italyum® ('ital~yum') - Delicious food or drink of Italian origin.
There is a simple understanding in Italy, that food and drink are not just a requirement of life, they enrich life.
We have a simple mission at Italyum - to share that passion for fine food and drink, and to help you aquire the skills and knowledge to create your own authentic Italian cooking.
Yet authentic does not necessarily mean difficult. Through a series of easy to follow recipes graded from Easy to Advanced, we guide you though the process of taking good quality, basic ingredients, to create your own Italian masterpiece. It's the closest thing to alchemy we know, as you create delicious food using simple ingredients and the knowledge of generations of Italian cooks.
Our recipes are uniquely simple to follow with step by step pictorial guidance, and the expert commentary from Federico. If you want a challenge however, you can find it here also - how about trying your hand at homemade tagliatelle?
In no time at all, even if you have limited cooking experience you will be creating really tasty and interesting meals that will impress your friends, and delight your taste buds. Vegetarians should look out for the sign denoting there is no meat or fish, but there may be dairy products or eggs.
Italyum is currently the work of Federico Pezzaioli (recipe research and development) and Jeremy Webb (web site creation.) Italyum is not a restaurant, not a take away, not a publishing company but just our hobby!
We hope you enjoy Italyum. If you do, why not bookmark the site, and tell your friends!
 My philosophy - Federico
When, at 36 years old (I am now 43), I decided to leave Italy for Scotland, I have always known that food was going to play a big role in my life. Food is the connecting leitmotif with my homeland; it is a great way to socialise with people and if you do it right it will also help you to enjoy your life and live longer!
There should not be wars in this world; any dispute between countries should be settled through cooking competitions – what an ideal world this could be? Unfortunately it’s not like that!
Anyway, I have decided to give a contribution to our society, telling people the things I know about Italian food with the hope of inspiring those who lives on fast food (fast to take you to the coffin!) or to bring back on track those who are thinking that the nouveau cuisine have done a big favour to all of us (it’s killing the traditional cuisine of Europe!) I cannot guarantee you hundreds of recipes every year and I cannot guarantee that I will do this forever, but what I can guarantee is that the recipes published in this website will be as authentic as they can be.
I have spent considerable time searching in old books, searching for the history of the recipe, then understanding the cultural background that influenced the way the recipe is carried out, and finally the “comparison”, where I discuss the recipe with the people living in the specific area where the recipe comes from. For example, if the recipe comes from Emilia Romagna region of Italy, I can assure you that before publishing it I always speak with the locals, the old folk that know so much, and not just one.
This, to be sure that I gather as much information as I can, and then I create something that has the real character and tradition of the land where the recipe comes from. Sometimes, I found myself travelling to Italy for the sole purpose of getting the real feel for, and have a better understanding of what I am going to publish, like when I went in Romagna for a couple of days, to see how they make homemade tagliatelle using the traditional method: a metre long rolling pin! I can assure you that there is no chef in the world with the same skills of those old ladies who have been making fresh home made egg tagliatelle as I have seen there.
Nowadays, we are bombarded by TV cooking programs, books, specialised magazines and what I see is that we are drifting towards what I call a “Michelin stars mentality”, mostly created by all these celebrity chefs, which I have to say some are really inspiring (though not many!), but most are just contributing in changing our most traditional dishes into many “commas and hyphens” in the plate. Maybe presentation, presentation and again presentation is what they need to transform £ 2 value of ingredients in £ 20 and what you eat, sometimes, is just a very expensive bird portion! If you are happy with that, fine, fair enough, in the end it is your choice and you money.
I have a more traditional view about food: less presentation and more substance on my plate, and of course do not forget the rule of thumb; cooking Italian is about keep it simple and using the finest and freshest ingredients available, that’s it! Anyway, being traditional does not mean that sometimes I do not try to innovate or that I always get it right. I am a self-taught home cook with the passion for the good food, all the food, and no matter which part of the world it comes from.
I publish Italian recipes because I am Italian and this facilitated me because of the culinary background of my family but also because when living in Italy I had the chance to travel from its toes to the top and always ended up in someone’s kitchen. Now, it’s time to share this passion with all of you and I hope to have the time and the drive of keep going and, why not, to learn more so that more people will enjoy what I am doing.
Federico
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