EUC Organizes Italian Cooking Class, Spotlights Region of Lazio

On May 2, EUC Undergraduate Research Assistant Noam Zipris organized an Italian cooking class, co-sponsored by the Department of French & Italian and the Italian Club. Wish you were there? So do we! Read on to learn more about the dishes that the class featured, in Noam's words:

"An important piece of Italian culture is food, and if you go to Italy—in places besides in the big cities and touristy areas—you will find that there are strict rules to food and many regional specialties –there are 20 Italian regions, all with their own specialties—beyond what we think of us standard Italian food. For example, cannoli—which is actually the plural form for cannolo, though they are always so good that you always want more than one—is a sweet pastry from the southernmost part of Italy, in Sicily. On the other hand, dishes like risotto are more commonly found in northern Italy like in the region of Lombardy. In this class, we made dishes that are most found in Lazio, which is the region in which Rome can be found—central Italy. 

The two main dishes that we created were cacio e pepe and risotto al telefono. Cacio e pepe literally means cheese and pepper, which is exactly what the dish consists of. Risotto al telefono, or “risotto of the telephone,” is a risotto dish in a tomato sauce that has pieces of mozzarella that melt and stretch so that the strands look like telephone wires, hence the name. Regarding the side dishes created, the first was boiled artichokes—artichokes in Italian is the word carciofi, which I think is way more fun to say than “artichokes." Artichokes, or carciofi alla romana, are a famous dish from the city of Rome. 

Tiramisu and garlic bread were our two outliers. Tiramisu has been claimed by many regions in Italy, though the strongest claim comes from the city of Treviso which is in the Region of Veneto. Tiramisu is made up of three Italian words—tira/mi/su, which means pick me up. On the other hand, garlic bread is not actually from Italy, but rather it is an Italian-American dish, though it probably originated as an off shoot of Bruschetta which is an Italian dish consisting of toasted bread, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar."

Do you want the EU Center to organize more cooking classes in the future? Have an idea for a culinary tradition to spotlight? Let us know at eucenter@illinois.edu!