It is a symbol of the national gastronomic tradition and every Sunday most Italian families sit at the table to enjoy a menu that is the same as 50 years ago so, at least one day a week, the local foods and the regional recipes triumph over ready meals and frozen ones.
The Sunday lunch, which has its origins back to when families went together to Sunday mass in the morning (very few families still do), means to gather at the house of some members of the family (depending on the family always the same house or on rotation) and have lunch all together, often with grandparents, cousins, parents and so on.
My family is very small here in Italy so we never really followed such tradition but I’ve been invited to many Sunday lunches also because Italian families are usually very welcoming so this tradition is not strictly reserved to family members or at least it wasn’t so before the virus.
The table is traditionally set up and fully prepared with a tablecloth which sometimes have been kept by the family for decades, maybe because knitted or embroidered by a grandmother, and the best silver cutlery or porcelain plates are taken out and used for the occasion.
My grandmother made beautiful doilies and lace mats which we still keep and use sometimes to decorate the table but without the tablecloth or vice versa.
Family doilies
The host decides the menu which is always a very abundant meal, consisting of multiple appetizers of the local tradition, a first course, often stuffed pasta like ravioli or fresh pasta like gnocchi or tagliatelle or a baked pasta like lasagna.
Here in Liguria the appetizers are usually consisting of fish since we have lots of fresh fish caught daily and they usually are octopus and potato salad, stuffed anchovies, fried calamari and anchovies or marinated fish. In our region the first course usually consists of trofie (a type of fresh twisted shaped pasta), ravioli, or gnocchi dressed with either pesto, the most traditional basil sauce of Genoa, or other seasonal sauces like mushroom sauce during the Fall or calamari sauce in the Summer.
Homemade ravioli with mushroom sauce
There is also a second course served like fish or meat which usually depends on the territory where the family lives and there is also a side dish like baked potatoes or veggies and a dessert to end the meal.
Here in Liguria, the second course is generally a baked fish or rabbit, both very typical here.
The dessert is rarely made by the host because there is a ‘silent agreement’ that the other commensals will bring wine and a dessert but I’ll talk more about this dessert on my next blog. The host nevertheless always has coffee, tea, biscuits, fruits and often nuts to offer his or her guests…you’ll never leave hungry from an Italian home!
Sunday afternoon after the lunch is over (and the lunch will be very long amongst chats and all these courses) is generally spent lounging on the sofa for obvious digesting reasons and traditionally it was the time to listen all together to the soccer games on the radio but, nowadays, the paid TV services have bought the rights to show the games on their channels on TV so the games are often on different days and at different times depending on the team you follow and obviously nobody listens to the games on the radio anymore.
