Food habits per region

Abruzzo

Abruzzese’s flavor their dishes with hot chili pepper, aromatic saffron, fruity olive oil. Nothing is as typical as maccheroni alla chitarra ("guitar pasta"): sheets of egg dough are cut using a flat rolling pin on a wooden box with strings (hence the name "guitar"). Crêpes (called scrippelle) are rolled around savory fillings, dropped into broths, or layered with cheese, vegetables, and meat before baking. Polenta is usually enjoyed with a spicy sausage ragù or hearty meat sauce. In port cities, just-caught fish is marinated in a vinegary brine. In the mountains, sheepherding remains a common way to make a living, so lamb, kid, sheep, and mountain goat are mainstays of the diet; wine, garlic, olive oil, and rosemary are favorite flavorings, especially when the source of heat is a lively wood fire. Many families still raise their own pigs, and free-roaming pigs yield flavorful, lean meat and tasty salumi (cured meats). Pastries tend to be unsophisticated: olive oil is often used instead of butter, nuts or dried fruit provide bulk and flavor, and sheep's milk ricotta, a favorite in central and southern Italy, shows up in fritters and sweet cakes.

Basilicata

Basilicata's cuisine is laced with various chilies--some spicy, and some sweet. Basilicata’s women begin the day with kneading and rolling out pasta dough--some made of soft wheat flour and egg, some made only of semolina flour and water, and yet another with a combination of flours called miskiglio. Another typical pasta in Basilicata is made by rolling thin logs of dough around an iron rod, creating thick, hollow spaghetti that must be shaped one at a time. Poor pasta: Back to the days when wheat flour was scarce in Basilicata,They prepared a special pasta using fava bean, barley, chickpea, and semolina flours. The shape is similar to teardrops or slivered almonds.

Calabria

Greek, Arab, and Albanian influences have shaped the Calabrese kitchen: characteristic dishes are flavoured with chili pepper, sweet-and-sour notes mingle in savory preparations, and desserts are often deep-fried and drenched in honey.

Campania

Best known for its pizza, Campania's cuisine relies on vegetables and herbs, salty capers, dried pasta, and fresh farmhouse cheeses (water buffalo's Mozzarella). Their pasta is among the best and the most varied in all of Italy.

On the Amalfi Coast you can get an unique pasta called Scialatielli, prepared with flour, eggs, milk, grated Parmigiano, and parsley, shaped into stout strands, and tossed with seafood and flavorful cherry tomatoes. Fertile volcanic soil near Mount Vesuvius and a thriving fishing industry combine to make Campania's kitchen one of the luckiest, and most varied, in Italy. Seafood dishes are bright and vibrantly flavored, a true ode to the sea, while pastries bespeak an Arab and Greek influence and often feature honey, nuts, and spices.

Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna is home to many of the country's most renowned foods: Prosciutto di Parma, Mortadella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and balsamic vinegar to name a few. Emilia-Romagna is the birthplace of that most delectable of vinegars: aceto balsamico, or balsamic vinegar.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Slavic, Austrian, and Hungarian influences make the cuisine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia uniquely. The city's cabbage soups and pastries are remains of years under Austro-Hungarian rule. Particular to the cooking of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is a pungent fermented turnip preparation known as brovada, served alongside spiced pork dishes.

Lazio (Latium)

This region is home to Rome, the capital of Italy. In Latium, lamb and pork are standard fare, and sheep's milk cheese is produced in small dairies and large cooperatives. Simple pastas made of flour and water and a wealth of vegetables.

Liguria

The cooking of Liguria uses the most of land and sea. Its hills offer a lot of meaty porcini mushrooms and pine nuts, while the sea provides anchovies.These three ingredients are combined with other staples, most notably the region's delicate olive oil, to create Liguria's favorite dishes: braised salt cod, stewed rabbit, and pasta sauces. Focaccia, is the region's most symbolic bread, usually baked plain but sometimes stuffed or topped with every ingredient imaginable.

Lombardy

Rice and corn thrive in the northern climate, resulting in a lot of different risottos and polentas. Veal, beef, butter, and cow's milk cheeses are eaten at nearly every meal, and sweetwater fish out of one of Lombardy’s lakes makes the diet complete.

Marches

Most Italians know and love the stuffed olives from the Marchigiano town of Ascoli Piceno, fried until golden in a crispy robe of egg and bread crumbs, but outsiders have yet to discover the wealth of classic recipes from this region. Whether you are partial to thick, chunky seafood soups or prefer grilled meats imbued with wood smoke and aromatic herbs, the cuisine of the Marches deserves to be explored. Sheep's milk cheeses aged in caves for months lend a unique flavor to favorite dishes, and griddle-cooked flatbreads accompany most meals in this little-known Italian region.

Molise

Chili and garlic lace nearly every dish, as does Molise's golden olive oil. Wild and cultivated herbs like fennel and rosemary flavor roasted rabbit, pig, and lamb, and seafood is often cooked into hearty soups and served atop toasted garlic-rubbed bread.

Piedmont

First-class wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, and Barbera come from hillside vineyards, partners to a cuisine that is rich and refined. Fresh pastas are stuffed with spiced forcemeats and flavoured with white truffles, rice is paired with everything from frogs' legs to Castelmagno cheese, prized cuts of meat are boiled to tender and served with great pomp during the cold winter months, and the chocolate confections are the best in the country.

Puglia

Three most important ingredients: wheat, vegetables, and olive oil. Semolina flour is used for a variety of handmade pastas. which are boiled with wild or cultivated greens, with hearty meat ragùs, or cooked into soups. Rustic breads are baked in the ovens to be eaten with the daily meals and serve as the starting point for appetizers, salads, soups, and desserts; like frisedda, a twice-baked ring-shaped bread. And almost every dish is drizzled with olive oil

Puglia is Italy's largest producer of olive oil. Fava beans, are transformed into thick soups, refreshing salads, and comforting side dishes, and rice is baked with potatoes and seafood or vegetables to make a main course called tiella (named after the pot in which it is cooked). Sea urchins are savored raw in the port city of Taranto, flavored with a squeeze of lemon.The Apulians, shepherds tend to prefer lamb, mutton, kid, and goat, which they cook simply with fragrant herbs, olive oil, and perhaps a handful of tomatoes or potatoes. When it comes to sweets, the Apulian like honey, nuts, and dried fruit in their pastries, cakes, and fritters.

Sardinia

Mysterious and isolated, Sardinia has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age. Phoenician, Greek, Arab, Spanish, and French invaders have come and gone, marking the local language, customs, and cuisine. The mountainous inland terrain is home to wild animals (boar, mountain goat, hare, and more) which are transformed into succulent pasta sauces, stews, and roasts. Lamb, the island's favorite meat, is often cooked in the company of wild fennel, and sheep's milk cheese appears at nearly every Sardinian meal.

Sicily

Its cuisine is the result of Greek, Arab, Spanish, and French influences over the centuries, with antipasti, great pasta preparations, complex rice dishes, stuffed and skewered meat and fish preparations, and honey- or almond-based sweets.

Best known for its dessert wines, Sicily has had an important oenological tradition since antiquity.The most symbolic wine is Marsala, a dry, semi-dry, or sweet fortified wine vinified mostly from Grillo, Catarratto, and Inzolia grapes in and around the town of Marsala. Sicily's two other famous dessert wines are Malvasia delle Lipari, an amber, grapey, sweet wine from the Aeolian islands, and Moscato di Pantelleria, a sweet, golden wine obtained from Zibibbo grapes. Sicily's proudest red wines are Cerasuolo di Vittoria, vinified from Frappato and Nero d'Avola. The most prized white wines are Bianco di Alcamo, dry, slightly grapey, fruity flavor; Catarratto, with a full, spicy character; Grillo, lightly citrusy, earthy, astringent, and Inzolia, fruity and intense.

Trentino-Alto Andige

The cuisine of this northernmost Italian region combines Germanic, Hungarian, and Italian touches, and includes such delicacies as beef goulasch and fruit-stuffed gnocchi with browned butter and bread crumbs. Rather than pasta or risotto, cooks in Trentino-Alto Adige prefer to prepare polentas made of cornmeal or buckwheat, or hearty soups studded with bread dumplings. Speck, the region's prized smoked ham, flavors numerous dishes, from braised cabbage in red wine to long-simmered pork stews.

Tuscany

Tuscany's food is clean, sober and simple. Dishes are build of vegetables, beans, saltless bread, and fruity olive oil, their aromatics (thyme, rosemary, and fennel) are used and never wasted. Sharp sheep's milk cheese from artisanal dairies lends saltiness and pungency to pastas, savory pies, and salads, and robust grains like farro (emmer wheat) add bulk to soups. Tuscans, are lovers of rice, they cook risotto with cuttlefish ink, with squab, or with chicken giblets, and of rice to vegetable soups. Ravioli and tortelli are the region's classic stuffed pastas, these are filled with ricotta or potatoes and pancetta, then in with butter and sage, tomato sauce, or a meat ragù. Along the coast they eat a lot of fish, scorpionfish, monkfish, mullet, and other rock fish are cooked to create a thick, tomato-laced soup called cacciucco. A special breed of cattle known as Chianina provides meat for the grill, and the wild boar that lives in the Tuscan woods is transformed into a sweet-and-sour stews and hams.

Umbria

Nicknamed "The Green Heart of Italy. It relies on pork for most of the traditional dishes. Every piece of the pig is put to use, and specialties like Guanciale (the salted and cured meat from the pig's cheek) are put into pasta sauces and pots of fava beans or peas. And the region's black truffles scent many dishes, from delicate polentas to savory cheese breads.

Val D’aosta

The cooking of Val d'Aosta, incorporates French and Swiss influences, polentas of stoneground cornmeal, cow's milk Fontina cheese used for fritters, risottos, and soups, and the local bread is made of cold-hardy northern grains like rye or buckwheat, Beef is the staple meat, but the mountains also offer venison, mountain goat.

Veneto

Soups and risottos studded with seafood; a selection of cured meats and aged cheeses; and the mountain villages specialize in hearty foods like braised beef, savoured with a bracing glass of the region's famous Amarone wine.

Reference:

http://www.rusticocooking.com/regions.htm