I saw a really good documentary recently, hell if I can remember the name. It covered actual Italian historical dishes. They were explaining that most of the really old stuff was region specific. Like one dish in one area had nothing to do with the same dish in another area. They actually went through kind of a food reimagining or Renaissance after one of the wars. Basically they were saying that pizza as it is now is not that old. Prior to the rush into America they had flatbreads that kind of but didn’t really approximate pizza, and it wasn’t until the Italian Americans repatriated that they started honing what they consider they current concept of pizza.
Tbh I find Italian culinary traditions underwhelming. Like they just gave up 10 minutes in, no work at all because it’s too hot.
To be fair, the further from coastline, the better the Italian cuisine - more herbs, more variety, more complex recipes (e.g Ligurian braised rabbit)
I saw a really good documentary recently, hell if I can remember the name. It covered actual Italian historical dishes. They were explaining that most of the really old stuff was region specific. Like one dish in one area had nothing to do with the same dish in another area. They actually went through kind of a food reimagining or Renaissance after one of the wars. Basically they were saying that pizza as it is now is not that old. Prior to the rush into America they had flatbreads that kind of but didn’t really approximate pizza, and it wasn’t until the Italian Americans repatriated that they started honing what they consider they current concept of pizza.
Italians have a couple of great hits and a lot of duds.