Ah, the beautiful Italian cuisine! Tasty dishes envied all over the world, often the subject of (terrible) foreign imitations. But as the good said Shakespeare «not all that glitters is gold ". Yes, because there are dishes in our beautiful country that will make us flee like Bolt in an Olympic final. Real delicacies that will make us re-evaluate pizza with pineapple, spaghetti with ketchup e Starbucks. Are we exaggerating? Judge for yourself, but know that your appetite may pass by reading the next lines.
Spring rolls? No, of lamb!
Ready to go, let's start immediately with a dish that will delight all lovers of splatters: i turcinieddi (o gnummarreddi). Typical of the Apulian, Molise, Calabrian, Campania, Abruzzo and Lazio culinary traditions (practically only in Valle d'Aosta they do not make them), these are nothing more than simple rolls. Nothing strange then, right? Well, actually they are rolls made with lamb guts, stuffed with lamb entrails and - in some cases - enriched with lamb tripe and sweetbreads (a kind of bovine gland). In short, poor lamb! These small and delicious dishes are prepared on the grill with bay leaves, olive branches and lots of courage.
Raw snails: the sushi of the poor
Also in Puglia (but also in Sicilia) it is possible to come across another dream dish: the snails. But wasn't it a typical French dish? Absolutely, but we in Italy have the version for real men. In fact, tradition provides that these small and sweet snails are consumed raw, maybe still alive. At most, if the very idea of the slimy that covers them starts to cause us retching, we can burn them on a plate. Today it is difficult to find them on a restaurant menu, but they were once considered a valid remedy for gastritis. Do you have a stomach ache because maybe you ate raw snails? No problem: eat more raw snails!
'O pere e' o musso: nothing is discarded here!
It is said that nothing is thrown away from the pig. And in Campania this thing has been taken literally. 'O pere e' o musso, in fact, it is none other than the foot and the snout of the pig (or the calf). First, the parts in question are cleaned, then boiled, everything is then cut into small pieces and served in a dish with salt and lemon. It is usually sold by typical carts in the middle of the road, making it de facto one of the symbols of Campania street food. But despite this, of the Neapolitan culinary tradition, we continue to prefer the pizza.
Black pudding: vampire's favorite cream
How beautiful are the chocolate spreads! So sweet, so tasty, so spreads. A real delicacy suitable for young and old. Then one day someone, with obvious problems of sadism, thought it best to enrich the recipe with a special ingredient: the pig's blood. Yes, because as we have already told you before, of this animal nothing is thrown away! Immediately after its slaughter, the blood was collected in large containers, mixed for about 15 minutes, filtered and cooked with dark chocolate, sugar and other ingredients. Unfortunately - or fortunately - the sale of that dish was prohibited in 1992 for health reasons. What is on the market today is the light version without blood, even if the doubt - given the name - remains.
Casu martzu: with worms and cheese it takes courage
We close this tasty culinary review with perhaps the most "particular" dish of the Peninsula: the casu marzu (o the case phrase). From the outside it may look like a classic cheese, but inside it hides a terrible secret. A colony (or pack, flock, flock or whatever it is) of worms you are literally eating our cheese!
La Piophila casei (cheese fly) in fact lays its eggs between the cracks in the crust. As soon as they hatch, the babies of the aforementioned fly begin to feed on the dairy product in question. This creates a kind of creamy sauce made of worms, worm droppings (eh, aren't there bathrooms in there?) and cheese chewed by worms. Now, a normal person, at the sight of such destruction, it would take everything to throw it in the garbage. In Sardinia, on the other hand, they decided to transform it in a typical dish. But dream of finding it in a delicatessen: the European Union has in fact banned its sale. If you really want to taste it, you will have to go into the heart of the island in search of some breeder linked to tradition, just like Indiana Jones.
And you, do you know other dishes to recommend to the faint of stomach?
