private clubs of 20 black guys and 2 italians, they don't even represent their native cities fighting each other, it's just a big money circlejerk.

>aubergines/eggplants are now cucumbers because some not-quite-but-close-enough dirt-eater from marche said so

What's the objectively best dolce?

I can't know every english word when It's language number 3 for me, can I? Mistakes can happen.
Torta maronita. Look it up. Fucking delicious.
Also, we already mentioned top tier stuff like cassata siciliana, babbà and cannoli siciliani, so what's more to say?

>nduja, cannoli
Love both of those. See, the South DOES have the best foods! Is the bread for the piadina, basically a pita?

Also, do you make your own pasta?

Never eaten pita so I dunno.
"Make your own pasta" huh? Well if it's gnocchi, ravioli, tortellini and tagliatelle, homemade pasta is the best. Handmade pasta from stores is still very very good, but beware of branded shit like "Giovanni rana".
If you mean spaghetti, pennette, farfalle and other kind of "vanilla" pasta, then no, we don't, we buy it because it's basically the same.
We always cook it on our own and make the sauce ourselves, sometimes even the tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes, but we don't make the generic pasta by ourselves, since Barilla and brands like that already make a very good work.

And it's my fourth language. Yet I still know the difference between an aubergine and a cucumber.

Good for you. Big deal, I got a word wrong, will Queen Elizabeth come here and ask me to fuck her now or something? I still write better than a lot of americans who never studied their own grammar.

I see, good to know. So which brands do you like from dry pasta? I was once told by Italians that people prefer Divella instead of Barilla? I love De Cecco and Rummo but they're a bit more expensive than the rest. Giuseppe Cocco is also popular here but never tried it.

Different Italian here.
Piadina is more like naan, but not quite. Pita, as far as I know, has no fat in its dough, which is why its unpleasant and of poor quality, much like the people who make it.
Piadina and naan traditionally both have clarified animal fat, lard and ghee, respectively.
With lots of us going health-conscious these days and forgetting that our grandmothers lived to be 100 years and ate lard all day, every day, piadina is now also made with vegetable oil.

Mom always bought Divella or Barilla because they're affordable, but I've eaten De Cecco and it's good anyways.
I'd say I prefer Divella when it's not cooked too much, we call it "al dente", which means that you feel it on your teeth but it's not crunchy, just cooked enough to be edible. Usually It just takes 5 or 10 minutes, depends on how much pasta you put in the pot and what's written outside the box.

nonna also toiled in the field growing chickpeas all day and washed clothes with a board, not shitposting on Veeky Forums

As he said, if any bread is made with swine lard, it's really good and tasty. Variations of pizza and focacce are good examples.

>implying that explaining the difference between piadina and pita is shitposting when someone asked 'what's the difference between piadina and pita?'

Bisnonna sometimes says that she wants Mussolini back.
But hey she makes neat clothes lavorando a maglia so it's good.

Who are you talking about? I think you mean Arabic "pita", which is thin like paper and tastes like cardboard.

Real Pita bread is made with olive oil.

>Implying nonna Antonia wouldn't shitpost if she spoke english

>al dente
This is the only way to cook it! I save some water from the pasta before I add the sauce to cook them together. It always makes it 10x better because of the salt and starch.

Looks nothing like piadina to me.

I didn't say it looks like piadina, I'm responding to this: "Pita, as far as I know, has no fat in its dough, which is why its unpleasant and of poor quality"

Which is probably pic-related.

Dude calm down.
I'm not sure I get it.
First of all you make water boil, you put salt in it, then you put pasta. While you're doing this you make sauce, and only when both are ready you mix them in a separate container. You don't put the sauce inside the boiling water and vice versa. That's a crime.

I'm OP and I was finally answering the pita question saying it doesn't look like piadina at all.

>It's an italian thread
>Nobody has asked about maccaroni and cheese
I'm proud of you for not doing that.

Are there large regional variations in pita?
I had pita once and once only on holiday to Cyprus. It was awful.
The one in this pic actually look quite good and not drier than a geriatric cunt.

Kek.

This is what I do, you can tell me if it's wrong or not. When the sauce is cooked (separate pot) and the pasta is ready I remove it from the water, and pour all the water out of the pasta pot except for a very small amount at the bottom (2-3 tablespoons max.), then I add the sauce and the pasta back to the (still hot) pot where I made the pasta and mix them all together for a 1-2 mins.

By the way, I've seen recipes where they throw the pasta in the sauce while it's cooking. E.g. paccheri con broccoli e salsiccia

>he likes to be smacked with brassica and forcemeats
I can oblige.

Cyprus pita is horrible. It is becoming popular in Greece, because it doesn't have oil in it so health-conscious people love it, so now when you order souvlaki you can have it as an option.

Real Greek pita looks like pic-related. Cypriot food has many middle-eastern influences because they have a significant Lebanese population and well...they are almost next door to the Middle East. It's not all bad though, they make a delicious pastry called Tahinopsomo, which is basically a braided brioche with Tahini, cinammon and sugar filling.

wat

Sorry, it was silly.
Paccheri are from Naples. "Pacchero" in Neapolitan is also slang for 'smack' because the word is descended of ancient Greek for "whole hand" and ancient Greek, which is still spoken dialectically in some parts of the south, strongly influences many of the Italian dialects of the area, Naples and Bari in particular.
Many times, I've heard "smettila o ti do un pacchero!" literally "stop that or I'll give you a whole hand!" implying a smack.
This is also related to standard Italian "pacca" which also means "smack."

That pasta is made on a frying pan tho, it's not with sauce.
And you're doing it wrong. You don't need extra water, the pasta already absorbed enough. If you feel that it lacks salt just...well put some more salt while cooking.

This is the method I've seen to cook it, he adds water to the sauce before the pasta:
youtube.com/watch?v=-GXtPuhQ4Ds

Also, in the other method I was talking about here I've been using 2tbspoon water from pasta pot mainly because it has starch and starch makes the sauce and the pasta bind/come together better. How do you do it?

lel, that makes a lot more sense now. Is tubular pasta very popular in Italy? I've been watching Italian TV shows recently and I swear to god EVERY single time they are eating pasta it's Paccheri or Rigatoni.

I just mix the sauce and the pasta when they're done, period. No fucking around with the water. The sauce is already good on its own and I like it to be consistent and not watery. After I have "scolato" the pasta, I use the water to feed my plants or some shit.

I see. It doesn't make my sauce watery, because frankly 2tbspoons of water for half a packet of pasta and a half a pot of sauce makes no difference, but I'll try it your way and see. Do you do the mixing in a bowl or in the pot with heat?

Bowl, I live alone and eat directly from it.

>feed my plants
Doesn't that kill them because of the salt content?

Cacio e pepe.

I've heard so many people rave about having it in Italy. From my minimal understanding of Italian food, I follow that it's about the freshness and integrity of the ingredients.

Is there anywhere stateside where you can eat a comparable version of that dish? Or find ingredients to make a similar caliber of dish?

I assume the salt went in the pasta because they are still alive.
Italian householf of first generation immigrants.

Tripe; yay or nay?

With eggs and tomato, absolutely yes

>Is there anywhere stateside where you can eat a comparable version of that dish? Or find ingredients to make a similar caliber of dish?
Just make it yourself. Fresh refrigerated eggy noodles or good pasta you enjoy like Barilla, grate your own pecorino, grano pagano (harder to find). crack your own peppercorns. Dip a measuring cup into the pasta water to reserve some, before you drain it. This is used just in case you want to thin the sauce a bit when it's all combined and cheeses are grated and all that.

>margherita con mozzarella di bufala + fried chips on top
explain

What do you think of my pizza? It's a new take on rustic. Instead of peasants making shitty food, it's poor people making food.

>putting sausage in a ragu
>claims to be authentic

Take that sausage shit back to Brooklyn, famiglia.

You call them french fries probably. I put them on pizza all the time, they just go with everything.
I literally gave away where I come from, If you actually read the thread you would know I'm at least 500 kms away from Bologna. Let them make their ragù the way they like it, I'll eat pappardelle col cinghiale in the meantime.
Se sei ancora dubbioso te posso consiglià de gì a pijattela 'ntel culo, sempre che te c'abbia capito 'n cazzo de quel che ho detto :)
It looks like shit, give up

>Se sei ancora dubbioso te posso consiglià de gì a pijattela 'ntel culo, sempre che te c'abbia capito 'n cazzo de quel che ho detto
Based user uses dialect to prevent sperglords from using google translate. This is italian shitposting, fatto con passione