Italian cuisine

It consists of traditional meals and ingredients that people consume in Italy. While pasta, sauces, and cheeses are staples across the country, every region has its own unique ingredients and dishes that have contributed to the influence of Italian cuisine.

Italian cuisine has influenced food culture around the world and is viewed as a form of art by many. Wine, cheese and pasta are important part of Italian meals. Pasta comes in a wide range of shapes, widths and lengths, including penne, spaghetti, linguine, fusilli and lasagna.

No one area of Italy eats the same things as the next. Each region has its own spin on "Italian food," For example, most of the foods that Americans view as Italian, such as spaghetti and pizza, come from central Italy. In the North of Italy, fish, potatoes, rice, sausages, pork and different types of cheeses are the most common ingredients.

Pasta dishes with tomatoes are popular, as are many kinds of stuffed pasta, polenta and risotto. In the South, tomatoes dominate dishes, and they are either served fresh or cooked into sauce. Southern cuisine also includes capers, peppers, olives and olive oil, garlic, artichokes, eggplant and ricotta cheese.

Wine is also a big part of Italian culture, and the country is home to some of the world's most famous vineyards.

The oldest traces of Italian wine were recently discovered in a cave near Sicily's southwest coast. "The archaeological implications of this new data are enormous, especially considering that the identification of wine [is] the first and earliest-attested presence of such product in an archaeological context in Sicily," researchers wrote in the study, published online August 2017 in the Microchemical Journal.