#4 Principessa in her kitchen (English)

A few days ago, I almost burned down our house, accidentally of course. An attempt to prepare a home-made zuppa di zucchine (courgette soup) caused the pan catching fire, burned zucchine, a kitchen full of smoke and a horrible stench throughout the whole apartment that was still lingering days after. Mi scusa Alessandro… (my flat mate). 

“No, but in Italy they really don’t put cream in a carbonara”, says your neighbour who now ‘fully understands’ the Italian cuisine and all its traditions after her three-day cooking holiday to Tuscany

Although I’ve been in Italy for over a month already, the country with undoubtedly the most famous cuisine in the world, I still haven’t written anything about my culinary experiences so far. I could effortlessly elaborate in more than a thousand words on the delicious carbonara I simply never get enough of or, my guilty pleasure, the tramezzino (the Italian version of a ham and cheese toast you buy in every single bar for just one euro fifty and you usually eat on the go). However, I would probably bother you with cheesy clichés and culinary tips you have heard just one time too often thanks to all those cooking shows on TV and the many hobby chefs in your circle of friends (“No, but in Italy they really don’t put cream in a carbonara”, says your neighbour who now ‘fully understands’ the Italian cuisine and all its traditions after her three-day cooking holiday to Tuscany where she totally felt for Giorgio the chef with his dark curly hair). Plus, the truth is that I cook most of my meals at home, contrary to this past summer in Naples in which I haven’t come near to a stove or oven for the full two months. Forty degrees, no decent ventilation and the best pizza in the world on every street corner was a no brainer to me. In Rome however, I do cook and doing so I have discovered other – unexpected – things in my Italian kitchen.  

So when I recently bought fresh ravioli stuffed with pumpkin, I literally couldn’t wait to try it. But it turned out to be such a deception!

Many of the products you’ll find here in Italy taste very different compared to the same products back home. And for most of these products applies: they better do! (think about the tomatoes, prosciutto, olive oil, wine, mozzarella di bufala: the list is endless). But apparently, even in Italy you can make wrong food choices because when my friend came by the other day bringing two pizza’s (so much for his confidence in my cooking skills) all my three different olive oils were inspected and then heavily disapproved: “Che olio di merda!” (literally: what a shitty oil!). Yet, I should probably mention that he has been elected best olive oil sommelier (a very prestigious yearly competition in Italy) of 2019… Despite the conflicting opinions within the land of la dolce vita, all the delicacies here are one of the main reasons why millions of foreign tourists travel to Italy every year again. Therefore, it was very unexpected that I had to conclude that some of my meals here turned out to be a lot less tasty compared to back home, and with one product in particular: zucca. My beloved pumpkin! One of my favourite dishes in The Netherlands is, without any doubt, pumpkin soup and since every hipster eatery has started serving it over the past years, I got to try many. Also in Italy pumpkin is a popular and widely used product, think about the – okay, here’s a little culinary tip then – fiori di zucca, a Roman specialty you definitely have to try. So when I recently bought fresh ravioli stuffed with pumpkin, I literally couldn’t wait to try it. But it turned out to be such a deception! The pumpkin was so extremely sweet with some strange taste to it I just couldn’t define. Until it hit me. It tasted just like this sweet almond paste we use in traditional pastries for the holiday season back home. I actually went outside in the rain onto the balcony to check the packaging however it stated there would be no other major ingredients than pumpkin. Probably it was supposed to taste like this but I just really don’t like very sweet things in my savoury meal (therefore I’ve signed many petitions pleading for the registration of putting pineapple on a pizza as an official crime, something the whole nation is horrified about here and is considered to be the pinnacle of the americanisation of the Italian culture). Only a few days later, I decided to give it another try and to cook a simple but delicious pasta with pumpkin, pepper and parmesan. Once more, I couldn’t wait to attack my plate but again it left me completely disillusioned. This time, the pumpkin was sour, horribly sour with a nasty structure. However, as I’m strongly against throwing away food I finished my plate anyway, though reluctantly. This whole pumpkin adventure did give me a huge revelation because not in a million years I would have expected that even I, the greatest lover of the Italian cuisine, could long back to Dutch plate. Ah well, some things are just different here from what they are back home.

So the fact I nearly put the house on fire last week was definitely caused by things being so different here in Italy, including how to handle a – very normal – stove. That it potentially could have something to do with the fact I completely lost myself in finding a nice hotel in Naples for my upcoming trip and forgot the whole world around me including the zucchine on the stove I couldn’t possibly imagine.