One reason mozzarella di bufala (buffalo mozzarella) is so delicious is because the animals are treated with utmost respect. They are milked when they are physiologically ready!

Here we go with a new series with Anna and Marika. Each video will feature an oral quiz — just like in actual Italian schools — about a region of Italy. A separate cooking video will feature a recipe from that region. We start in the "heel of the boot": Puglia.

Anna gets grilled on Sicily by Marika. Oral quizzes are very frequently used in Italian schools. Grading is done on a scale from 1-10 for primary and secondary schools, and from 1-30 at the university level.

It's time to talk about Calabria, a southern region with both sea and mountains. Let's hope Anna did some studying.

Let's see if Anna has studied one of the northernmost regions of Italy. It's a border region and as such, has some peculiarities.

Because Anna knows the subject backwards and forwards, she volunteers to take the teacher's quiz on Liguria, but that doesn't help much with her grade.

Agata and Catena have stopped at the Catania outdoor market to do some food shopping. Catena gets to taste some of the delicious local specialties.

Catena and Agata relax in the garden of Agata's baglio [Sicilian architectural form with buildings arranged around a courtyard]. They're getting ready to cook typical Sicilian dishes that Catena will include in a cookbook she's writing.

Terre d'acqua means water-lands. We are talking about the once marshy area which has now become the fertile Po valley. Gualtiero Marchesi is considered to be the founder of the new Italian cuisine, and is perhaps the best known Italian chef in the world. He begins telling us his story.

World famous chef, Gualtiero Marchesi talks about his career, his search for a total cuisine, an authentic cuisine.

Our famous chef talks about the town where he spent much of his childhood, San Zenone al Po, where two rivers meet, and where flooding has always been part of life.

Gualtiero Marchesi recalls his childhood, living along the banks of the River Po. His memories are as diverse as milking cows and seeing German bombers taking out bridges.

Gualtiero Marchesi recalls the early years of his friendship with Aldo Calvi, when the would hunt and fish together along the Po.

Pre-war and wartime cooking, when fuel for cooking was in short supply, made raw recipes come to the fore.

Water, earth, fish, animals, rice: these were the fundamental elements of Italian cuisine in the pre-war and war years, elements that profoundly influenced the culinary creations of one of the most famous chefs in Italy, Gualtiero Marchesi.