By Martina Telesca

On December 23, the third of a series of workshops organized by Galileo Galilei Italian Institute, with the cooperation of Chongqing University, took place under the title: “When food becomes art: Italian cuisine explained”.

The workshop was dedicated to Italian food, well-known and renowned all over the world. The activity started with a short introduction about the origins and the factors that had influenced Italian cuisine, made so famous by its simplicity and the quality of ingredients. When thinking about Italian food, what immediately comes to your mind is pizza or pasta.

Video: Come la pizza è diventata la pizza

But Italy is not only about pasta and pizza: the whole Mediterranean cuisine has become well-known everywhere, and it is highly appreciated and universally regarded as a very healthy diet.

Having spent some months in China, I found a few substantial difference between China and Italy when it comes to eating habits: the timing (in Italy we usually eat quite late), cutlery (everyone knows that Chinese eat with chopsticks, while Italians use the fork), the preference for coffee or tea and pasta or rice among others.

Video: La dieta mediterranea

The workshop went on with a culinary journey that brought us all around the Italian peninsula: we began with the gastronomic tradition of Northern Italy, that prefers butter and rice to oil and pasta. Then we passed through Central Italy, characterised by a great variety of olive oil and wine, ending up in the South, that produces different quality of fruit and vegetables thanks to its mild weather. Every region of Italy has its own typical dishes, that we presented though each regions’ specific products.

As the workshop was held on December 23, just two days before Christmas, we chose to talk about Italian Christmas traditions. In Italy, lunch and dinner are – especially during holidays –true moments of sharing for the whole family, times for meeting and reunion. During Christmas festivities, two different moments are especially important to Italian families: Christmas eve’s dinner, on December 24, and Christmas lunch, on December 25. On these occasions every family meets up to eat and celebrate with all the relatives. Christmas menu varies a lot from region to region. Even from family to family recipes can differ from one another; likewise traditions, habits and rituals change from place to place, but differences notwithstanding, there is a common ground shared through the all peninsula.

The seminar ended with a workshop, during which Gianluca Vestrucci, the chef of the Italian restaurant DCafé situated in Chongqing University, showed us how to make pizza from scratch. At the end of the demonstration everyone had the chance to taste an original freshly made Italian pizza!