What is real food? What is food, or what is real food? Is what we are eating genuine and pure? Is what we are serving to our friends and family as tasty and fresh as what we think? These are all questions I’ve been presented with over the last five months at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo—and the thing is, I thought I already knew all of the answers to these questions. My whole life, I have been looking for different foods and ingredients to add to my recipes. I’ve had the opportunity to eat in good restaurants in many countries, and the whole time I was learning the art of cooking, I thought I knew what food was. I thought the skills I had learned over the years gave me the ability to prepare and serve real dishes with real … Continued
…continuaCame a long way…
…to get to know how to make real Austrian Apfelstrudel. I started the Master in Food Communications to gain a deeper knowledge around all food-related topics, including the social, environmental and economic dimensions. Four months have already passed and so far my expectations are more than satisfied. It’s so much more than just studying food and culture. The sum is bigger than its parts. It’s living food and food culture and sharing the same knowledge and passion with friends all over the world while bringing me back to my food roots. Food is culture. Culture is food. With 28 people from 17 different nationalities in a one-year Master Program in Food Culture and Communications in the middle of Piemonte, talking in English and making trips all around the country and as well to international destinations—this feeling is getting stronger and … Continued
…continuaCiao Thai Lady!
I could always tell when a neighbour was stealing from me because the smell would spread all over the house. With parsley, basil (green and purple), rosemary, oregano, anise and mint on the window box in front of my apartment, I could barely blame them, though: it was too hard to resist! One of them (probably tired of been caught red-handed) asked for permission to get some herbs every once in a while and, about once a week, would come by with her own pair of scissors and an empty bag to gather some anise for the tea that she would later share with her upstairs neighbour. This old lady became the ¨protector¨ of our little garden. If she noticed something strange on our plants she would let us know, and if we were away for a few days she … Continued
…continuaHard Cheese
About four months into my year here at UNISG, I was chatting with some friends visiting from back home. They asked about school, we had the perfunctory “well, I’m not actually learning to cook” conversation, and then I began to explain my classes in a bit more detail. “Well,” I started, “It’s like . . . a series of modules, where we have an intensive session of one class over the course of one week, and then we never have it again.” That week, for example, we had split our time between a survey course on the world food economy, and cheese tasting. As I explained my coursework for that week, I was struck by this bizarre juxtaposition. What kind of field was I studying in where we spent the morning discussing the residual effects of the US Food Aid … Continued
…continuaTravel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer
We went on our first European study trip a few weeks ago to Istanbul, and I can definitely say that my life is substantially richer. Istanbul is a marvelous city located between Europe and Asia, separated by the Bosphorus Strait; it has a population of 14 million, so it can be a bit chaotic at times. It is a city of great history, and was the capital of four empires: the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Empire and the Ottoman Empire. It has its own personality, every corner has a story, and its inhabitants are beings with open hearts and kindness. Our week was busy; we ate a lot of Turkish delicacies, had many lectures, and visited the city’s food sites such as the world famous spice bazaar and the market in the women’s square … Continued
…continuaNourishing and Nuturing Passed-Down Memories
When I was a child, I loved hearing my dad tell stories about his own youth in Flatbush, Brooklyn. There was the story about the blizzard in the late 1950s that blanketed Prospect Park in powder. My grandpa Jack took the two oldest Martin children—my dad, Robert, and his sister, Mary Ellen—sledding in Prospect Park and they crashed into a huge snow bank, toppling them out. And the story about how Robert—who grew up to be a stickler for rules as a lieutenant in the NYPD—got in big trouble with the nuns at St. Francis of Assisi School for tossing around the kneelers they used during mass like Frisbees. But the best stories were those about food. I would beg my dad to tell me again and again about the food that his grandma, Maria Libretti, used to cook in … Continued
…continua“Food means recipes to most people…”
“Food means recipes to most people…” On a recent study trip to Istanbul, one of our lecturers, a blogger and all-around Istanbul food guru, Tuba Satana, stopped me in my tracks with this statement. “It does?” I thought. In my mind, most people I know haven’t the slightest idea how to cook or follow a recipe, and the first thing that food means to them is their favorite restaurant take-out menu or a dish their mom or dad made growing up. Even for food bloggers and restaurant reviewers, food is often represented more by an image or the tradition of a dish, while to some, food is the basic feeling of satiation or fulfillment. I was put off because, to me, food is certainly recipes, but also the menu items to which they translate, the ingredients, the story behind the … Continued
…continuaSunday Supper, Creating Community in Bra, Italy
My favorite time of the night is about eight-thirty. Dinner has finished, dirty plates are on the tables, chairs are pushed back, wine glasses are refilled, and my classmates—who are our friends—along with neighbors and visitors, are at this communal table that we call Sunday Supper. There is this cacophony that makes me smile. For a few minutes I meditate on what’s happening in that moment. Voices in a mixture of languages swirl around, all talking at the same time. There are smiles, laughter, and intense conversations going on, connecting these people to each other. All is right in my world. I live a dream. For over a decade, I said to my wife Colleen, “I don’t know how, or when, but I promise someday we will live in Italy for a year.” In 2010, the company I worked at … Continued
…continuaThe Sacred Food Object
The sacred food object There it was, again: that strange, unidentified object looking at me. As in all the other veggie stores, it was sitting in a wooden box, close to the register, piled up with other similar objects. No name tag, no price on it, nothing that would suggest what it was. I had spent just a couple of weeks in the town but I had already visited quite a few veggie stores, on the mission to choose the one that would become MY store for the rest of my time in Bra. Bra, a small town clinging to the top of a hill in the region of Roero, Piemonte. In Bra there are a few main streets, all named after Risorgimento symbols: Via Principi di Piemonte, Via Vittorio Emanuele, Piazza Giolitti, Via Cavour. A history book on a … Continued
…continuaMorning Rides and Rabbie Burns
Having always grown up in crowded cities, I was not a biker before moving to Bra. Well, that was my excuse anyway. However, now after four months of being here, I feel I have fully embraced it, and my morning bike ride to UNISG is a part of the day I enjoy most. Each morning—weather permitting of course—I strap on my helmet, whiz out my front door and climb onto my bike to get going. Meeting up with the ‘biker crew,’ as we like to call ourselves, at the top of the hill on Via Cherasco. Swizzing down that massive hill is always exhilarating…and a lot easier than cycling back up it! On a clear day you can see all the surrounding mountains, which look especially stunning in the morning sunshine; it illuminates why Piemonte means at the foot of … Continued
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