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Ask my friends and family and they will tell you that I am obsessed with Italian food, but in my defence, who could not fall in love with a food culture so full of history and tradition, so absorbing and so totally fascinating.

The one problem I have found with Italian food is the deeper you look into it, the more you discover that there is no such thing as "Italian food". From North to South, city to country, region to region, even town to town, every Italian has a different view as to the traditional food of Italy. Every Italian is an authority on food, it is second nature to be able to talk, and very often argue, both informatively and passionately about the food of their region, their town, their family and probably most important and influentially, their "mamma".

One of the main problems I have found with Italian food is that Italian people never consider themselves Italian, they are Tuscan, Calabrese, Sicilian or Sardo . . . never just Italian, this is just the same with Italian food, take for example a simple Italian product . . . Pasta. Every Italian eats it, but look a little deeper and you find it's a minefield of tradition, heritage, politics and geography. Pasta can be either fresh or dried, but to Italians it's fresh in Northern Italy and dried in Southern Italy, then there are the shapes, in Northern Italy fresh pasta is made into Ravioli, Agnolotti, Cannelloni, Tortellini, Cappeletti and so on!!!. In Southern Italy it is Linguine, Farfalle, Buccatini, Fusilli, Tubetti . . .  the list is endless.

This is how seriously Italians take their food, from birth Italians are exposed to good food, but often only the food of their region. As Italians grow up they become involved in the food they eat, teething babies are given boiled Parmesan rind rather than teething rings, children eat the same food and drink the same wine as their parents, school meals are freshly prepared regional cuisine and every milestone throughout an Italians life is marked and celebrated with food. Birthdays, christenings, engagements, marriages and funerals are accompanied by traditional and regional foods. To an Italian the celebration often begins with the sharing of the food preparation for the celebration.

Every Italian celebration has a wealth of traditional food associated with it, Torta Pasquelina, lamb and colomba pasquele at Easter or Bacalla in agrodolce, Struffoli (honey pastry rags) and Panettone at Christmas, and the various other "festa" (celebrations) an Italian celebrates throughout their year will often have a traditional or regional dish or ingredient associated with it. This upbringing leads to how openly and passionately Italians talk about food and often how disparaging and dismissive they can be about the food of other regions, but this is just an accepted part of the Italian way of life.

Italy - A Way Of Eating

It is very difficult to generalise the eating and food of Italy, when cooking Italians are following the traditions and recipes of their previous generations. Take a simple traditional Italian Ragu . . . how is it made?. Well not as easily as you would think, depending where you come from it could be made from either beef, pork, veal or a mixture of two meats or maybe all three - maybe you mince the meat or maybe you roughly chop it - the ragu base (Soffrito) has carrot, celery, white onion or red onion, or maybe some garlic, or maybe dried chilli, or maybe thyme, or maybe rosemary - maybe you use fresh tomatoes, or maybe tinned or maybe you use Passatta (pureed tomatoes) . . . depending where in Italy you come from any of these can be traditional. Every Italian family have their own traditional recipe for the traditional dishes of their region . . and theirs is the right way of doing it, nothing else will ever come close.

This is why I find Italian food so fascinating, the passion with which all Italians can prepare and speak about food is so endearing and infectious, to listen to them speak about the dishes of their region just makes you want to eat it.

I am not Italian, far from it, I'm from Yorkshire, but having worked with Italians, seen them cook, eat and enjoy the foods of their country, listened to their stories of growing up in Italy, hearing their memories of the food and celebrations of their childhood, makes me wish I had been brought up the Italian way, my food knowledge came from books, college and my job, not from my childhood, my family,  and my culture as it is with Italians.