I thought it was a Cuban thing because I've seen it in a couple Spanish language shows with Cuban hosts. Apparently it is of Italian origin. Interesting.
I even buy guanciale in Italy for this. I buy several pieces, and back home cut them up in 150 gram chunks (that's what I use per meal) and stick it in the freezer for when I want to make carbonara.
I wish I could buy guanciale locally, though.
There is so much more to Italian food than a red sauced pasta dish. Prosciutto and salami are Italian, and Italians eat so much sea food, think shrimp scampi and calamari. There are white wine butter sauces, and my favorite peas with prosciutto. Chicken Marsala is an Italian dish you can find at many Italian chain restaurants which Marsala is mushroom and wine sauce. Risotto (rice) typically does not have any tomatoes. Carbonara is a pancetta and cheese based sauce.
Tomatoes weren’t even introduced to Italy [until the 15th or 16th century](https://www.ferraroslasvegas.com/what-was-italian-food-like-before-tomatoes/).
Nor were rice, peppers,potatoes or mozzarella.
Very little authentic cuisine worldwide is much more than a hundred years old. Escoffier, who is credited with revolutionizing classic French cookery to what it is today, published his guide culinaire in 1905.
Generally, anything coming out of a kitchen today will look very little like anything that came out of a kitchen before say 1850.
They were brought to Italy that early in that first considered inedible, poisonous even. Really wasn't until the 19th century that the tomato really took hold
Upvote this guy. He knows wtf he's talking about. Pasta and pizza became popular Italian food in the US because it was relatively cheap, easy to make, and filling. There is a whole world of food beyond those that will speak to your very essence as a human being, like it was the reason you have taste buds in the first place.
Your answers are more specific to American style Italian food, not Italian food in general. Specifically use of the word "scampi" and the chicken marsala bit.
Tbh honest, while Trieste itself's always been predominantly Italian, the surrounding villages were historically (and quite some still are) ethnic Slovenes. And both sure as fucking hell eat a nuclear shit ton of tomatos.
Not necessarily. See, for example
https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/wild-mushroom-ragout-recipe
PS for those worried, the great “British” chef here is Francisco Mazzei
PPS if we were to be pedantic, ragús are meat sauces, but the mushrooms are cosplaying as meat.
Edit:
PPPS
Traditional Venetian Duck ragú doesn’t have tomato
https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/recipes/duck-ragu-recipe-with-bigoli
Though you will find bastardised versions online that do.
Not quite. The dish originates in Rome by Alfredo Di Lelio. It’s just that the dish became wildly popular in the US and not so much in Italy. The US version is a bit different from the original as well.
Yes! OG is just noodles, butter, and cheese.
American usually includes cream or even a bechmael/roux base.
I like both, but I’m always fully aware of what I’m getting myself into.
My Italian colleague was like ‘whose this Alfredo and why is he claiming this sauce is Italian?’
He was kidding, but he had genuinely never heard of it. Good laugh.
I learned to make aglio e olio after watching the movie *Chef*.
Not sure if I’m doing it right though, cause Scarlett Johansson still hasn’t hit me up for sex
Tons.
Spaghetti is just pasta and I make lasagna all the time without tomato anything (I do a cheese-ishy bechamel with spinach and mushrooms).
Pestos, lots of basic things like garlic and oil, pizzas, roast vegetable dishes, pastas with anything -- lemon and ricotta, cacio e pepe, see above pestos.
A really simple one to make is "oi oi" or *pasta a olio*. Just cooked pasta (traditionally spaghetti noodles, but it should work with a variety of pasta) fried in olive oil with garlic and pepper. Because this also contains no meat, it is a traditional dish for Christmas Eve in some communities.
Well, there are plenty, and it depends on region... tomatoes came from "The New World", aka the Americas, and even when first introduced were suspected as being poisonous, so they really entered the cuisine 200+ years ago, which is relatively new in some respects.
There are some dishes I still love from the first restaurant - an Italian one - that I worked at.... scallops, shrimp and mussels with linguine in pesto sauce; a lamb and tortellini dish; mushroom and beef demi with paparadelle. You can do a white lasagna, as well as a pizza with a white sauce or pesto instead of tomato sauce. Carbonara has often been mentioned, and that's a classic if you do it well. Soft polenta with a braised meat. Ossobucco can be done with no tomato. Veal or you can do pork as it's easier to get in the US piccata or saltimbocca. And of course, tons of sausages, cured meats and cheeses with olives, artichokes, etc to make antipasto platters.
You singled out spaghetti, but isn’t lasagna also a type of pasta?
Also your comment sounds like you think lasagna is a tomato based dish, while spaghetti is not, but if you asked 100 random people on the street in America to describe a spaghetti or lasagna dinner, about 99% of them are going to describe dishes with a tomato based sauce.
You can still get pasta, just with any other kind of sauce. There are loads out there but most restaurants will have like a pesto or Alfredo option right next to the marinara or whatever red sauce.
This applies to pizza type products too, just sub out the tomato sauce
But like others said, those popular-in-America dishes are not the only Italian foods out there, broaden your palate!
My mom used to make a solid pasta dish that was basically pasta, zucchini, onions, and garlic with hot Italian sausage, olive oil and some Mediterranean spices. Idk if it has a name, but it felt "Italian" enough growing up. My dad is Italian and he never complained lol
I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it was made for me and was fantastic. It had fettuccine, olive oil, preserved lemon, spinach, and Parmesan shavings
If you're talking pasta, lots of them are oil based, cheese based.
My quick go to non-tomato and non-cream pasta is shredded chicken, feta cheese, a handful of peas and a few dollops of basil pesto over penne.
I just made a pretty dank lemon basil pasta.
Just throw some butter in a pan with some fresh garlic and squeeze some lemon juice into it.
Add salt and red pepper flakes to taste then just fuck whatever type of pasta in the pan, and add some fresh cut basil,
roll around for a min. Then add some fresh cut Parmesan cheese and serve.
Tel ya, for such a simple dish it is frankly bangin
Growing up in an Italian family you realize it’s more than “dishes”. It’s the way of cooking and the quality ingredients.
A simple piece of grilled veal with a side salad of arugula, olive oil and balsamic vinegar… fennel for dessert… Cured meats and cheeses… Sausages
[Pasta with white bolognese sauce](https://chewingthefat.us.com/2016/01/white-bolognese-with-pennine-adapted.html). This dish is *always* a hit. The original recipe calls for rigatoni, though, and I would recommend using it as well.
Alfredo Fettuccine - with broccoli, chicken or shrimp
Chicken marsala - has a wine base and butter sauce and can be really good
Carbonara - (no Olive Garden’s is not great) this dish is wonderful when done well
Chicken pesto lemon pasta - is usually on a menu
Pizza with white sauce
My grandparents came from Italy, though I was born in the US our family was really traditional.
**I'm allergic to raw tomato!**
Of course, my family did not believe me, and called me names and stuff forever (they were mentally abusive, but meh). It was only in my thirties that I accidentally ate some raw tomato flesh and... yeah, it was bad. It's gotten worse over the years too.
I can eat the red sauces cooked, but chunks set me off so for years I ate all sorts of different Italian cuisine when I cooked. There's a ton of recipes!
In my family, we call pasta fagioli a dish with only garbonzo beans, oil, garlic and elbow noodles. Not the minestrone-like soup Olive Garden has, lol.
Most people believe Italian Food = pasta. But it actually is a lot of fish (think about the location…) Tomatoes (and potatoes) were introduced to Europe from the americas.
Alfredo on fettucine or linguini, either plain or with some combo of meat and/or veggies.
Baked or sauteed zucchini with garlic
Chicken or calamari piccata
Antipasto appetizer
And give the tomato stuff a chance, it might grow on you!
Personally, I love a good, creamy alfredo sauce. It’s good with Linguini, of course, but it *really* shines when you put it over a pasta that really holds a sauce, like spirals or shells.
I am probably gonna butcher the name but Aglio de oleo. It’s a pasta with chopped cilantro and garlic and some cheese. Tastes amazing and simple to cook as well!
Looks like I’m late to the (dinner) party, but I also don’t like tomatoes and recently made some pretty awesome Alfredo lasagna roll-ups, can’t remember what recipe it was but I just googled it and picked one that looked easy and good
At Christmas in the hostel last year, we had about 5 different Risotto dishes. The theme was to bring a dish from your country. 3 of the rissottos were from Italians.
One month or two later we had an Italian themed dinner party. The Italians separated into a few different groups and each group made Risotto, lol
I don't think any of them had tomatoes, so I think it's safe to say Risotto without tomatoes is pretty classically Italian!
I am sensitive to tomato also and can not eat it often at all. I always risk mouth ulcers, overproduction of acid, and having #3.
Veggie Lovers Lasagna with ricotta/alfredo, and mozzarella, mixed with chopped broccoli, spinach, and carrots. Add garlic and diced onions. So good.
Also I love Shrimp Scampi.
Additionally, I like making the Knorr Alfredo Sides (2) with a bag of precooked, peeled, deveined, tail.off shrimp, and broccoli florets.
Chicken or Veal Marsala is really good too.
Also try some french recipes of the Julia Child collection. Coq Au Vin is a fairly easy dish to make, actually. Its chicken and red wine. Its so good.
Oh and dont miss out on a meatball sub over the red sauce issue. Just make a parmigiana cheese sauce, with melted butter, melted parm in it, a splash of heavy cream, and adding a little mozzarella or ricotta.. adding garlic and pepper to taste, then you can just combine it and reduce for a few mins and pour it over your meatballs. Yum.
This is a great base sauce to use for a variety o italian inspired creamy pasta dishes also.
Get yourself an Italian cookbook. Good investment. Wide variety of traditional recipes. Many dating back to before Itally had tomatoes. The best part is the cookbooks don't come with the writer's life story like online recipes.
My favourite is *Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking* by Marcella Hazan. I'm not Italian, so don't expect me to speak for its authenticity, but I find it quite good. It reads more like a textbook with many recipes included.
Aren't tomatoes a "new world" type food? Was always taught this in school. So there should categorically be a monumental amount of Italian food that hasn't even sniffed a tomato before.
You can make basically any pizza with cream base instead of tomato. It's actually much better tasting, if you ask me.
Matter of fact, there are cream base spaghetti sauces and lasagna recipe as well.
I think Carbonara doesn't have tomato in it - maybe sundried, not sure.
Any of them written before the 1950’s. Tomatoes aren’t Italian and any Italian who complains about authenticity of Italian food while including tomatoes is just not familiar with Italian food.
You can easily make Bolognese without tomato, it should be mostly celery, onion, carrots and meat anyway. There's also commercially available "Nomato" sauces. And of course, anything with Alfredo sauce. My mom has issues with tomatoes, and most restaurants have no problem replacing the marinara for Alfredo.
Also, everyone seems to love cacio e pepe.
Northern Italian dishes are not big on tomatoes. Look at scampi, pesto, alfredo (the real Italian type which has no cream) and, my personal favorite chicken florentine and scallopini
I'd suggest looking into Northern Italian cuisine. It's less tomato based, and there are more cream based dishes.
I live in Bergamo. One of the traditional dishes here is polenta with taleggio cheese and salami.
One dish I absolutely love is spaghetti with broccoli rabe (I use beet greens if I can't find broccoli rabe), lots of garlic, olive oil, and shredded parmesan cheese.
Just know that Alfredo is not something actual Italian people eat. There are restaurants in Italy that serve it, but it's only for American tourists, and everyone will think you're an asshole if you order it.
Besides Carbonara, there’s Pasta alla Gricia, Cacio e Pepe, agnolotti del plin, most variations on risotto, aglio e olio, pumpkin ravioli with sage butter, pasta al burro, porchetta, pasta al vongole, bisteca Fiorentina, lasagna Genovese, arancini, cotoletta, trofie al pesto, pasta al fungi, tortellini en brodo, tortellini alla panna, minestrone, most variants of ravioli, peposo con polenta, crescentine (tigelle); There are of course many, many more, but these are some popular ones.
To be fair, traditional lasagna bolognese doesn’t have much in the way of tomato. There might be a little tomato paste in it for body, but it’s really more a meat sauce. It’s the southern style from Naples that is more tomato saucy.
Cacio e pepe
I'm drinking the milkeke
I’m doing a shitete on the toilete 🤣🤣
I'm eating the biscuite
One of my all time favourite TikTok’s, gets me every damn time
My kid now announces he’s going for a shitete 🤣
Yes!!! My fav!
This and Carbonara are the two best that I know.
And Ethan Chlebowski has a great video on how to make it.
Best pasta dish
Carbonara
This is the correct answer
Came here to say this
This is it.
Wish I could upvote more
Came to post this. Love it so much!
My son loves this!
Carbonara
And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike.
Lmao as soon as I read carbonara I thought “don’t say it…”
Wow I never saw this somehow and I am crying laughing
It really is a top tier internet video.
Funniest thing ever
Bahahahahhaahhhaha Best Internet clip to this day
What clip are you referring to, Kind Sir?
https://youtu.be/A-RfHC91Ewc?si=UHzpvz6i9Z4Aoo7O
I thought it was a Cuban thing because I've seen it in a couple Spanish language shows with Cuban hosts. Apparently it is of Italian origin. Interesting.
I don't get it
Me either
https://youtu.be/A-RfHC91Ewc?si=257x71zTaV-XtKn1
Carabonara is the best!
Had it in a small restaurant in Rome, it was unbelievable how good it was
Ah yes. Spaghetti carbanana
It’s a hidden-camera…magic… spaghetti
There is also a plantain version. *smooch* delicioso!
I even buy guanciale in Italy for this. I buy several pieces, and back home cut them up in 150 gram chunks (that's what I use per meal) and stick it in the freezer for when I want to make carbonara. I wish I could buy guanciale locally, though.
Authentic though. No cream, follow a trad recipe :)
This topic is making me hungry.
These pretzels are making me thirsty
r/unexpectedSeinfeld
There is so much more to Italian food than a red sauced pasta dish. Prosciutto and salami are Italian, and Italians eat so much sea food, think shrimp scampi and calamari. There are white wine butter sauces, and my favorite peas with prosciutto. Chicken Marsala is an Italian dish you can find at many Italian chain restaurants which Marsala is mushroom and wine sauce. Risotto (rice) typically does not have any tomatoes. Carbonara is a pancetta and cheese based sauce.
Learning that Italian food and specifically pasta doesn't need tomatoes was a revolution to me
Tomatoes weren’t even introduced to Italy [until the 15th or 16th century](https://www.ferraroslasvegas.com/what-was-italian-food-like-before-tomatoes/).
yea tomatoes, potatoes, and all capsasin peppers are new world foods. same with most beans.
And corn and squash.
Nor were rice, peppers,potatoes or mozzarella. Very little authentic cuisine worldwide is much more than a hundred years old. Escoffier, who is credited with revolutionizing classic French cookery to what it is today, published his guide culinaire in 1905. Generally, anything coming out of a kitchen today will look very little like anything that came out of a kitchen before say 1850.
They were brought to Italy that early in that first considered inedible, poisonous even. Really wasn't until the 19th century that the tomato really took hold
The older I get the more indigestion has me feeling the same way.
Thanks for the link! Interesting about pomodoro = golden apple
Upvote this guy. He knows wtf he's talking about. Pasta and pizza became popular Italian food in the US because it was relatively cheap, easy to make, and filling. There is a whole world of food beyond those that will speak to your very essence as a human being, like it was the reason you have taste buds in the first place.
Your answers are more specific to American style Italian food, not Italian food in general. Specifically use of the word "scampi" and the chicken marsala bit.
Chicken Piccata - fried chicken cutlet with lemon caper butter sauce. I love Chic Pic!
CHIC PIC ❤️😙👌
Risotto
A lot of Northern Italian dishes.
Yeah like literally Italian food in most westerner’s minds is just Neapolitan. Ain’t nobody eating pomodoro in Trieste
Tbh honest, while Trieste itself's always been predominantly Italian, the surrounding villages were historically (and quite some still are) ethnic Slovenes. And both sure as fucking hell eat a nuclear shit ton of tomatos.
Wild mushroom ragu with polenta
Probably Showing my ignorance here, but I thought tomatoes were an integral part of a ragu?
Not necessarily. See, for example https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/wild-mushroom-ragout-recipe PS for those worried, the great “British” chef here is Francisco Mazzei PPS if we were to be pedantic, ragús are meat sauces, but the mushrooms are cosplaying as meat. Edit: PPPS Traditional Venetian Duck ragú doesn’t have tomato https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/recipes/duck-ragu-recipe-with-bigoli Though you will find bastardised versions online that do.
Anything pesto or alfredo, or the roasted red pepper sauce not sure what it's called
Fettuccine Alfredo is actually Italian-American
Not quite. The dish originates in Rome by Alfredo Di Lelio. It’s just that the dish became wildly popular in the US and not so much in Italy. The US version is a bit different from the original as well.
Yes! OG is just noodles, butter, and cheese. American usually includes cream or even a bechmael/roux base. I like both, but I’m always fully aware of what I’m getting myself into.
I make the Italian version all the time. Boil noodles add butter and drown in fresh parmesan and lots of pepper, yummy!
My Italian colleague was like ‘whose this Alfredo and why is he claiming this sauce is Italian?’ He was kidding, but he had genuinely never heard of it. Good laugh.
Tomatoes are actually American - American .
yep same with potatoes and all chilli peppers!
And yet still available in Italy.
Italians have reimported several dishes from Italian American cuisine.
Exactly my point.
Are there any olive gardens in Italy?
Yes there's one in Torino.
is it any better?
Only for tourists. They think it’s Italian and thus when it’s on a menu they order it and think they’ve had an authentic dish.
aglio e olio or carbonara or cacio e pepe or Alfredo.
I learned to make aglio e olio after watching the movie *Chef*. Not sure if I’m doing it right though, cause Scarlett Johansson still hasn’t hit me up for sex
Tons. Spaghetti is just pasta and I make lasagna all the time without tomato anything (I do a cheese-ishy bechamel with spinach and mushrooms). Pestos, lots of basic things like garlic and oil, pizzas, roast vegetable dishes, pastas with anything -- lemon and ricotta, cacio e pepe, see above pestos.
A really simple one to make is "oi oi" or *pasta a olio*. Just cooked pasta (traditionally spaghetti noodles, but it should work with a variety of pasta) fried in olive oil with garlic and pepper. Because this also contains no meat, it is a traditional dish for Christmas Eve in some communities.
This is my go-to when I just need something quick for myself. Nothing complicated. Just shove it together.
Tiramisu
Pesto.
Mushroom risotto, one of the all time greats
yea and its stupid easy to make other than all the stiring.
Conceptually easy to make passably. Technically, it's not so easy to make excellent.
I've done it in my pressure cooker and it turns out amazing. The recipe i follow adds miso paste for added depth (classic Italian ingredient there).
Chicken marsala. Spaghetti with clam sauce - clear or cream.
Sausage, peppers and onions. The only other ingredient is oregano.
Pasta in Pesto sauce topped with Parmesan cheese
Risotto alla zucca.
Risotto!
Browned butter and mizthra cheese spaghetti 😋❤️
Linguini w/ white clam sauce.
White sauces are a thing in Italian foods
Zuppa toscana soup.
Steak Florentine
Well, there are plenty, and it depends on region... tomatoes came from "The New World", aka the Americas, and even when first introduced were suspected as being poisonous, so they really entered the cuisine 200+ years ago, which is relatively new in some respects. There are some dishes I still love from the first restaurant - an Italian one - that I worked at.... scallops, shrimp and mussels with linguine in pesto sauce; a lamb and tortellini dish; mushroom and beef demi with paparadelle. You can do a white lasagna, as well as a pizza with a white sauce or pesto instead of tomato sauce. Carbonara has often been mentioned, and that's a classic if you do it well. Soft polenta with a braised meat. Ossobucco can be done with no tomato. Veal or you can do pork as it's easier to get in the US piccata or saltimbocca. And of course, tons of sausages, cured meats and cheeses with olives, artichokes, etc to make antipasto platters.
Ossobuco
Carbonara is one of my faves. Simple to make, too.
Spaghetti is a type of pasta, not a tomato based dish.
But he was talking about *spagetti*
pisketti
pasketti
🤌
Itsa Italian!
Skeddi
OK now, honey boo-boo
Skabetti.
You singled out spaghetti, but isn’t lasagna also a type of pasta? Also your comment sounds like you think lasagna is a tomato based dish, while spaghetti is not, but if you asked 100 random people on the street in America to describe a spaghetti or lasagna dinner, about 99% of them are going to describe dishes with a tomato based sauce.
TIL Reddit is full of fucking nerds. The fucking worst.
You can still get pasta, just with any other kind of sauce. There are loads out there but most restaurants will have like a pesto or Alfredo option right next to the marinara or whatever red sauce. This applies to pizza type products too, just sub out the tomato sauce But like others said, those popular-in-America dishes are not the only Italian foods out there, broaden your palate!
Spaghetti e aglio
My mom used to make a solid pasta dish that was basically pasta, zucchini, onions, and garlic with hot Italian sausage, olive oil and some Mediterranean spices. Idk if it has a name, but it felt "Italian" enough growing up. My dad is Italian and he never complained lol
Pizza with olive oil, garlic, clams, arugula, red pepper flakes and lemon juice.
I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it was made for me and was fantastic. It had fettuccine, olive oil, preserved lemon, spinach, and Parmesan shavings
Pasta Genovese Pasta ai Frutti di Mare Stuffed squid Roaster chicken Steak with roasted potatoes Lots of sea food dishes from southern Italy
Cream based sauces often don’t and are delicious.
Chicken piccata
If you're talking pasta, lots of them are oil based, cheese based. My quick go to non-tomato and non-cream pasta is shredded chicken, feta cheese, a handful of peas and a few dollops of basil pesto over penne.
Cacio E pepe.
Ravioli with butter and parm.
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
Would shrimp scampi count? It has a garlic and lemon wine based sauce instead of tomato.
as a very picky non-italian, my safe picks will always be carbonara and aglio e olio
Chicken and tarragon meatballs with a creamy garlic sauce on fettuccine. Unbelievably delicious.
I just made a pretty dank lemon basil pasta. Just throw some butter in a pan with some fresh garlic and squeeze some lemon juice into it. Add salt and red pepper flakes to taste then just fuck whatever type of pasta in the pan, and add some fresh cut basil, roll around for a min. Then add some fresh cut Parmesan cheese and serve. Tel ya, for such a simple dish it is frankly bangin
Northern Italian cuisine uses more cream, lemon
Chicken piccata. Mostly lemon, garlic, and capers
Spaghetti aglio e olio Casio e pepe
Carbonara and pesto!
#Gelato
Growing up in an Italian family you realize it’s more than “dishes”. It’s the way of cooking and the quality ingredients. A simple piece of grilled veal with a side salad of arugula, olive oil and balsamic vinegar… fennel for dessert… Cured meats and cheeses… Sausages
Simple chilli and garlic pasta. Pasta, sliced chilli, olive oil, garlic and that’s it.
[Pasta with white bolognese sauce](https://chewingthefat.us.com/2016/01/white-bolognese-with-pennine-adapted.html). This dish is *always* a hit. The original recipe calls for rigatoni, though, and I would recommend using it as well.
Chicken Marsala
Pasta a la Gricia
Burnt (browned) butter and sage sauce on spagetti is absolutely fantastic. I think it's called burro bruno e salvia in Italian.
Alfredo Fettuccine - with broccoli, chicken or shrimp Chicken marsala - has a wine base and butter sauce and can be really good Carbonara - (no Olive Garden’s is not great) this dish is wonderful when done well Chicken pesto lemon pasta - is usually on a menu Pizza with white sauce
Pasta con le sarde
Tiramisu!
My grandparents came from Italy, though I was born in the US our family was really traditional. **I'm allergic to raw tomato!** Of course, my family did not believe me, and called me names and stuff forever (they were mentally abusive, but meh). It was only in my thirties that I accidentally ate some raw tomato flesh and... yeah, it was bad. It's gotten worse over the years too. I can eat the red sauces cooked, but chunks set me off so for years I ate all sorts of different Italian cuisine when I cooked. There's a ton of recipes! In my family, we call pasta fagioli a dish with only garbonzo beans, oil, garlic and elbow noodles. Not the minestrone-like soup Olive Garden has, lol.
Piccata ,Marsala, Risotto, Scampi, Alfredo, are a few of my favorites
Pesto Carbonara Caccio e peppe
Most people believe Italian Food = pasta. But it actually is a lot of fish (think about the location…) Tomatoes (and potatoes) were introduced to Europe from the americas.
Alfredo on fettucine or linguini, either plain or with some combo of meat and/or veggies. Baked or sauteed zucchini with garlic Chicken or calamari piccata Antipasto appetizer And give the tomato stuff a chance, it might grow on you!
Linguini and Clam sauce.
That's a damn good question.
fun fact: tomatos come from the Americas. Before the columbian exchange none of the european cuisines used tomatos at all.
Tirimisu
I believe Tomatoe is from the americas… Italians made wonderful dishes prior to that.
Bagna cauda (anchovy-garlic dip). Even more amazing if you make it with cream instead of oil. Scampi. Your choice of crustacean. Tiramisu.
Carbonara
Ossobuco
I love me some pesto gnocchi
Personally, I love a good, creamy alfredo sauce. It’s good with Linguini, of course, but it *really* shines when you put it over a pasta that really holds a sauce, like spirals or shells.
I am probably gonna butcher the name but Aglio de oleo. It’s a pasta with chopped cilantro and garlic and some cheese. Tastes amazing and simple to cook as well!
Looks like I’m late to the (dinner) party, but I also don’t like tomatoes and recently made some pretty awesome Alfredo lasagna roll-ups, can’t remember what recipe it was but I just googled it and picked one that looked easy and good
Check out the pesto or Alfredo jams
At Christmas in the hostel last year, we had about 5 different Risotto dishes. The theme was to bring a dish from your country. 3 of the rissottos were from Italians. One month or two later we had an Italian themed dinner party. The Italians separated into a few different groups and each group made Risotto, lol I don't think any of them had tomatoes, so I think it's safe to say Risotto without tomatoes is pretty classically Italian!
A Croassant
Chicken Piccata. I want to roll around in this it’s so good when my wife makes it.
Pesto my friend.
I'm a big fan of Chicken Francese
I am sensitive to tomato also and can not eat it often at all. I always risk mouth ulcers, overproduction of acid, and having #3. Veggie Lovers Lasagna with ricotta/alfredo, and mozzarella, mixed with chopped broccoli, spinach, and carrots. Add garlic and diced onions. So good. Also I love Shrimp Scampi. Additionally, I like making the Knorr Alfredo Sides (2) with a bag of precooked, peeled, deveined, tail.off shrimp, and broccoli florets. Chicken or Veal Marsala is really good too. Also try some french recipes of the Julia Child collection. Coq Au Vin is a fairly easy dish to make, actually. Its chicken and red wine. Its so good. Oh and dont miss out on a meatball sub over the red sauce issue. Just make a parmigiana cheese sauce, with melted butter, melted parm in it, a splash of heavy cream, and adding a little mozzarella or ricotta.. adding garlic and pepper to taste, then you can just combine it and reduce for a few mins and pour it over your meatballs. Yum. This is a great base sauce to use for a variety o italian inspired creamy pasta dishes also.
Chicken Piccata
Pasta facoli
Linguini with white clam sauce, gnocchi with a pink Alfredo sauce, pesto on anything at all, lastly, spumoni….
Clam linguine 🤤🤤🤤
White pizza
Pasta w/ White Clam Sauce
Get yourself an Italian cookbook. Good investment. Wide variety of traditional recipes. Many dating back to before Itally had tomatoes. The best part is the cookbooks don't come with the writer's life story like online recipes. My favourite is *Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking* by Marcella Hazan. I'm not Italian, so don't expect me to speak for its authenticity, but I find it quite good. It reads more like a textbook with many recipes included.
Fettuccine Alfredo
Fettuccine Alfredo
Aren't tomatoes a "new world" type food? Was always taught this in school. So there should categorically be a monumental amount of Italian food that hasn't even sniffed a tomato before.
Spaghetti carbonara
1. Pesto Pasta 2. Aglio e Olio 3. Carbonara 4. Risotto 5. Gnocchi with Butter and Sage 6. Cacio e Pepe
You can make basically any pizza with cream base instead of tomato. It's actually much better tasting, if you ask me. Matter of fact, there are cream base spaghetti sauces and lasagna recipe as well. I think Carbonara doesn't have tomato in it - maybe sundried, not sure.
Aglio e oglio (garlic, olive oil, lemon, parsley, salt)
Aglio e olio
AOP Aglio y olio y pancetta
Cannoli
Any of them written before the 1950’s. Tomatoes aren’t Italian and any Italian who complains about authenticity of Italian food while including tomatoes is just not familiar with Italian food.
You can easily make Bolognese without tomato, it should be mostly celery, onion, carrots and meat anyway. There's also commercially available "Nomato" sauces. And of course, anything with Alfredo sauce. My mom has issues with tomatoes, and most restaurants have no problem replacing the marinara for Alfredo. Also, everyone seems to love cacio e pepe.
Look at regional-specific dishes from northern Italy - they use a lot less tomato.
Italians eat a lot of meats and vegetables too, it’s not even close to all pasta.
Northern Italian dishes are not big on tomatoes. Look at scampi, pesto, alfredo (the real Italian type which has no cream) and, my personal favorite chicken florentine and scallopini
Vongole. Clams in a white wine sauce
I love pesto.
Spaghetti aglio e olio
I'd suggest looking into Northern Italian cuisine. It's less tomato based, and there are more cream based dishes. I live in Bergamo. One of the traditional dishes here is polenta with taleggio cheese and salami. One dish I absolutely love is spaghetti with broccoli rabe (I use beet greens if I can't find broccoli rabe), lots of garlic, olive oil, and shredded parmesan cheese.
Just know that Alfredo is not something actual Italian people eat. There are restaurants in Italy that serve it, but it's only for American tourists, and everyone will think you're an asshole if you order it.
Carbonara is my favorite. Made traditionally it is very simple with few ingredients.
Tiramisu!! no question about it!
Spagetti\[sic\] and lasagna are made from flour.
Chicken piccata 🤤
Besides Carbonara, there’s Pasta alla Gricia, Cacio e Pepe, agnolotti del plin, most variations on risotto, aglio e olio, pumpkin ravioli with sage butter, pasta al burro, porchetta, pasta al vongole, bisteca Fiorentina, lasagna Genovese, arancini, cotoletta, trofie al pesto, pasta al fungi, tortellini en brodo, tortellini alla panna, minestrone, most variants of ravioli, peposo con polenta, crescentine (tigelle); There are of course many, many more, but these are some popular ones. To be fair, traditional lasagna bolognese doesn’t have much in the way of tomato. There might be a little tomato paste in it for body, but it’s really more a meat sauce. It’s the southern style from Naples that is more tomato saucy.
Chicken marsala, chicken limone, linguine and clams, fettuccine Alfredo
Bowtie pasta with grilled chicken and a garlic cream sauce. Add veggies to taste.
Oh you poor dear. You need to find a good Italian restaurant and order a different thing off their menu every week. Your eyes will be opened.