Whenever I go to the United States to visit family and friends I have the same problem. I want to catch up on all the foods and tastes I miss living in Italy (Japanese, Thai, Indian, Mexican—a burger even—anything but pasta), and my family is dying to have me cook Italian food for them. They see me as the Italian food expert now, which of course I’m not. It’s the fact that I make my own pasta that somehow qualifies me in their minds. The second I buy a plane ticket, they start organizing dinner parties that I am supposed to cook as the visiting “Italian chef.â€
It’s sweet and flattering, and at the same time a bit annoying. Not because I don’t like to cook; I really enjoy cooking for family and friends. It’s that it is almost impossible to recreate the dishes I make in Italy with American ingredients. The flour, olive oil, bread, cheese, etc. are all different. They want me to cook an authentic Italian meal, something I would make for friends in Italy. But what I want to cook is Californian food: fresh seasonal salads, grilled Pacific Ocean fish, guacamole with jalapenos and cilantro.
My grandmother’s dinner request during my last visit was a repeat of the “divine†ricotta and herb ravioli she had eaten in Sicily that previous spring. I explained that Sicily probably has the world’s best cow’s milk ricotta (especially in the spring when the grass is green), and that the ravioli just wouldn’t be the same made with the tasteless stuff in the plastic bucket from the supermarket. To humor her, I tried anyway; and as I expected, the ravioli were a disappointment. The creamy flavor of fresh, artisan made ricotta was lacking. I would have been better off stuffing the ravioli with fish or something from the local farmer’s market.
I believe we should cook with what is fresh where we are. That is the beauty of Italian cooking. There is no secret; use high-quality, seasonal ingredients and you can’t go wrong. This is the central message of the Slow Food movement. Many people mistakenly think Slow Food is about Italian food because it began in Italy, but it’s really about the food heritage of your area, preserving indigenous and tradition food products, and supporting food artisans. Eat from the land you live on.
This doesn’t mean one can only make Italian food in Italy. Of course not. Pasta and other Italian dishes are served in homes and restaurants across the globe. It may not be exactly the same as what you would eat in Italy, but how could it be? Ingredients vary and recipes have to be modified to suit the area and the season. What’s the point of trying to make fresh tomato sauce in New York in the winter? Use what is available. If you have beautiful potatoes, why not make gnocchi? Push aside the cookbook and be creative.
Californian cook and cookbook author Rachel Lee has been living in Italy since 2001. She divides her time between Tuscany and Sicily.
