Keep it simple, stupid.
Once on a food tour in Rome, our food guide told us that she was a chef in training at a local culinary school (and she was stupid pretty and spoke 8 languages so I hated her). Her father was a diplomat (is that seriously a real job not in Disney movies?) and had traveled all over the world with her as a child (I’ve had about enough). She had always known she wanted to be a chef, and she came back to Italy as an adult to work her way up from the bottom of a kitchen. #ratatouille. I asked her, as a child who got to experience almost every food culture in the world, why she chose Italian food as her professional specialty, and all she said was, “Because Italians always try to cook with the fewest possible ingredients.” She was very passionate about this mentality, because to her it meant that the quality of the ingredients used in a dish mattered more in Italy than in any other culture.
Any ingredient is a main ingredient. “Salt or pepper,” she said, “count as a main ingredient.” And when used, they should be distinct enough that you should notice if they weren’t used at all. Something as simple as pepper could ruin a dish if it was omitted, for example. Which was a downer for me because I hate pepper tbh. She said both the pleasure and challenge of Italian cooking was simply the hunt for the best ingredients: When there is so few in a recipe, everything matters.
The Italian government cares profoundly about the quality of their food (does the American government care about anything?). For example, to get that famous mozzarella cheese from Italian buffalos, the buffalos are literally pampered. And I mean, get a full-body massage once or twice a day, nails and hair did, pampered. They believe happy buffalos make better milk. Can you imagine if the American government thought that happy college students made happy adults? Man.
Bottom line, quality over quantity. Cooking truly Italian by following a very short list of ingredients is much harder than you think. By default, this makes you care more about where your ingredients are coming from, and you will big time notice a difference in flavor.
Since our trip to Rome, I have invested heavily in cooking my way through an old, classic Italian cookbook. I struggle because there’s no shiny or colorful pictures and I am a simpleton, but I have made some of the best meals I have ever had by doing this.
Italians take this mentality into their everyday life: What little do you need to make the best from what you have? Do I have to make any analogies about this and shit like unhealthy romantic relationships? No? Ok.
An authentic carbonara has less than 10 ingredients: pasta, pepper, cheese, bacon/pancetta, garlic, olive oil, white wine (hell yes), eggs, and parsley. You risk salmonella poisoning, sure, but nothing about that recipe is complicated. If you want to go somewhere and just strip down to the bare bones of what is holy in this world (an old Italian grandma’s carbonara), you need to start in Italy.