Praise indeed ?????

I think my neighbour calls it a very similar name - sounds like 'cheekoria', with the emphasis on the 'o' (as in orange) bit. He farms around our place and at times his wife (and others) come down and dig up baskets full of (what I think) is weeds, they say to me just take them, but weeds look all the same to me. I occasionally see  cars parked up near the fields on the Piane de Falerone road with lots of people walking around with baskets picking greens out of the fields. They know what to do around here ! S  

The fact(S) are firstly that Italian cuisine doesn't exist, there are a number of VERY different cuisines from different parts of the country.Where cultural influences from outside are more tangible like the big cities not only is there a huge variety of different restaurants (from different countries) ethnic food,from different regions of italy and you might be suprised to see how oriental and middle eastern spices are VERY present in modern cuisine for example in Milano.For the same reasons  on the opposite side deep in rural Italy where large scale immigration is inexistant,contact with outside cuisine also ,areas with very traditional agricultural values tend to eat what they've always eaten.I suppose in remote and rural parts of the U.K. it wouldn't be so much different.I think you would be very suprised to see what inroads foreign cuisines have made in Italian cooking especially over the last ten years.In fact the top three chefs at the moment in Italy are all of German origin, tempura has become a regular "italian" dish,  cous cous using north african spices is considered a "traditional" dish in south western Sicily..the list is very long..