Talking of food ...

Say "Italy" and I'd wager a good 6 times or more out of 10 the knee-jerk response would be "pasta" or "spaghetti" or some other gastronomic impulse. This is no accident. Every single citizen of this country has a gene that renders them both willing and unwitting marketers of arguably their most renowned cultural facet: their cuisine. It's as if they're swept along on a sort of wave cast by the gourmand magician's wand, riding it boisterously and happily in blissful ignorance of their role in perpetuating an enviable tradition.

It's a little difficult to work out which is the proverbial chicken and which the egg in all of this - did the food come first, followed by the enthusiasm for it ... or did their desire for things sensual produce, inter alia, the most exquisite tavola? It doesn't really matter - it is what it is, and the world is truly thankful for it.

Most intriguing in this epicurean theatre - replete with its din of gestures and noisy camaraderie - is the role of the male. Not any and every male (although I suspect it's the vast majority), just those that don't spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen. They are, in my experience, the most eager to expound on the specialties of their regions ... the key ingredients of a ragu sauce ... the best place to find fresh (insert foodstuff here).

Two classic examples.

First, Pepe, our neighbour who lives in Bari in Puglia, and who visits his mother's house in Regnano several times a year. She (nonna) seldom comes these days, having now reached the age that her physical condition keeps her back in Bari. When she is here, though, you'll find her - blue scarf wrapped around her head in the way that makes all the older woman seem related if not clones of each other - bent over like a hook, scavenging the fields for cicoria or nettles or some other green leaf that grows wild in the fields.

Perhaps Pepe got his knowledge from his mother, or perhaps from his wonderful cook of a wife, Anna. But it's most certainly as a looker-on, albeit a mighty observant one, that Pepe's knowledge derives. When quizzed by Maria - as Anna slaved over the dishes after another of her prodigious feasts - whether or not he helped in the kitchen, Pepe responded that he had tried washing up once before, but he didn't like it so he doesn't do it any more. He wasn't joking.

But he can tell you exactly which ingredients to use for the perfect penne arrabiata ... what it is that makes pugliese bread so delicious ... and how long you should blanch the beans before taking them off the stove and mixing it with the ubiquitous olive oil and I forget what else. He's a gem, though, genuinely caring for our well-being, and - it goes without saying - the satiation of our appetites.

The second instance was on a hike with some 15 or so Italians on the premier festa of all summer feste - ferragosto (which falls on 15th of August and whose origins deserve a blog entry all of its own). Now going on a hike with a group of Italians (the word "large" is superfluous here) is an experience of an entirely different kind from a hike anywhere else that I've been, and is one to be savoured and enjoyed for its very uniqueness. However, that's not the point here.

The point is, after we'd had our various sandwich lunches and roused ourselves from the gentle slumbers that the food and the hot day had induced, somehow the topic got around to food. (There is a saying that all roads lead to Rome - perhaps that has some sort of proverbial significance here with respect to conversations and food.) Claudio - a really interesting guy who paints frescos and collects ancient stone implements - launched the first salvo, proclaiming with deep sincerity and mouth-watering conviction his unflinching and passionate loyalty to dried pasta (as opposed the fresh kind made with egg). He reeled off all sorts of shapes and incarnations of his culinary elixir, but I don't remember any of them. I do, however, remember his face - alive, sparkling, ecstatic, as he reeled off his heavenly weak spots. For a consistently fascinating and fascinated fellow, he rose to height that I hadn't seen before.

Sitting some distance away, Giuglio, normally a (very) silent, smiling chap, was immediately drawn to the topic, like a moth to a flame. Over he came and joined in with a verbosity that might even have surprised Carla, his wife. He bubbled with mirth - for what seemed a disproportionately long time - at the recollection of a friend of his who had once eaten pasta for breakfast. He took on a new persona for me in that moment.

It was indeed a spectacular hike, through a narrow, towering gorge with a crisp river that we had to wade through up to our knees. I'll remember it for that, no doubt. But I'll remember it more for the simple joy of that conversation, when everything else stopped and fell away, and the lifeblood of the Italian passion came charging to the surface, eager to be heard ... and shared.