I recently learned that tomatoes are native the south and central America, and are not European as I had previously assumed. Given this, I would like to know a little bit more about the use of tomatoes in Italian cuisine. Many popular Italian dishes make use of tomatoes in some way, from a simple marinara sauce to lasagna to pizza. Seeing as tomatoes were only introduced to Italy about 5 centuries ago, how did tomatoes become so prominently featured in Italian food, and how was the landscape of Italian food altered by their introduction?