Food Tech

Italian Dinner (1x7)

Air date: Mar 11, 2010

For generations, people have been gathering around the table to experience the traditional recipes of America's most popular ethnic cuisine – Italian food. Have you ever met anyone who hasn't tried pasta? Probably not since Americans eat over 2 billion pounds of it each year. But pasta's just a part of our big Italian family dinner. Host Bobby Bognar travels from coast to coast in search of what makes this dinner so special. He'll trawl the waters off North Carolina and crawl the forests of New Mexico for the ingredients in our pasta sauces. In New York, he'll learn the secret behind pasta's many shapes. Then he'll press some California grapes and learn how one type of bacteria makes both vinegar and wine. And when it's time for dessert, Bobby goes from New Jersey, where he learns the difference between gelato and ice cream, all the way to Costa Rica for an after-dinner caffeine boost. So pull up a chair, grab a plate and help yourself.