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I love that I've become a mentor, almost like a mother, to all the people out there that love Italian, that love cooking. I seem to make them comfortable.
There is a history to Italian food that goes back thousands of years, and there's a basic value of respecting food. America is young and doesn't have that.
The filming happens in my home, and I cook like I do at home, on my home stove with my house pots and so on. That's who I am. I am very true to my real profile.
Food feeds our souls. It is the single great unifier across all cultures. The table offers a sanctuary and a place to come together for unity and understanding.
It's in the nature of Italians to live life with a positive tone and to celebrate the invitations that come along in life. Italian food is so conducive to all of that.
The food of a country is my story. It is a small story, but people relate so much to it. I want to share that, but also the idea of bringing people and family together.
Italy is so influenced by others: couscous in the south, cinnamon in the north because of the Venetian spice trade - I just want to divulge as much information as I can.
I think that lunch is one of the most enjoyable and important things in the day. But you need to create the space and the time to do just that. And in Italy, we do that.
When I say, 'Everybody to the table and eat,' I mean it. That is the glue, the center that holds the family, that gives security. Good food brings everybody to the table.
What really makes your business is your workers - their commitment, their knowledge, how you train them, how you treat them. They have to make the entity a winning entity.
My grandmother taught me the seasonality of food. She lived with the rhythms of nature. That's the way we should live. Why do we need raspberries in January flown from Chile?
Make gifts meaningful by putting the time in creating them, whether baking and cooking, or in making arts and craft. It will all have more meaning for the giver and receiver.
I cooked for the two Popes that were here. Pope Francis I cooked for and Pope Benedict before him. Pope Benedict is German. And I did a little research - his mother was a chef.
There's a great need to convene at the table with family and friends. People are feeling it and wanting it. For me to be a minor player in helping with that, it makes me so happy.
When you sit down to eat at a table, you are ready to take in nourishment - we all need to eat to live. Even in primal tribes, people ate together. It's the opening for friendship.
Italian food is seasonal. It is simple. It is nutritionally sound. It is flavorful. It is colorful. It's all the things that make for a good eating experience, and it's good for you.
Simplicity in preparation is the Italian way. Make easy dishes, and then you can elaborate the final preparation by decorating with vegetables or herbs or adding a dash of olive oil.
Traditions are our roots and a profile of who we are as individuals and who we are as a family. They are our roots, which give us stability and a sense of belonging - they ground us.
When you invite friends over, especially for food, with the food you want to send out a message of affection, of appreciation, of celebration. But also of culture - who your family is.
If we don't focus on when we eat - like, let's say we watch television or something - you eat much more. If you focus on the food - you smell it, you cook it - you're enjoying it already.
Everybody can cook. You don't have to do anything fancy. You can do a nice antipasto spread with sardines, anchovies, some meats, marinated vegetables, fruits, cheese, nuts, and crackers.
It's important to let children fly on their own. I understood that they needed to create their own life and not be my shadow. Let them make their own decisions, and support them along the way.
My evolution came not as a plan but as opportunities came. People offer them when they see you're doing something well. It's up to you to recognize them, take them, and then dedicate yourself to them.
Choose recipes like a base recipe; make a big pot of soup and freeze it. From then on, you can take it in any direction. Another day put rice in it, or then put corn or sausages. From there, it's endless.
Eating is something we all have to do. When we sit down at the table, we nurture ourselves, and hence, all our resistance goes away. We are open to receiving good and taking it in with gusto and pleasure.
I think people make it too systematic in a way, like it's a chemistry formula. Food is not like that; food is very forgiving. Connecting and making do with a lot of the food elements can be fun and exciting.
I see how people connect with me on different level through my show, how they want to transport what I cook into their home kitchens for their own families. It's my responsibility to always make sure that is quality.
The Caprese salad perfectly represents the colors of the Italian flag. While I am not so sure that the colors of the flag stem from the cuisine, there is no denying that those colors do evoke a typical Italian plate.
When I first came here, Italian food wasn't anything I recognized. I didn't know what Italian American food was; we never ate it at home. It was the food of immigrants who came here and made use of the ingredients they had.
In 1981, we opened Felidia, and the newspapers, the city papers, the big timers came, and I got invited on the 'Today Show' and so on. A lot of food luminaries would come to Felidia - Julia Child, James Beard, they all came.
Don't accept what a grocery store has for you. Tell the store to get you want you want. If you want honey from a local farmer, organic honey, you tell them. We are in control. It's up to us as the consumer to get what we want.
A box of spaghetti can take seven minutes to cook, and you can make a sauce at that time with perhaps garlic, olive oil, and zucchini. Then you've got yourself a complete meal. The whole thing shouldn't take more than half an hour.
I attended classes and taught classes, in Food Anthropology at Pace University, with an anthropology professor. You can trace history by the architecture and food of a place. Food is one of those things that transcends and stays in the culture.
Telling my grandchildren stories of my growing up is some of our favorite times spent together. They want to know what it was like and what I did as a child. They seem to be especially interested in the organic and simplistic setting I grew up in.
The best things - when I really feel that I'm communicating, and when I really feel that people are getting it - are simple, straightforward recipes. I think simple is the hardest to achieve because you don't have all those elements to hide behind.
Match the right food to the right occasion. Think about what you are celebrating. If you are honoring people, what are their favorite foods? If it is a holiday, what is the food for it? When you give an identity to the party, people appreciate that.
Physically, women have some challenges in the kitchen, like lifting heavy pots on and off the stove. You learn to adapt; you learn to find a way. But the biggest challenge for women in this industry is how to balance a family with such a demanding career.
I found great rewards in cooking a dish and feeding it to someone. It was a means of communicating. I was giving part of my talent or my gift and sharing it with somebody, making somebody happy. And it gave a lot back to me, and I wanted to do more and more.
Vin brule is a version of mulled wine enjoyed in Piemonte, in northwestern Italy. It's a perfect choice for holiday entertaining because you can double or even triple the recipe and leave it over very low heat, ladling it out as your guests come in from the cold.
Kids today are really so alienated from the source of food. If they are going to nourish themselves properly, if they are going to safeguard this environment we have and the economy that goes with it and world hunger that goes with it, they need to know about food.
I was born in Allied-controlled Pola. At the end of World War II, the victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties and borders with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The Paris Treaty was signed on February 10, 1947. I was born a few days later.
My grandmother had a courtyard of animals, like goats and chickens. She made ricotta cheese, cooked with potatoes warm from the garden, grew everything from beans to wheat. It was simple, seasonal food, and we all ate what was produced 10 miles from where we lived. It was that way for centuries.
What I continuously remember is when I was a child in the courtyard with my grandmother and we milked the goat and we made the ricotta. The still-warm ricotta from our goat, on top of a piece of bread, and we used to sprinkle just a little bit of honey or sugar on it. That flavor, that stays in my memory.
We had our wheat. We made our own olive oil. We made our wine. We had chickens, ducks; we had sheep, cows, milk. So I was raised in a very simple situation but understanding really food from the ground... the essence of food and the flavors. And those memories I took with me, and I think that they lingered on.
Whether you talk about the olive oil, whether you talk about Aceto Balsamico, whether you talk about Grana Padano, whether you talk about Mozzarella di Bufala. These are all traditional Italian products that are hard to beat, and they're easy to transport and buy. You don't have to do much around it. Just eat them.
I'll get home from work on Friday night and take out some beans and soak them. The next morning, I'll put them in a pot for soup, then just keep chopping, chopping, chopping - carrots and celery and cabbage - and in two or three hours, you have this wonderful, mellow soup that fills up the whole house with its aroma.
With the Industrial Revolution, the production of food was delegated to big companies in order for women and men to be in the labour force, to come home, stick something in the oven, and eat. It became a big industry that does not have a love affair with food nor is really concerned about nurturing you or giving you the right nutrition.
I think traditions change and modify with each generation. With new members joining the family, their customs and traditions have to be respected and combined with the exiting traditions. And the children that follow are part of that new evolving tradition and, as they grow, will have input that will, in turn, continue to evolve that tradition.