Get to know the food of Campania You’ll find incredible octopus, squid and clams served along the jaw-dropping coastline; further inland, there’s enough flat, fertile farmland to ensure meat and vegetables get a look-in too. Many of the Italian dishes we know originated in Naples, which even as far back as the eighteenth century was a city famous for its food. Neapolitan cuisine is famed for being influenced by both the cucina povera (peasant cuisine) of the Campanian countryside, and the more aristocratic, extravagant dishes of the wealthy within the city.
Pizza – Naples’ most famous culinary export – is the perfect example of this; originally a cheese-topped flatbread for the working classes of the city, it became a phenomenon among the wealthier citizens as soon as the pizza maker Raffaele Esposito put tomatoes and basil on it in honour of the visiting Queen Margherita. In many ways, Campanian cuisine is what a lot of us think of when we think of Italian cuisine as a whole. Pizza and pasta reign supreme; ingredients like aubergine, tomatoes, lemon and anchovy are in abundance.
While it doesn’t offer up the risottos, parmesan or meaty ragùs of the north, a large amount of the fresh, light, summery, Mediterranean flavours we love about Italian food can be traced back to this beautiful part of the country. Our hero recipe from Campania by Pollyanna Coupland This simple (and wonderfully named!) dish from Campania shows you just how easy it is to cook fish. The br.