Pages of Italy — Episode 3: Italian Cuisine — A Story of Regions

Buongiorno! Episode 3 of my Pages of Italy is now live! Pull up a chair. Pour something Italian. Turn the page. Pages of Italy is a reading podcast for anyone who loves Italy — or who has always wanted to. Each episode is a slow, warm journey through Italian history, cuisine, architecture, and culture, hosted by Italian landscape watercolour painter, former columnist, and writer-illustrator Denise Wong. In this third episode, we sit down at the Italian table and discover there is no such thing as "Italian food" — only Venetian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Tuscan, a thousand regional kitchens sharing a language but not a plate. We trace the surprising Arab roots of dried pasta and Sicilian pastry, the late and reluctant arrival of the tomato, and journey from the butter and risotto of the north to the olive oil and dried pasta of the south — before asking what the slow, unhurried ritual of the Italian meal reveals about how Italy moves through time itself.