Italy Food Tour

Today I've prepared an itinerary to enjoy Italian food. A journey through different regions, dedicated to the best Italian dishes.

Your taste buds will thank you!

MILAN

The milanese typical dishes are the risotto alla milanese , cassouela con polenta and trippa. The true risotto alla milanese includes ossobuco (literally "bone with a hole"), a cross-cut veal shanks. There are many recipes, the most common is to braise the ossobuco with vegetables and then add it to the risotto, another version is to boil the ossobuco with vegetables and use the stock to cook the rice. The rice is cooked with white wine and stock and when it's ready they add butter and grana cheese and then the ossobuco. My mom used to prepare this dish and i loved the marrow inside the bone. Delicious! 

Another milanese typical dish is the cassoeula with polenta. It consist of pork meat cooked with vegetables which has to stew for 2 and a half hours. Then they add the cabbage and cook for another half an hour. It is usually served with polenta, which is cornmeal boiled into a porridge, and it's a typical winter dish.

Our last dish is the cotoletta alla milanese, a slice of beef, veal, chicken or pork, dippen into beaten egg and then covered with bread crumbs and fried in oil or butter. It's a very simple meal to cook and it is often served with french fries or mashed potatoes. 

If you visit Milan during Christmas time, don't miss the panettone, a sweet bread loaf that we eat for Christmas and New Year.

After tasting all of these deliciousness, enjoy the beautiful city of Milan using our itinerary. Take now a train and reach our next destination...

BOLOGNA

Bologna is famous for its good food and the most famous dishes are ragù, lasagne and tortellini.

The ragù is a meat based sauce also used to prepare lasagna. It is usually made of sauteed veal meat, carrots, onions and celery, then cooked with broth. It's a pretty long procedure but the result is amazing. It is also as sauce for tagliatelle pasta or as ingredient in lasagna. Someone may call "ragù alla bolognese" a simple sauce with tomato sauce and minced meat, but that's nothing compared with a real ragù!

Lasagna is a first dish made with a sheet-shaped type of pasta, put in several layers with ragù, bechamel and parmigiano cheese in every layer and then baked. Many variations exist, but this is the more common. 

Finally we have tortellini, a ring shaped stuffed pasta usually served in broth. The real tortellini has hand made pasta and are delicious. You can also eat them with a sauce, bechamel and ham is a common variation. 

In the center of Bologna there are many restaurants, bar and pastry shop where you can find every typical dish and dessert. Visit Bologna with our new itinerary!

GENOA

From Bologna take a train and reach Genoa, another beautiful city with delicious dishes.

The first one is pesto, a sauce consisting in crushed garlic, basil, and pine nuts blended with olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and a sardinian cheese. It is traditionally prepared in a marble mortar and it is used as sauce for pasta. It is one of my favorites sauces!

Genoa is also famous for its focaccia, which is similar to a pizza. It is thicker and the classic focaccia is only topped with salt and olive oil. The rising and the preparation may take to 20 hours and it has to be cooked in a wood-burning oven. In Genoa it is common to eat a focaccia for breakfast. Enjoy this typical dishes visiting Genoa with our itinerary! Then take a train and reach...

FLORENCE

While you are staying in Florence you can't miss a juicy bistecca alla fiorentina! It's a T-bone cooked over
a wood fire. It is usually big and thick so you may have to share it with other persons. I think it is the most famous florentine dish and it's delicious. The usual cooking is very rare, so if you don't like to eat rare meat remember to tell the waiter to cook it more. 

Another deliciousness from Florence is a street food actually, the lampredotto, and it is made from one of the stomachs of a cow. It is cooked with vegetables, usually tomatoe, onions and celery, and then served. It once was a peasant dish, but now you can find it as a filling for sandwiches in many mobile stands in Florence. Another typical dish is the schiacciata, similar to the pizza but without tomato sauce and more crispy. It also exist a sweet version with Nutella and mascarpone cheese on top.

From Florence I suggest you to fly to Sicily and then make your way up to Naples and then Rome, where i think it will be more easy to fly back.

PALERMO

One of the most famous dishes from Palermo is the arancino or, how it is called in Palermo, "arancina". It is a street food  and it is a stuffed rice ball covered in bread crumbs and then fried. The filling is usually ragù, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and peas. 

Then we have pani ca meusa, another street food. The names means literally brad with spleen and it actually is a sandwich with chopped veal's spleen and lungs who had been previously boiled and then fried, sometimes some cheese can be added. It is a heavy dish, so if you are not used to it don't have much or you will have some problems digesting it!

And finally we have the parmigiana di melanzane, a sort of lasagna made with eggplant instead of pasta sheets. Every layer is filled with tomato sauce, cheese and sometimes sliced boiled egg and then baked. A very rich dish you can't miss!

A typical dessert is cannoli, a pastry consisting of a shell of fried sweet dough filled with a cream made with ricotta and sugar and decorated with candied cherry.

NAPLES

Well, the most famous dish from Naples is obviously the pizza! It originated here and Neapolitan pizza is a bit
different from the ones you can find everywhere else. It still use the original recipe so it is thicker and strictly cooked in wooden-burning oven. The first pizza was the margherita, with only tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil. 

Then we have another famous dish, that you can find also in other regions. It is the caprese salad. It is made of sliced tomatoes, sliced mozzarella and basil with olive oil and it is usually served as starter. 

Two typical desserts are sfogliatelle and babà. Sfogliatelle are shell-shaped pastries filled with sweet ricotta, or almond paste. 

The babà is a small yeast cake filled with pastry cream and soaked in liquour. Delicious! Use your time in Naples also so discover this amazing city using our Naples itinerary!

ROMA

In Rome you can taste the carbonara, another dish of peasant origins. It is pasta with a sauce made of bacon, eggs, pecorino cheese and pepper. The beaten egg is added away from the heat, to not make it coagulate. It is added to the hot pasta so it forms a sort of cream. Another famous sauce is the amatriciana sauce, again based on bacon, tomato and pecorino cheese.

Then we have the saltimbocca (literally "jump in the mouth"), a typical dish consisting of veal meat topped with prosciutto and a leave of sage. But the roman variation roll the meat with ham and sage and cook it in butter and white wine. 

Visit Rome using our Rome itinerary while tasting all the dishes!

Also remember that in all the cities you can have homemade gelato and espresso!

We have reach the end of our food itinerary. I hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to post your opinion or request down below. Bye!