Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour, 歡迎回來酒館. Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, lulu, hi, everyone.

Remember we did or we said we were gonna do like a mini series about loan words from other languages into English.

Oh yeah.

So far we've done Japanese and we've also done German, so I thought let's do one other episode today.

Yeah, I think we can do Italiano.

Great. So Italian, there are many loan words that's borrowed from Italian, right?

There are loads of loan words in English that come from Italian, particularly from the Renaissance.

So 500 years ago, the Renaissance started in Italy and lots lots of phrases and words were adopted into English around that time.

And they generally are... you know like when we were talking about German loan words, a lot of them about the war, you know about philosophy, but from Italian, it's usually something like arts, music, and food.

Yes. And also don't forget fashion as well.

Oh, that's true. So first of all, let's talk about food.

Yes.

If you’ve noticed that if you go into a cafe, pretty much whatever you order is an Italian.

They are pretty much all Italian words, latte, cappuccino, americano, espresso...they're all words that come from Italian. And that's mainly because coffee started to become popular in Europe via Italy.

Even in the UK, in English speaking countries, when you order you don't translate you just order in Italian, like you would say cappuccino.

Yeah. We'll say a cappuccino, we'll say a latte, and so on.

Same as in Chinese actually, although obviously we sort of changed them into Chinese characters like 卡布奇諾, but it's still cappuccino.

Exactly. Yeah It's still the Italian word.

But one thing very interesting is... you drink latte, right? 拿鐵The thing is in Italy, if you order a latte, they'll give you milk.

Yeah. Latte is just the Italian word for milk.

So If you want to actually drink latte, you have to say cafe latte. Yeah. It's like cafe mocha.

Exactly. But it's not just coffee. It's also food. Think about pizza, pasta, gelato, risotto.

Everybody knows pizza, but pasta is the umbrella term ,right? the general term of Italian noodles, basically.

Yeah, spaghetti, penne, lasagna, tagliatelle, these are all Italian words, and they're all types of pasta.

There are at least 60, 70 different types of pasta.

I would not be surprised.

Yeah,I think I personally have tried 30 or 40 different types.

Yeah, I probably tried about maybe 20 or so.

I love pasta. The thing is when you go to a restaurant and then they say all of these words like spaghetti, penne, lasagna, and then in Chinese they are all translated like什么意大利, they are all different types of pasta. Pasta is like the umbrella term.

Exactly, we wouldn't say noodles.

No, noodle is Asian isn't it, in English when you think of noodles you think of Asian noodles. And also gelato.

Yes, I love gelato.

Gelato is just an Italian ice cream, they are lighter. They're lighter than average, the really super creamy ice cream. I think they're healthier ?

No, they really aren’t.

I think they are healthier. I've checked.

Okay. I think you might be trying to convince yourself of that.

And I love what you were just saying I love risotto, which is just Italian rice.

Yes. So it's a particular type of rice that you get in Italy. And it's normally a bit harder?

Yeah. You cook it creamy. 意大利會飯. I do a really good risotto. You've tasted...

I've tried your risotto, it's amazing. Because the thing is that in China it's difficult to find very good risotto because lots of people find the rice too hard.

Yeah. I think it's because we consider that uncooked or not cooked enough, and ?

Obviously you have things like panini.

帕尼尼. I think in recent years, especially in first tier cities, you do get that a lot in like I would say more western, fast food, healthy fast food restaurant.

Yeah, panini are very popular in the UK, so that basically just hot grilled sandwich.

Yeah, but if you call it panini then people like it more.

Exactly, it sounds a bit more exotic. Obviously you got the cheese and such as mozzarella and ham such as Prosciutto.

But also one of my favorite dishes, well, I say dish it’s more like a snack really, Bruschetta.

Bruschetta? Rremind me is that very dry piece of bread, very hard, and on top of it, it's just kind of like a tomato paste or salad?

Yes, tomato, basil and olive oil. It's very very simple on toast, but it's delicious.

And it's very light.

Yeah, very very light.

And of course how can you forget tiramisu? 提拉米蘇，Oh yes, So I do like tiramisu.

And interestingly with tiramisu, I think the most authentic recipe does contain alcohol.

Yeah. It's a particular type of Italian alcohol. You only have like a little bit of it, but it's so so nice .

And the base is soaked in coffee in espresso. So if you cannot take caffeine or alcohol, that really isn't a great dessert for you, but otherwise it's really good.

It's amazing.

Recently I really got into you know when you cook pasta, you have all of these sauces, right? One of the sauces I really like is pesto sauce.

Same here. I love pesto because it's just so versatile. You can just put that on any type of pasta. It goes with almost any type of meat or any type of vegetable and it just tastes really nice.

這個是意大利青醬, it's a green sauce, basil, garlic, pine nuts, you know what's not to love? Exactly. 羅勒, 然后是大蒜還有松仁. It's super yummy like... I think our store carries it, but we're not advertising it. You can get it wherever.

You can check it out yourself.

Okay, of course there are many Italian cured meat, like different types of ham, salami, prosciutto意大利的火腿也挺有名的, and they all have their different names.

That's one of my favorite things just kind of get in some Italian hams, some Italian cheese and some fresh bread. That is delicious. I love that.