Born: Venice,1952
Mother tongue: Italian
Grandchildren: Isabella, Gioacchino
What they call her: Nonna Nico
Both my grandmothers were excellent cooks. One was better at French style cooking and the other was from Tuscany. My maternal grandmother passed away when I was 9 but I picked up the Tuscan recipes as they were passed down in the family. I do always regret not asking for the recipes of my paternal grandmother because she had such a refined way of preparing food.
My own step-grandchildren love my Gelo di Mellone, which is a Sicilian dessert. I’m Venetian but since I’ve been living here in Sicily for so many years, I learned to cook the traditional Sicilian dishes. It’s a delicious watermelon pudding infused with jasmine. I also do it in the cooking classes I give here at the palazzo.
It has been said by my son that I’m the only Mamma that’s ready to cook at any time of the night or morning. I love to host very much. I always love to cook and love when my son brings his friends and I’m ready to cook any time of the day or night. I’ve cooked a whole meal for him and his friends at 3 in the morning. He was one of the most popular kids in the American school because he would trade my beautiful food for all this horrible junk food like peanut butter jelly sandwiches. At a certain point, one of the other mothers stopped me and asked me for my meatball recipes. I said, “How do you know about my meatballs?”, to which she responded that all the children were eating my food. Of course he’d give the blonde girls with blue eyes two meatballs. Food is love, after all.
Feeding is an expression of love. It’s an Italian thing. Here, it’s important to feed. Did you know, for example, that one of the first symptoms of mental disorder is a bad relationship with food? How you approach food in life can say a lot about your mental state and your personality. Then of course, there is the inescapable fact that we can’t live without food.