CalItalia Food

CalItalia Food is about the Italian ingredient that carries a real quality gap between the authentic article and what is sold in the United States: how to judge one, where to buy it, and what to do with it once it is home. The Italian ingredient, and the gap worth paying for sets out the idea behind every page. The site is organised in seven sections, and each one opens with a short guide to judging what is in it.

The sections

The guides every ingredient answers to

Italian Ingredients

What an ingredient is, where it comes from, how it is made, how to judge a good one against an ordinary one, and where to buy it.

Preserved and Pantry

The tins, jars and bottles that carry a season: anchovies, capers, olives, tomatoes and salted fish, and how to judge a jar before you buy it.

Olive Oils

Cultivar, harvest date, acidity and polyphenols, what separates a single estate oil from a blend, and how to judge a bottle and use it.

Salumi and Cold Cuts

Cured pork and its regional names, from culatello to nduja, how to read a cut face, and how to judge and buy the real thing.

Pasta and Grains

Bronze dies, durum wheat, rice for risotto and the grains that came before pasta, and how to judge a box and use what is in it.

Cheeses

Fresh, stretched, washed and aged, what a paste tells you about how a cheese was made, and how to judge one before you buy.

Sauces and Pestos

Pesto genovese and its cousins, the sauces built on a single ingredient, and how to judge a jar and use it.

Where to start

How to Read an Italian Ingredient List, and What Should Not Be In It

The additives, bulking agents and cheaper swaps that separate a real Italian product from an imitation, in the order they appear on a label, and how to judge a list before you buy.

DOP and IGP: What They Guarantee, and What They Do Not

The two Italian protected marks are not interchangeable. What each one controls, where the guarantee stops, how to use them to judge a label, and which foods carry no mark at all.

Made in Italy, Product of Italy, Italian Style: What Each One Means

Three phrases that look interchangeable and are not. What each legally claims, which one means nothing at all, and how to judge a label that carries none of them before you buy.

What Italian Ingredients Cost in the United States, and What Too Cheap Means

Rough price bands for the main pantry and salumi categories, what drives each, how to judge a price that looks too good, and how to buy well rather than cheaply.

Where to Buy Genuine Italian Ingredients in the United States

The four routes that actually work, what each is good and bad at, which to use for which item, and how to judge an importer you have not used before.

What Cannot Be Imported, and Why Some Italian Foods Are Not Sold Here

The sixty-day rule on raw milk cheese, the restrictions on cured meat, why certain Italian products simply do not appear on American shelves, and how to judge what you can buy instead.