½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

I studied ½ûÂþÌìÌà at school and at university and lived in Rome for nearly 5 years. My love for this beautiful language led me to consider some interesting ways to teach ½ûÂþÌìÌà and to start up an ½ûÂþÌìÌà school. I listed the top 5 things I love about Italy and came up with:

- Amazing food
- Stunning landscape
- Romantic language
- Friendly people
- Beautiful art and architecture

So I thought - what about teaching ½ûÂþÌìÌà through love and awareness of these wonderful aspects of Italy?

Lesson 1: Amazing food

Lesson 1 starts with food, we all know famous ½ûÂþÌìÌà dishes such as:

*Spaghetti alla bolognese
*Lasagne
*Pizza Margherita

But what about some tasty Roman food treats?

³§³Ü±è±è±ôì: balls of rice in a little tomato sauce filled with mozzarella and deep fried
Filetti di baccalà: battered cod fillets
Fiori di zucca: Courgette flowers which are deep fried and filled with mozzarella and anchovies

³§³Ü±è±è±ôì

All of the above are called fritti (fried food) and are often eaten as an antipasto (starter) at the pizzeria. Roman pizze have a thinner and crispier base than Neapolitan style pizze.

Some Roman piatti (dishes) include:

Pasta alla gricia: pasta with pancetta-like guanciale, pecorino cheese and pepper
Bucatini all’amatriciana: long pasta like spaghetti with a hole through the middle, the sauce is tomato based, with the ingredients used in gricia
Pasta cacio e pepe: pasta in a creamy pecorino cheese and black pepper sauce
Porchetta: roasted pork with herbs, garlic and black pepper, typical from the roman countryside

If we wanted to order food in a restaurant in Italy, we could use the following sentences:

Prendo un supplì: I’ll have a rice ball
Prendo la pasta alla gricia: I’ll have the pasta with guanciale and pecorino

To order drinks, we could say to the waiter:

Posso avere una bottiglia di vino?: Can I have a bottle of wine?
Posso avere dell’acqua?: Can I have some water?

And if we like our food, we could express our pleasure with the following easy-to-remember adjectives:

È buono/a: It’s nice (depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine)
È buonissimo/a: It’s really nice (depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine)

That’s all for now, buon appetito (enjoy your meal)!