The Fake Italian: Connecting Through Italian Cuisine
Story
My uncle owns an Italian restaurant in Lynn Massachusetts, the city I grew up in and it was rare if we didn’t eat there at least once a week for many many years. Growing up, I grew up with the Italian influence from his restaurant. This environment gave me a special connection and interest to both the food and culture. I remember running around the restaurant, learning the ins & outs, and trying whatever food my sister and I could get our hands on. While I feel so close to this culture, funny enough, I have no blood relation to Italian culture, no one in my family does, including my uncle. Italian food is just special to us. From what I know, and they don’t tell me much, my uncle chose Italian cuisine because he knew some great Italian chefs, and they still work for him to this day.
Fast forward a few years, I got a job at a family-owned Italian take-out restaurant I still work at. I work both at the upfront counter and cooking in the back, usually just salads or pizzas. This connection to Italian food has stayed with me through that. As a teenager, I was able to reconnect with that part of my childhood. My sister also worked here with me, we were both able to redevelop that connection with Italian food. She was a cook, I remember watching her learn the recipes and when she started teaching them to me. I never really got to cook, the saute station was much too high pressure and scary for me at the time, however she would show me the recipes and sometimes let me flip the pans. The first dish she showed me the recipe to was the Fettuccine Alfredo. I remember trying to concentrate on the dish while also having to run up to the front counter whenever a customer came in or the phone would ring with its annoying ringtone. I watched in awe as she added the cheese and flipped the noodles, I didn’t think I could ever do it, nevermind perfect it like she had. This is why I specifically chose fettuccine alfredo out of all the great, timeless Italian dishes, because I have a personal connection to it and it reminds me of my sister and uncle.
My family ties with Italian food connect to the origin of fettuccine alfredo linking back to one Italian family in the early 1900’s.
Research
Some might believe that the origin of different foods are one of the most interesting parts of different cultures and cuisines. Fettuccine Alfredo has an interesting yet pretty basic origin story. According to John Mariani, a known and influential food critic at Forbes, “Fettuccine all’Alfredo was created in 1914 by Alfredo Di Lelio, who had four years earlier opened a restaurant in Rome, Italy, under his first name on the Via della Scrofa. At the time Alfredo’s wife had given birth to their son Armando but was left without an appetite.” Alfredo created this simple dish in order to help his wife eat after she had lost her appetite postpartum. This is why the original version of the dish is so simple with few ingredients. Here are the ingredients in the original version, “Fettuccine, butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano.” (Mariani). This dish was created to be simple and filling, it was not created to be a very flavorful popular dish, however it has come far from its origin. When created, it was only served in two different restaurants in Rome. While this dish was authentically created in Italy, it is not quite as popular over there as it is in America now.
Italian-American cuisine is very popular in America and very different from actual Italian cuisine. Fettuccine Alfredo is a perfect example of an Italian dish that is completely different in America. According to Angelo Camillo, a hospitality specialist, who wrote “An Exploratory Study of the Historical Development and Trend Analysis of Restaurant Cuisine”, “‘Fettuccine Alfredo’ (in Italy All’Alfredo), a pasta dish featured at the two rival Alfredo restaurants in Rome, Alfredo Alla Scrofa and Alfredo in Trastevere, (both claim to have created the dish among many other Alfredo restaurants in Rome,) became an Italian cuisine icon in America; however, Italians in Italy can hardly relate to it” (58). The dish that Americans know and love is a very different version of the classic Fettuccine Alfredo enjoyed in Italy, its country of origin. It is also less popular in Italy, While this dish is originally an Italian dish, throughout its history it has also made quite a mark on American-Italian culture.
The ingredients in fettuccine alfredo changed because the dish got more popular through migration and ingredient availability in different places. One of the places this dish is so popular is America, and they changed the recipe a noticeable amount. Originally, the dish included only 3 ingredients: fettuccine, butter, and cheese, like mentioned above. This is still the Italian version today. When the dish got popular in America, there was one new main ingredient added and many different versions of the dish created. The main ingredient added to the dish was heavy cream in order to thicken the sauce because America had different access to different ingredients for the meal. Also, in America, a lot of people will add things to the dish such as spices, broccoli/vegetables, meat/chicken, etc.
Overall, the origin and recipe for fettuccine alfredo has changed quite a bit and it has evolved a great amount.
Creating the Dish
1 box of fettuccine pasta
1 cup of butter
¾ pint of heavy cream
Salt and pepper
1 Dash of garlic pepper
¾ cup of grated romano cheese
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
I decided to choose this recipe because it seemed like the best way to include the original method and the more modern/Americanized method into one recipe. The original recipe was very simple, pasta, butter, and cheese. Modern recreations of the recipe often include more spices and cream. I felt like this recipe was good in between because it didn’t add to many more ingredients than the original recipe but it also included aspects from the American/modern version because the American version is a much more popular version of the dish. Also, personally I prefer the sauce with cream and spices, without it the dish would be quite plain. Another reason for my recipe choice was because I figured my friends, who I made the dish for, would appreciate this version of the dish. One of my goals here was to just generally learn how to cook this dish because it is one that I enjoy at restaurants but have never been able to enjoy at home because my mom did not cook it. With this goal in mind, it helped me choose this specific recipe because it was simple enough for a beginner but it also had promise for turning out delicious.
I decided to make this meal at school, in my dorm, to give my friends a nice home cooked meal. I cooked alone, however it was nice to have my friends there for support. Making the dish was not too complicated. Personally, the most frustrating part was the pasta. I can never tell when the pasta is supposed to be finished and I did not want to mess it up when I was feeding it to my friends. This was also my first time making fettuccine pasta and it was hard in the small pots my roommate and I have. The recipe was generally pretty simple to follow, I did not get messed up when making it and ruin the dish (thankfully). Unfortunately, I did make a bit of a mess. It’s very easy to get sauce all over the place when making it from scratch, however this is an easy fix. I really enjoyed the meal, I thought it was better than any store bought alfredo sauce I have tried, so I will definitely be making it more for myself in the future. My friends enjoyed the meal as well. One of my friends, Ruby, said that it was a really good dish. For the most part, my friends agreed that it was good and ate the meal. Overall, this process was pretty simple, fun, and successful. I wish that I would have been able to share the dish with my sister and Uncle to hear their thoughts on my take on the classic Italian dish.
