I started to look at recipes with a different perspective. While I am preparing dinner for us, on the marble table upstairs in our house, or while I am cooking during one of the classes, where many hands and experiences meet around the same wooden table now marked by time,…
I abandoned January resolutions a few years ago. Now I prefer to choose a word, a single, evocative word. In the recent years, this word has worked like a magic formula scribbled on a piece of parchment, like an omen, a powerful statement from the past, engraved with capital letters…
Today I'm sitting in the living room, right in front of the wood-burning stove: finally the cold weather has arrived. I'm not used to stay still anymore, so I immediately seek a source of heat: a cup of steaming black tea, a wool blanket, the roaring fire. We spent the…
This past weekend we taught a food writing class in Vicenza. Each time our eight and more hours of conversation become an opportunity to reflect on many aspects, which go beyond writing. We begin with the use of specific adjectives and action verbs, we move on to the experiences and…
There is a very short time of the year when eggplants, still firm and purple, thrive in the garden and on the market stalls with the orange squashes. They are not only complementary in colour but also, and above all, in flavour. The smell of butternut squash baking in the oven is close to that of a cup…
The August heatwave brought eventually some time for resting, for sleeping in a shaded room in the afternoon, for a weekend in the mountains foraging wild raspberries and blueberries, for personal projects and reflections and lazy dinners cooked by my mum, where I was just sharing leftovers from classes. It brought…
If you are subscribed to our Newsletter, you will already know that I have chosen these three months of summer as a season of change. It took just a few weeks to understand that this really will be a time of evolution and new awareness. A newly rediscovered instinct pushes…
If someone invites you to go to a sagra, stop whatever you're doing, cancel other commitments, dress up comfortably and bring along a mosquito repellent. The sagra, a town food festival, is the heart of the true Italian food scene. The sagre fill up parking lots, sports facilities and squares throughout the year, but mainly…
I’ve written my first acceptance speech, sitting at my tiny desk in the living room with a stained apron, dreaming to wear a red dress and high heels and to stand in front of some of the best food writers, bloggers and editors of our time. I am sure I would have cried, I’m emotional.