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I won't argue with the other names (although some sound quite wrong to my northern-italian ear), but I'm 100% positive that no Italian would call it "pannetone": it's "panettone", ("giant bread" or something like that).

Now we can start the big debate for deciding whether the true one is panettone with just raisins or panettone with raisins and "canditi".

Boy, do we love to talk about food... and we're generally quite picky about it although I agree with other commenters: we need to learn from other countries the pleasures of brown bread.



Just start considering NJ the 21st Italian region. Spaghetti with meatballs and chicken parm are certainly things you never see in Italy, but are considered a staple of Italian cuisine in the US.

The other thing which is weird is how a lot of these specialities are very regional: I wouldn't know a place that makes good panettone also makes good sfogliatelle or cannoli.


It's not that those foods aren't found in Italy, they're mostly just not found served like they are here. Spaghetti with meatballs exists, it's just that you'd have spaghetti usually first. Meatballs here are simplistically polpette al sugo there, and would be eaten as a meat course after the pasta.

Chicken parm is one too many ingredients slammed together. You have chicken cutlets there for sure. It would usually (but not always) be eaten more simply than with sauce and cheese on it, and not served over or next to pasta like here.

A lot of that is also more distant generation Italian-American. My parents, who are from different regions of Italy, and my grandparents, one of whom grew up in Italian Africa, didn't really make this stuff. Not to say it isn't good, I just think it's been changed to fit the US in two big ways - first, that meat (and food generally) is cheaper here, so we eat a lot more meat; and second, everything on one plate, since IMHO Americans want to eat faster than Italians would.


Not true, spaghetti con le polpettine is a thing, just not very common nowadays, and not spread throughout the country.


Polpettine are different than the Italian-American meatballs that you'll find over here. Much smaller, and one bite in with the pasta. American polpette are more like polpette Napoletane (and for good reason, that's who brought them here) and quite often even larger than that. You have to cut them to eat them, even if it's just with a fork. Too big, in my opinion, to eat with pasta. I serve them as secondo.


You are also assuming that Italian cuisine didn't evolve in the past century. Even the most famous Italian dish: pizza margherita is not 150 years old. There are very common dishes nowadays, for example carpaccio, that pare post-ww2 inventions.

Did you know that Quebecois French is closer to old French than proper French French? Can you safely say it isn't us who have evolved and Italo-Americans who have stayed the same?


No, I think that both Italian and Italian-American cooking have evolved over that time. Italian-American cooking isn't a snapshot of early century southern Italy, and neither is a given Italian region a snapshot of its past. Both have moved forward independently. Both have changed a bit in my lifetime.


Exactly, and "sfogliatelle" is another typo right next to it.

Any article about italian food is doomed to attract hordes of Italians complaining about what is written aha

(STOP THE NO CANDITI BLASPHEMY)


Panettone isn't panettone in my house without the candied fruit.

Its also vitally important that the candied fruit you use be at least 20 years old, since its sold in absurd quantities (relatively to how much you use in a recipe) and the only thing we use it in is panettone and wheat pie (which, actually, my mother is in the other room making for easter).

Now, what goes into the wheat pie... That's gonna start up an argument here.


Yes, panettone. Pannetone is not a thing, only a spelling mistake no Italian would do. No hard feelings, I keep making spelling mistakes no native English speaker would do.


Dal nord e non parli di pandoro!?


Troppo a nord, dovrei parlare di zelten :)




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