Time - the key ingredient to so many italian dishes

For ages I could not figure out why italian food tasted so damn good. I scrutinized the ingredients and they are all the same ingredients I use at home, but theirs just always tasted better. After years of analyzation and months of watching a seasoned Italian chef go to work on a daily basis (Thanks Grazia!) I think I figured it out. The key ingredient is TIME; not Thyme the spice, but actually just letting the flavors meld together.

See, time is the one thing that many modern cooks simply do not have. We rush home from work, tired and under pressure to put something on the table before we fall off our feet. I am a Rachel Ray-type girl myself with a host of meals up my sleeve that are ready to serve in 30 minutes or less, although I like to think my food is healthier than hers. Here in Italy, the great thing is that the food is healthy and it tastes great; although I am the first to admit that the meals here are not exactly light in the calorie department.* And I still haven't figured out the whole skinny phenomenon with all the pasta and oil consumption going on around here!

Since lunch is the main meal here, I can walk out of the house for my morning cup of cappuccino and I already smell food cooking. But, since the meals are so straightforward with so few ingredients, I couldn't figure out why people were slaving away at the crack of dawn. I observed that everything gets put together at 9 or 10 a.m. and is left on the stove or in the oven for a good 2-3 hours. Seriously, where I am from nobody except Julia Child and Mario Batali cooks for 3 freaking hours. But, its not as hard as it sounds; once the food is in the pot its just about checking in on the heat and stirring every 20 minutes or so.....Hey, I can do that!

Case in point/Minestrone Recipe:
I made Minestrone from scratch the other day and it was a great experience. First of all, I just headed downstairs to my local grocer and said "give me everything I need for Minestrone" as I was instructed to do. Nobody wrote down the recipe because they said just tell your grocer you are making minestrone and he'll help you. The produce guy, Diego, grabbed a few fava beans, a couple asparagus, some fresh peas (I'd never seen them in the pod before and I consider myself a health nut!), spinach, a potato, cauliflower, a bunch of bietola (similar to spinach), carrots, zucchini, borlotti beans, and a small bag of pasta into a large bag. "That's it", he said. "Tell me how it turns out, dear".

I was always under the impression that you need to make a broth and add a ton of herbs to make a good soup, but it turns out that if you cook your food awhile it actually makes its own broth and few spices are needed. For the most part I threw everything in boiling water (except the leafy greens and pasta) and let it simmer for 1.5 hours, then I added the pasta and leafy greens and that was that! Topped with parmigiano it was a masterpiece. The same goes for so many simple pasta sauces that are 2-3 ingredients just left to simmer for an hour or two.

Now, I have made soups a million times before and they always tasted healthy and bland. I have made soup with these same ingredients but after watching people here, I learned that I had to wait for the food to be ready and not the other way around.

The travesty in my revelation is that time is the one ingredient that is very hard to come by these days. Just like anything else in life, time to cook needs to be made a priority. I can only attempt to sway the reader into adding this essential ingredient by adding that eating a diet of fresh, homemade food has more benefits than tasting good. The entire family looks and feels better almost over night and that is a reward that will continue to bless you for many days and years ahead, if you are lucky enough not to be hit by a car.