cuisine of northern italy

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To understand the cuisine of Northern Italy we have to go back in history. With the defeat of the Roman armies, the barbarians were able to swarm through the Italian territory almost without resistance. The cities were sacked, and the survivors took refuge in the most remote areas of the countryside.

Inhabitants of northern Italy fleeing the Lombard invasion around 570 A.D. found shelter on the islands along the delta of the Po River. There the city of Venice was founded, protected by the lagoons of the north Adriatic Sea. After 1000 A.D., with the end of the barbaric invasions, the people of Italy began returning to the cities. A widespread increase in population occurred, boosting agricultural production, artisan manufacture, commerce in fairs and markets, and creating important new harbors such as Venice and Genoa.

A new political entity was being created: the Italian Comuni (The City States). The towns of northern and central Italy organized themselves into autonomous city republics, while the empire and the church had too little power to oppose them.

The fortune of Italian cities remained unchanged until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire and the discovery of America. By then the interest of world commerce had moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. While in France, England, Germany, and Spain large nations were being created, Italy remained subdivided into many small political and territorial entities. The strategic importance of Italy diminished: The Italian cities could not compete with the larger states and soon became lands of conquest for foreign powers, which would maintain control in different parts of Italy until the unification in 1862.

Banquet in the Giudecca, Venice 1755.

Later in time, most of the towns coalesced into larger signorie (princedoms) that would acquire enormous power and wealth. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Venice, Verona, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, and Milan all became extremely rich through the commerce with the Islamic world as well as the trade between the Italian territories and northern Europe.

The wealth of the Italian signori of the Renaissance is legendary. Many books written during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell about cooking in the courts of the nobility. Among the most famous are Opera […], by Bartolomeo Scappi (Venice, 1570), who was the cook for Pope Pius V in Rome; Banchetti […], by Cristoforo Messibugo (Ferrara, 1549), the cook for the Duke of Este. All of them have hundreds of recipes and concentrate on the magnificence of the banquets.

In spite of the long coastline, the cuisine of the north has fewer fish dishes than one would expect. The Mediterranean Sea is generally not as abundant in fish as the Atlantic. In addition, fish was difficult to deliver and never reached the regions of the interior, where fresh water or lake fishes are moderately present.

Even under foreign influence, the Italian cities never lost their identity. The mark left by the latest foreign occupations was either limited or fully integrated into the local culinary traditions. At the same time, many unique food ingredients and original cooking techniques were developed and preserved in northern Italy, and they remain very popular all over the world today. A few examples: red radicchio from Treviso, balsamic vinegar from Modena, Parmigiano Reggiano from the Emilia region, prosciutto from Friuli, pesto from Liguria, tortellini from Bologna, and the list goes on and on.

Every region developed particular qualities depending on the history and geographical location. The lands along the alpine arch all have the characteristic of extending in part over the mountains, and in part in the Po valley. Two main staples dominate in these areas: in the plain, rice in the form of risotto; and everywhere, maize in the form of polenta.

Polenta

Mortadella

Risotto

In contrast, the cuisine of Venice is rich with mollusks, crustaceans, sardines, and other fishes present in the lagoon. The Liguria region is famous for its cioppino, a fish stew that was transplanted to San Francisco by Genoese fishermen at the beginning of the last century. In this environment, baccala’ (salt cod) or stockfish (dried cod), which are always available, became two of the main components of the local cuisine, and many sophisticated recipes in the Veneto region include one of them as an ingredient.

A quite different condition is present in the Emilia and Romagna areas, south of the Po River. The fertility of the land, the farming and abundance of wheat, as well as the pork breeding, made Bologna the culinary capital of Italy. Nicknamed La Grassa (the fat), this city is celebrated for its many fresh-pasta dishes. These dishes are present with profusion all over northern Italy, but in Bologna they are particularly sophisticated and refined.