English spaghetti

It's true, we have always had to adapt dishes to what we can grow here and to our climate. Many years ago I used to eat spag bol in Greece, nothing like the italian version and hardly any tomato, but really lovely lamb mince flavoured by all the rosemary and thyme and oregano that the local sheep ate. In Germany I was given spag bol with added potato. In fact it was more like mince casserole on spaghetti. None of us are wrong, just different.

Marry into an Italian family and you don't have much choice about how you cook things. It's our way or the wrong way with most things. Having said that, a lot of Italian cooking is just so much easier. I've had friends ask me what they can put on their pasta who are very put out when I say just toss it with a bit of oil and lemon and throw in a bit of parmigiano. They want something with a dozen ingredients which will take two hours to cook.

I was once told there were as many recipes for Spaghetti Bolognaise as their were families in Bologna, and probably more.

Look at all the seasonal discussion in Britain about how to roast potatoes. Every chef has his/her own way of doing it. Compare Mrs Beeton's recipes for 'classic' British dishes with modern recipes. Recipes are not cut in stone they evolve and develop in their country of origin, with the diaspora of its inhabitants and in their adoption by people with a different culinary background.

When I had more energy and more people to cook for, I used to make my own pasta for tagliatelle, lasagne and cannelloni. Also the sauces.
The same with my curries, grinding and roasting and mixing spice mixtures from scratch.
Now:- I really can't be bothered. Don't enjoy my food on the whole!
The food I had the rosehip in Edinburgh was such a pleasant change. Haven't enjoyed a meal so much for ages!

Of course Brits eat pasta dishes as a main course. Italians eat them as a primo and then have a meat, poultry or fish segundo. Both first and second courses have equal importance so it follows that the pasta dish, including the sauce, is rather smaller than the helpings served in the UK.

I have eaten pasta dishes all over the world that taste much the same but have to say that Pizza in Italy is Just so very special and different. Especially in Naples....oh yumityyumyum! I don't know why they cannot grow pasta wheat in the uk. I'd buy it. Surely it must be profitable...everyone eats pasta.

Where wheat varieties will grow depends on soil, temperatures and the length of the growing season.

Durum wheat is adapted to the long hot days and relative lack of rain found in Italy. I think Durum wheat grown in this country does not make a good quality pasta as, because the growing conditions are not ideal, is not of a good enough and consistent enough quality.

The best pizza I've had was in Ercolano, just tomato and mozzarella - and not much of either, but thin and crispy and tasted divine!

Like laidback the best pizza I had was in Naples. Prepared in the restaurant and cooked in the pizza oven shared by a few bakers just round the corner - strange to see my pizza arriving from that direction and handed to the waiter! Just tomato, mozzarella and some basil, thin crust, sitting under an umbrella in blazing sunshine - gorgeous.

I'm sorry to say that one of the least appetizing pizzas I have ever tasted was in Venice. Soggy and floppy.

annodomini Not surprising – pizza is really a southern dish, as is pasta. Stick to risotti in Venice.

With a severe cheese allergy, I always avoid bought pizzas here, preferring my own home made, guaranteed cheese free ones. However, in Italy, where Cheese allergy is much commoner than in GB, I had no trouble ordering delicious pizza, topped with a variety of ingredients and usually sprinkled with grated carrot. On holiday in Pula, I discovered Istrian Pizza - again no cheese but with an egg popped on top for the last couple of minutes of cooking - Yummy.

I sometimes make my own 'breakfast/brunch' version, with beans in tomato sauce, mushrooms, tomato and bacon. I leave a clear space in the middle for the lightly cooked egg. Much loved by the DGC - I leave out the bacon for our vegetarian.

Venice is really not the place for pizza anno Actually there is some really bad food of all kinds in Venice if you're not careful. Oddly enough the hotel we go to up in the lakes produces some very nice pizzas. They charge 1 euro to deliver, but I haven't been able to persuade them to add England to their delivery route!

We found out the hard way about Venetian cuisine. We had much more appetizing (and far cheaper) meals in Verona, including the best risotto I've ever had, in a small back-street student café. Oh and great gnocchi in the city centre.

Venice! ( keep still my heart) liver Venetian style, polento, risotto veneziana!
Seafood fresh from the lagoon.( don't eat in the posh restaurants, go to where the locals eat)
Pizza is south of Naples.
Venice and the north are rice and polenta eating, the South is pasta pizza etc

There used to be a big pasta factory in Hertfordshire somewhere I don't know if they used British wheat though.

I think to make decent pasta you really do need the "right sort" of flour. factors like gluten content can vary greatly which makes a big difference to a finished product, like the difference between "strong" bread flour and ordinary flour.

Different varieties of plants etc, do tend to respond to different climatic conditions, although modern plant breeding techniques have helped solve that.
An example is how different varieties of potatoes have very different cooking and useage qualities.

and the same potato variety can taste and have cooking attributes that vary depending on weather and type of soil. My garden will not produce really waxy potatoes no matter what variety I use.

I live in South West Germany where home made pasta is the national dish, it is softer to eat than spaghetti and served with roast meat, it is made from normal flour grown here. German flour is also heavier than British.
People forget that pasta is only typical of some parts of Italy. In Northern italy Milan etc they have a meat and two veg cuisine

I like the Italian Spaghetti but we eat ours without sauce, apart from Bolognese sauce, but mostly just with cheese and olive oil or pesto, and it is certainly not expensive. Students live on it.

I used some English 00 flour to make tagliatelle for lunch. No clue as to what wheat it was ground from though. The pasta was nice though, served with an Alfredo sauce.