Some complaints about the food

Before I abandon Italy and this blog, there are a few things I'd like to complain about. No one likes Italian food more than I do, at least no one who's not Italian-born. My grandmother always said I nursed better after my mother had a spaghetti dinner, and pasta has remained my favorite comfort food ever since. Prosciutto, Parmesan, tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, basil, oregano, vegetables sott'olio--I love them all.

Another minute or two in boiling water would have made these even better.

One of the best things about Italian cooking is the way they overcook vegetables until they're soft and silky and every bit of their flavor is released. So I don't get why they insist on undercooking their pasta. Yes, yes, I know, the right way to cook pasta is supposed to be al dente. But if Italians are smart enough to know that green beans taste better when they're not still crispy, why don't they see that the same is true of spaghetti?

I understand that macaroni isn't any good once it's gone all mushy, like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee from a can. But surely there's a sweet spot somewhere between that and the unpleasantly crunchy tagliarini and penne I'm served every time I come to Italy. I hesitate to say that 60 million Italians might be wrong about anything, particularly pasta. But my mouth says that, on this point at least, they are.

My other grievance is about the shortage of interesting vegetable dishes on Italian menus. Danny and I always chortle when we see American articles and cookbooks that picture Italian cuisine as a few pasta and meat dishes surrounded by photogentic piles of beautiful vegetables. The reality, in most of the restaurants we've eaten at, at least, is that vegetable offerings rarely extend much beyond an insalata mista made up mostly of iceberg lettuce, some boiled green beans (which are pretty good once they're doused in olive oil), and verdura grigliata, which at this time of year means grilled zucchini and eggplant.

 Few things are tastier than vegetables roasted with garlic and olive oil until their edges caramelize and their substance softens into sweet creaminess. (See comments above about the deliciousness of overcooking.) But what we've been served, from one end of Italy to the other, is nearly raw slices of these vegetables cooked just long enough to earn some stripes from the grill, but with barely any flavor except for a saving splash of oil.

There are dozens, probably hundreds, of delicious Italian vegetable recipes--the chicory I've discussed earlier in this blog is just one example--but Italians who go to restaurants, or who run them, don't seem very interested. That's a shame.

"Also for celiacs"

We've been horrified to see that the crusade against gluten has spread to Italy--Italy, where wheat bread and wheat pasta are daily staples. All kinds of products (fruit juice, canned tomatoes) are labeled "senza glutine," and some of the more "modern" restaurants offer "senza glutine" versions of their dishes.

Italian gluten phobia seems particularly puzzling, given that many Italians still haven't gotten the memo about the dangers of smoking and tanning. I suspect the sudden anxiety about gluten is not unrelated to the fact that we've also noticed a lot more Coca Cola and french fries and big American-sized backsides in Italy than we used to see.

Eating more vegetables might be a better way to fight the spread of American-style flab than substituting rice and tapioca flour for durum wheat. Vegetables aren't going to get more popular, though, unless Italians start serving vegetable dishes that taste less like something your mother is making you eat as punishment, and more like a part of the meal that's almost as delicious as the (fully cooked) pasta.