Compared to the whole world Italy is a really small country but it has a very particular aspect that makes it different: having century of history and traditions that gave to Italy a deep variety in every single region of its territory.
Italy is composed of 21 districts and everyone of these has his own traditions and dialects and obviously every one has his own food tradition. The main Italian foods worldwide are pasta and pizza but if can travel Italy from North to South you can taste the local dishes unknown to the world.
For example the North of Italy, during Winter time, has a typical food made just with corn flour, the polenta. The versatility of polenta allows Italians to offer it in several ways but the most famous polenta recipe is to serve the authentic Italian polenta on a wood made dish with meat juice and sausages with Parmiggiano cheese. It needs to be served hot and in the North of Italy is a real tradition eaten almost every day during the cold winters. It is important to eat polenta with a good red wine.
The traditional polenta requires a long preparation that in the North of Italy becomes almost a family event. The polenta get usually eaten with many people or with the whole family so, since the early morning they begin to hot water and to stir the great quantity of polenta that needs hours to be ready to be served.
After a full morning of skiing it is traditional to drink wine and to eat the Italian polenta; in the last years to face the taste of more people possible, they started to offer polenta not only with meat juice but also with mushrooms, without juice, just with cheese or with some nouvelle cuisine ingredient like rare fish or vegetables.
In any case, the traditional polenta remains another precious element of Italian traditions and allows many people to enter in contact with the history of a part of Italy , the North one, full of history and traditions.