The cuisine of South Tyrol is rich of delicious and genuine ingredients that, in part, recall the Austrian tastes and flavors. It can create exquisite combinations that can satisfy also the most pretentious palates from very simple dishes. In this border land, open and friendly to everybody, specialties of gastronomic tradition synthesize influences from very different cultures. In that way the list of food varies from Austrian and Tyrolean dishes to the excellent interpretations of the classic Italian cuisine.
Main ingredients are, of course, the several flours (maize, Saracin corn, wheat and rye flours) with which different kind of bread are cooked (bread with sesame, cumin, barley and whole-meat). And then pork meats, game, and the several delicious cheese, trouts and perchs, sauerkrauten, cabbages and potatoes.
And again you cannot forget the many species of herbs, such as chervil, valerian, thyme and turnip sprouts all used a lot in cooking.
Well-kown and tasty are the Canederli (Knödel), which vary in consistency and taste according to the ingredients: speck, spinach, ricotta, or cheese, they usually go with stock but they can be eaten also as vegetables. Similar to the canederli there are Schluntzkrapten too, a kind of ravioli filled with spinach.
Delicious are the omelettes, filled with jam or apples, but the most characteristic is certainly the Kaiserschmarrn with raisins, pine kernels and icing sugar. Among the desserts you must remember the Strudel which can be filled with apples, cherries, apricots, pears, grapes or stuffed with ricotta cheese, poppy seeds... Another deliciousness is the Saracin corn cake, to say nothing about Krapfen and the Sacher Torte, coming directly from the Austrian tradition.
