When I’m having folks over, I always ask for dislikes/conditions. It never used to be that way. It can really throw a wrench into meal plans. Cooking for myself otoh, anything goes.
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Our prevailing tastes lean heavily on umami and intensity. Maybe it is from too many incredibly addictive fast foods plus restaurants that rely so heavily on salt. Whatever the reason, very subtle or delicate tasting dishes are just not as well known and loved as they ought to be. I think the extreme popularity of tossing vegetables in olive oil and Parmigiana and then roasting them is a great example. People treat things like steamed asparagus or blanched green beans with much less delight and gusto than they deserve. I do enjoy intense layered in flavors like anchovy in puttanesca, but I often omit it when serving it over grilled eggplant for guests, and I really don’t miss it that much. @Saregama’s mention of saffron is a great reminder of a gentle but miraculous flavor. I often toss saffron into plain basmati rice to accompany a pork tender and some stir fried snow peas (stir fried with a pat of butter and a few teaspoons of oyster sauce). Saffron is a marvelous harmonizer and acts almost like a palate cleanser. Likewise for steamed artichokes. I also find dishes like meat sauces loaded with umami notes and spices can get pretty overwhelming. I liked @damiano’s observation of the Italians’ frequent use of very few ingredients in sauces and cooking in general very insightful. As long as I am on this ramble, another plug for vegetable broth. I have even used it in BB, CAV, and onion soup to good effect. All three dishes are already overloaded with umami.
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I think it’s possible to appreciate both! Prime ingredients matter more when there are just a few of them.
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Hi Tim, thanks for your interesting reflections!
What I like about the Italian cuisine, and hence why I chose that recipe by memoriediangelina, is their absolute devotion to buying great ingredients. That way, there is less need imho to add things like anchovies and so on while cooking to create intense flavours. Combined with a good command of cooking techniques, I think one can get terrific tasting dishes without needing to resort to a lot of extra ingredients. And of course, there isn’t one ‘Italian cuisine’, not even mentioning the different American-Italian styles out there.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I also add anchovies here and there and from time to time in Italian dishes, eg to flavour the sauce of pan-roasted chicken or in a green leaf salad. But I also adore simple blanched green beans, with just a dressing of great quality ev olive oil and vinegar. Again relying on great ingredients (and cooking technique in choosing the right amount of time to blanch them).
For me, perfecting and understanding cooking technique is a great joy of regular day to day cooking. This Sunday I again made Penelope Casas’ Spanish style garlic beef stew but compared to 2 weeks ago, I kept the flame a bit lower while sauteing the beef, resulting in a less dark stew overall. It’s not necessarily better or worse, just different, and by learning what results in what, I am better able to choose the outcome of my dishes.
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As we are currently eating through restaurants/trattorias in Italy, I am not sure if this perception is really true. Many of the dishes in the restaurants are quite complex with many different components and tend to be quite flavorful and with “aggressive” flavor profiles. I think the main difference between for example cooking/dishes in Italy and what we cook/get in SF is that even though the ingredient/produce quality in California is most likely the best in the US it still lacks compared to what you get here - it is particular obvious in the meat quality but also the produce
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I thought your recent restaurant post looked extraordinarily fussy (at least for the Italian food I’m accustomed to… and prefer), but I guess the globalization of fine dining is to blame for that.
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These restaurants are far from fine dining and more neighborhood restaurants in Milano. I think there is a misconception that Italian food hasn’t evolved also over the last 20-30 years. It is still very much ingredient-driven but has become much more complex in terms of flavor combinations and ingredients (which is quite obvious when you walk through Milano and read menus and see what people eat even at small trattorias). Italian friends who also eat in Italian restaurants in Germany mentioned over the years several times that we eat “germanized” Italian food which is getting further from what is cooked in Italy (there is little incentives for Italian restaurants in Germany to change their menus towards current italian cuisine). In addition, you have recently eaten in Sicily which is in a poorer part of Italy and so according to them is changing (culinary wise) much slower than in other parts of Italy.
No doubt Italian cuisine has evolved in the last 20-30 years (as it has in Germany, or at least Berlin — I can’t speak for other parts of the country), with many “creative” takes on classic Italian dishes, e.g. vitello tonnato made with seared tuna and a veal demi glace.
It may just be my personal preference for less fussy, less globally streamlined Italian food 
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Not sure if I agree that it is globally streamlined but more the opposite as chefs care less and less what is expected to be “Italian” cuisine and really do their own interpretations of dishes and so it leads to much less similar dishes and a much larger and interesting variety. I am also not sure what is “fussy” for you on any of these dishes
This stood out to me in particular “Guinea fowl marinated in yoghurt, chickpea hummus, smoked black tea and radishes,” which could be a dish at any higher end restaurant in the entire world. It doesn’t register as Italian food to me in any way. I also thought the beef carpaccio looked like it was drowning in olive oil and smothered in whatever sauce was on top
Also, I’m confused why they felt the need to point out that the hummus is made from chickpeas — isn’t that standard?
Obviously tastes are very different for everybody but for us the guinea fowl was a great example of evolving Milano cuisine - game meat is very popular in Northern Italy and often gets tenderized with yoghurt. At the same time if you walk through Milan there is obviously so much immigration from the Middle East (based on people and restaurants) that hummus is becoming part of cuisines very popular in Milan and so it is the chef’s interpretation of what are now integral parts of Milan cuisines combined in a dish with high quality local ingredients.
And we didn’t think that the carpaccio was overpowered by other ingredients but accentuated by the sauces (similar also with the trout carpaccio) - often carpaccio without any sauces can be quite dry
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I agree, which is why the beef quality and marbling for carpaccio is so important, tho it seems most restaurants use filet (?).
Tastes are highly objective, of course, and I made this point in my initial reply. I prefer more ‘traditional’ Italian cuisine.
It really varies from region to region. In Venice I almost never had anything with more than two or three ingredients. Ditto from Rome south, even though they were very different ingredients. The northwestern corner had more complex dishes. I remember in the Savoia Jolanda in Venice, every dinner .featured a broth, simple meat like entrecote with lemon, simple fish, again with lemon, very fresh blanched vegetables, incredible mixed salads, fruit and cheese, dessert optional. In Rome and Naples there was more pasta, but it, too, was fairly simple. The Americanization of amping up pasta dishes with meat and/or cream never showed its face.
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We have reached “peak umami”, not unrelated to peak browning.
Hence miso, soy, fish sauce, and all the other “meatiness” enhancers for…meat 
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Define “ingredient”.
If you’ve had pizza in Rome, that crust itself probably had at least 3 (water, yeast and flour) if not half a dozen (sugar, EVOO, and salt) “ingredients.” Then you throw in the toppings. That sauce itself probably has at least 3 or four ingredients, if not more.
Good points. In Venice it usually, not always, was truly that few ingredients, broth being the main exception. Unless you are making your pasta from scratch, I would typically think of dried pasta as a single ingredient. I typically would not think of seasoning as separate ingredients. So a simple pasta sauce of tomatoes, olive oil or butter, and a little salt and dried oregano might qualify. I think of pasta with such a sauce as at least a very simple (and delicious) dish, even if cheese is on the table for grating.
Steamed vegetables with herbs and oil or butter…three.
Steak with oil, pepper, and lemon…three.
Poached or steamed fish with lemon and butter…three, or dress it up with diced vegetables or capers.
Crunchy little fried fish, three plus lemon.
The real point is that complex sauces were infrequent.
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Mine is almost exactly the same. I switched one thing after watching Bourdain track the Italian American red sauce. Since, I now use one lamb chop or shank, one pork chop and one piece of arm roast instead of ground beef. They just fall apart and you shred them at the end. Oops, I see soy sauce. I’ve never tried that. Maybe next time I make it.
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Did he end up at an underground facility in the middle of the US with miles of pipes extending under the entire country? My father swore that’s how restaurants got their red sauce…
LOL!! He backtracked from NYC to Italy. Great show. In the end, the conclusion was that the original was a piece of lamb, one of pork and one of beef, let it simmer forever and she’s good. I like plenty of garlic in there, some ground red pepper flakes, too.
Quote for your dad.
“I grew up eating generic, droopy, utility quality pizza—the kind you let sit on the board for a while so the cheese could congeal—before eating while walking, wide-stanced, to avoid the grease, down the street. I admit to a deep love for red sauce, the kind we all joked, was pumped through a central “Sauce Main” from one Italian restaurant and one pizzeria to another throughout New York and Northern New Jersey.” -AB
It was the real Cosa Nostra
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It is interesting to me that jokes about that very red sauce were based on the assumption that it was all the same (it sort of was), yet people discuss their favorite jarred sauces endlessly. By the time, not a very long one, that I have doctored any of those sauces with a splash of wine and some ground black pepper and a couple of pinches of crushed pepper flakes, there really is very little to set one brand apart from the rest. That is why 99.9% of the time I make my own sauce. It is not hard, does not take long, is fun, and tastes both unique and better. And I love a folded slice of New York pizza made with whole milk mozzarella that has plenty of puddles. Those puddles are delicious and worth the risk.
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