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How to Lunch Like an Italian (Even If You're Not) - Food52
In Italy, breakfast is usually small, just enough to jumpstart the day—and your appetite. Dinner is short and sweet and sends you to bed not swollen but satisfied. Lunch, however, takes on an almost spiritual importance. In the Italian culinary psyche, the midday meal is like the ego, the id, and the superego all rolled into one. It dictates your mood, your hunger, your schedule. In my family, lunch was so important my grandmother used to wake up before sunrise to start preparing pasta and sauce so that it was ready to eat by 1 p.m. By the time the sun swelled highest in the sky, we crowded back in the house to escape the heat and seek comfort in her plump, ricotta-filled ravioli.
Obviously, no one (not even me) is asking for that level of dedication. It’s admittedly a lot of food: a teeming plate of pasta, a secondo (meat or fish), vegetables (usually local, seasonal, and so delicious), all punctuated by freshly cut fruit and a hot, slightly sugared shot of espresso (no milk!).
In Italy, breakfast is usually small, just enough to jumpstart the day—and your appetite. Dinner is short and sweet and sends you to bed not swollen but satisfied. Lunch, however, takes on an almost spiritual importance. In the Italian culinary psyche, the midday meal is like the ego, the id, and the superego all rolled into one. It dictates your mood, your hunger, your schedule. In my family, lunch was so important my grandmother used to wake up before sunrise to start preparing pasta and sauce so that it was ready to eat by 1 p.m. By the time the sun swelled highest in the sky, we crowded back in the house to escape the heat and seek comfort in her plump, ricotta-filled ravioli.
Obviously, no one (not even me) is asking for that level of dedication. It’s admittedly a lot of food: a teeming plate of pasta, a secondo (meat or fish), vegetables (usually local, seasonal, and so delicious), all punctuated by freshly cut fruit and a hot, slightly sugared shot of espresso (no milk!).