We have friends in Italy who have these old stoves, and they turn out the most beautiful food. All you really need is time, the best ingredients, and love.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.
I've always been able to cook Italian food. That's in my blood because I'm half Sicilian.
I love Italian food; it's soulful like French food. Italian food is original and homey; it's market-driven, but also can be locally sourced.
My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.
Italians allow anything in their cooking.
I'm very Italian, so I love cooking for friends. Whether it's Valentine's Day and my boyfriend and girlfriends' boyfriends are away, or someone's in town, or someone had a baby, I cook.
In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.
What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.
I also want to go to an Italian island and do cuisine properly with some famous Italian chef and, like, his mother.
I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.