Word: cucina
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that the dollar is worth princely piles of lire, Americans in Italy should be getting more of everything for less, right? Yes, unless they happen to be gastronomical pilgrims in search of the Continent's current culinary wonder, la nuova cucina italiana, the new Italian cooking. In this case, the less-is-more rule applies. Also, less for more. La nuova cucina is found in expensive, often formidably serious restaurants, most of them in Northern Italy, where the fare is spare, artfully presented and somewhat outlandish. Surprising and a bit haughty, it has often been compared with the French...
...local chefs are trying to Frenchify their food. The innovators are on the march, however. The Milan-based magazine Italian Wines & Spirits has reported, with some hyperbole, that they "are gradually transforming the laws and principles of the nation's great culinary tradition ... The germs of the nuova cucina spread at the rate of a contagion...
...traditional cooking under challenge is usually described as la vera, antica cucina italiana, the true, ancient Italian cuisine. It consists of some 20 distinctive regional cooking styles that, for all their diversity, share a profusion of superb vegetables, game, fish and meat (Italians are the world's leading consumers of veal). Instead of aiming for symphonic blends of flavors, Italian cooking pays primary attention to natural tastes and textures and fresh ingredients. Pasta and in some regions rice dishes are an essential part of the vera cucina. Its dishes are characterized by locally produced sausages, hams, cheese, breads...
...interpreted 50 ways. As Waverley Root observed in The Food of Italy, "While French cooking has become professional cooking even when it is executed by amateurs, Italian cooking has remained basically amateur cooking even when it is executed by professionals. It is, in short, home cooking, la cucina casalinga, human, lighthearted and informal...
...menus, both aristocratic and earthy, exude all the warmth and good humor of la cucina Italiana at its best. For the primo piatto, traditionally pasta or a rice dish or soup, recipes go from the outrageously calorific, like a macaroni concoction with both cream and meat sauces, to simple ricotta croquettes (the ricotta in Rome is made from sheep's milk). To shock the neighbors, there is a fashion able pasta with vodka and red-pepper flakes...