Regional food of Lazio

The hills in Lazio are rich and fertile making it easy to grow vegetables of all types which in turn makes them an important part of the cuisine in this area. They are cooked with liberal amounts of oil, herbs and garlic and more often than not a good portion of anchovies.

The meat dishes in this area tend to be heavy and over flavoured, a throw back to the days of poverty when outside the cities the peasants had to eat what was left over when the rich had finished. Unspeakable cuts of meat were eaten then and still are in some more remote places and offal is big business at the butchers. All over this region they still have a tendency to use lesser cuts of beef and pork.

Chicken is used more here than in other regions and they also eat a fair amount of rabbit. Wild vegetables and herbs are gathered eagerly in the countryside along with snails which are a popular dish.

Pasta features strongly but the bigger, chunkier types such as bucatini and conchiglie are favoured. One of our best loved pasta dishes, spaghetti carbonara, comes from this region.

The popular pasta sauce arrabbiata, which means 'angry', comes from this region. It is so named because of the flakes of hot peperoncino that are added to it.