KNOWING OUR FOOD CULTURE

Insalata caprese (literally, the salad from Capri) was created in the 1950s at the Trattoria da Vincenzo in Capri, for regulars out for a light lunch.

Carpaccio (Italian pronunciation: [karˈpattʃo])  is a dish of raw meat or fish. The dish was invented and popularised by Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry's Bar in Venice. It was proposed with this name for the first time in Venice in 1950, in occasion of an exhibition dedicated to Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio (1465 – 1525/1526) well known for the characteristic red and white tones of his work. 

Gorgonzola (Italian pronunciation: [ɡorɡonˈdzɔːla]) is a veined Italian blue cheese, made from unskimmed cow's milk. To the whole cow's milk is added a bacteria  along with spores of the mold Penicillium glaucum. Gorgonzola has been produced for centuries in Gorgonzola, Milan; today, it is mainly produced in the northern Italian regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. Even the making process is very similar to the blue cheese, the main differences are in the taste (Gorgonzola is more sweet  “dolce” and not very salty), in the odor ( which is less persistent and pungent) and in the texture (Gorgonzola is more creamy and soft).

Linguine  are Spaghetti-length, flat noodles about 1/8 inch wide. The word means “little tongues”. 

Carbonara is an Italian traditional recipe from Rome. The origin of the name is still unclear. Two are the main plausible options: since the name is derived from carbonaro (the Italian word for charcoal burner), some believe the dish was first made as a meal for Italian charcoal workers. Others think instead, that the dish was created as a tribute to the Carbonari ("charcoalmen"), a secret society prominent in the early, repressed stages of Italian unification.

Bolognese, known in Italian as ragù alla bolognese, is a meat-based sauce originating from Bologna, Italy. The earliest documented Bolognese recipe comes from late 18th century in Imola, near Bologna. The first published recipe for a meat sauce for pasta that is specifically described as being "bolognese" appeared in the famous Pellegrino Artusi's cookbook of 1891.

Genovese sauce is an Italian traditional recipe from Naples. The origin of the name is still unknown, the two most popular theories say that in the fifteenth century, in the Aragonese period, in the area of the port of Naples, there were some taverns kept by Genoese cooks who used to cook the meat for hours with tons of onions, so as to obtain a sauce for seasoning pasta; the other theory says that in February 1495, in the ranks of the French army which occupied Naples, there were some Swiss mercenaries. Onion is a widely used ingredient in Swiss cuisine and those soldiers could have passed  the knowledge of a recipe originally from Geneva (Swiss). Hence, very easily the "sauce a la Genève" could easily become "Genovese" since in Neapolitan dialect we say  “ ‘a genuves."