Jeff Mills Coastal Vacations Club Blog

When traveling to other countries, food is considered to be one the best ways to totally experience the country’s culture. Thus, this also applies if you’ll be traveling to Italy. Food in Italy is one of the must tries when going there. As a guide, here are the top five foods that you must try out when traveling to Italy.

Risotto

Risotto is basically rice which have been sautéed and cooked with stock in a shallow pan, which results into a scrumptious creamy dish. It basically depends on the locale and recipe, but meat, seafood, poultry, vegetables, and different kinds of cheese are somewhat always added to complete the dish.

It is usually eaten after Pasta or Antipasto during a meal. You can generally choose between Pasta or Antipasto, then followed by Risotto. Eating rice in Italy is quite common. In fact, in all European countries, they are the ones who eat the most rice.

A lot of regions, towns, restaurants, and families would have a signature risotto recipe or at least a risotto style of cooking. Risotto is a typical dish in Piedmont and Lombardy.

Arancini

Arancini are fried, or less frequently, baked rice balls which has a diameter of 8-10 cm. It is usually filled with ragù or meat sauce. It’s also filled with tomato sauce, peas, mozzarella, and other ingredients. However, they are simply covered by bread crumbs on the outside. Its name is derived from its typical colour that can remind you of an orange. Arancini basically means “little oranges”.

Its main type is usually sold in cafes, which is an arancino con ragù. It has meat, rice, peas, and mozzarella. Usually cafes would also offer arancini con burro or arancini with butter. However, cafes can vary on different kinds of arancini, depending on their specialty. You can also try out arancino con funghi or arancino with mushrooms and arancino con mellanzane or arancino with eggplant.

Polenta

This must taste Italian food is made with white cornmeal or ground yellow. It usually depends on the region you are in whether it is coarsely or finely ground. Present knowledge believes that polenta was derived from earlier types of grain mush that were usually eaten during the Roman period and after. Primitive forms of polenta were done with starches like chestnut flour and grain farro, which are both still used in little quantity nowadays.

When polenta is boiled, it appears to have a smooth creamy texture because of the starch molecules of Yellow corn meal in it, which was cooked with stock. It’s usually served roasted, fried or creamy. It’s a very usual dish in restaurants found in the northern mountains and is usually eaten with boar or deer meat.

Gelato

Gelato is Italy’s version of ice cream. Flavors that are non-fruit are generally only made with milk. There is also a version of gelato that does not have dairy products and is only made with water, which is called sorbetto. It’s similar with a sorbet, but a little bit tastier. You can choose from a variety of flavours such as coffee, fruit, chocolate, and tiramisù.

Tiramisù

This Italian desert is one of the most popular. It’s made with coffee dipped savoiardi which are lady fingers, cocoa powder and mascarpone cream. This cake has a delicate yet intense taste. In Italian, ‘tiramisu’ means “pick me up”, but could be figuratively translated to “make me happier”.

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