Never Cooked Italian?
What You'll Need

Beginning in the kitchen, assuming you have pots and pans and a range, you probably have everything you need. The only specifically Italian things that come to mind are a pasta pot, which is a large (4 gallon, or 16 liter) pot for boiling pasta (it's also excellent for making soup), a colander, and a mezzaluna, a crescent-shaped knife with a handle on either end that makes mincing much easier. The mezzaluna is quick, and quicker to clean up after than a blender, and you'll wonder how you ever got along without one. It's also more precise, allowing you to chop just as fine as you want and no more. Finally, wooden spoons, which do not get hot and thus allow you to stir things without worrying about burning your fingers.

Moving to the table, you'll want two sets of glasses, one slightly larger, for water, and one smaller, for wine. This if you want to do things in style, and if you want to go all out you'll want specific glasses for specific types of wine. However, in most homes you'll just get one glass and fill it with wine, water, or a mixture if that's what you prefer. Silverware doesn't reserve any surprises, but plates do. An Italian dinner service consists of a piatto piano, a flat plate about 9 inches (23 cm) in diameter, and a piatto fondo, a 1 1/2-inch deep bowl of the same diameter. As you might expect, the first course goes into the piatto fondo (about a cup or perhaps slightly more), while the main course and vegetable go on the piatto piano. There may be a salad plate, though there may not. There won't be a bread plate, because Italians generally do not butter their bread. In a restaurant you'll get a basket of sliced bread, grissini, or rolls, whereas in a home the bread will go directly onto the tablecloth.

We now come to the heart of the matter: What do you need to cook an Italian meal? Food, obviously. You will want to buy meats, vegetables and other fresh ingredients in your market, selecting what's in season and looks good -- hothouse vegetables may look nice but they rarely have much taste, while things that look spoiled usually are. In terms of meats and fish, in light of the dioxin and mad cow scandals that have swept Europe over the past few years, it would likely be a good idea to consider meat and fish that are raised organically, using natural feeds (no animal-based meal for herbivores), and without recourse to hormones or drugs.

This takes care of the day-to-day shopping but ignores the long term things you can stock up on.

Poking around in my kitchen, I have found:

In Cupboards	In the Fridge
Extravirgin olive oil for salads and drizzling over hearty vegetable soups	Garlic -- useful though not overused in most of Italy
Cheap olive oil for cooking	Red onions -- they're not as bitter as the white ones can be
Corn oil for frying	Fresh parsley -- this is the one herb I associate with Italian cooking
Wine -- red and white	Celery -- minced, with onion, carrot and parsley (small amounts of each), this is considered an herb and is the basis for many central and north Italian dishes.
Tiny bits of pasta for broth	Carrots
Small elbows pasta (1/4 inch long) for thick vegetable soups	A wedge of Parmigiano for grating or eating with a pear
Short pasta such as penne, for thick sauces	Lemons
Flat pasta such as tagliatelle (fettuccine) or farfalle for cream sauces	Unsalted butter
Lasagne	Store-bought gnocchi for when we're rushed
Spaghettini for liquid sauces (e.g. aglio e olio or clam sauce)	Eggs
Rice: Arborio and Vialone Nano for risotti, basmati because it smells nice and is delightful with butter and grated cheese	Milk
Corn meal, fairly fine grind -- for polenta	Salted capers -- they don't have to be kept cold but we do
Flour -- all purpose (grade 00) for pasta and cakes	Anchovies -- an open jar
Sugar	Pecorino toscano -- sheep's milk cheese, for dessert
Marine salt (similar in flavor to kosher salt. Fine for use at table and coarse for salting pasta water	Pecorino romano -- a mild version, for grating
Bread crumbs	Ricotta salata -- salted ricotta, necessary for some pasta sauces (e.g. orecchiette ai broccoli).
Dried beans -- for soups, fagioli all'uccelletto, tuna with beans and more. We have both cannellini and borlotti (use cranberry beans for the latter if you're in the US). We also have green lentils	Mozzarella -- perfect with tomatoes and basil in summer, and nice to have in winter
Dried porcini -- excellent for risotto and handy for flavoring stews	Tomato paste (an open tube) handy for thickening sauces, or adding a touch of tomato flavor
Canned tomatoes and a bottle of tomato puree (handy for making sauces, especially the latter)	Bullion cubes (an acceptable broth substitute that can be used instead of salt too)
Nutmeg pods and a small grater -- much more flavorful than preground	Fresh rosemary and sage (we don't care much for dried)
Cinnamon sticks -- useful in some desserts	A chunk of unsoaked baccalà
Dried red peppers	Red & green peppercorns packed in vinegar (nice in sauces, especially for steak)
Black peppercorns & grinder	Mayonnaise (real) -- good in some sauces, and with boiled meats of fish.
Ground espresso coffee (bought from a roaster around the corner, 1/4 pound at a time)	Plain brined black olives from the deli counter.
Walnuts	White wine
Almonds	Lambrusco (it's nice chilled)
Pinoli	Asti and Brachetto, sweet sparkling wines to go with creamy desserts
Chestnut flour, when it's in season	Dry Champagne that's been there for a while
Sottoli -- vegetables packed in oil, as an antipasto
Mix for insalata di riso (rice salad; in summer) -- for when we're rushed
Vanilla
Chemical yeast in 15 gram (2/3 ounce) packets -- the Italian equivalent of baking powder
Dried herbs and spices -- an assortment, including oregano, nipitella (a type of thyme), coriander (whole), cumin, curry powder, and juniper berries
Farro, an ancient grain, for soups & salads

And on the windowsill, in summer, a basil plant.

Wondering what to do with all this stuff? Elisabetta (my wife) buys what catches her eye, opens cupboards and fridge, and improvises. Things are never quite the same from one time to the next, and we occasionally wish she had written down what she did. I tend to follow cookbooks the first time around and go from memory from about the third, unless it's a cake.

You'll find hundreds of recipes suitable for all occasions and climatic conditions, on site.

If you'd like to know more about Italian food in general, wines, customs, and so on, I frequently touch on these things in my newsletter.

Got more sites / recipes to suggest? Post on the Forum!

Buon Appetito!
Kyle Phillips

Backtracking: How to organize an Italian meal.
Photo mine.

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