Vancouver Sun – Pizza, pasta, prosciutto, Parmigiano-Reggiano — there’s a lot to like about Italian food. Yet, ironically, there really is no such thing as Italian food. It’s a cuisine of regions and the sub-regions within them. After all, the multiple kingdoms, duchies and papal states that ruled the Italian peninsula only unified in 1871. The rich, eggy pastas, buttery cheeses and cured pork dishes of Piemonte in the north are a world apart from the briny, sun-soaked olives, capers and tomatoes of Sicily in the south. In Calabria, food is flavoured with chilies, while in Liguria, it’s fragrant with delicate herbs, and in Tuscany, it’s simple, earthy and heavy on the beans, beef and olive oil.
