Famed chef brings Italy to your Minnesota table
By Marissa Block
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN
One of television's best-loved chefs, best-selling cookbook author, restaurateur and food and entertainment business owner Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is making a stop in Minneapolis next week to sign her latest cookbook, "Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy," which is being released in all major bookstores today.
If you go
What: Book signing with chef Lidia Matticchio Bastianich
When: 6:30 p.m. Oct. 28
Where: Mall of America, 118 E. Broadway, Suite 238, in Bloomington, Minn.
Phone: (952) 854-1455
Among her many accomplishments, Bastianich is the chef and owner of four acclaimed restaurants in New York City, as well as restaurants in Pittsburgh and Kansas City. She is also the founder of Tavola Productions, an entertainment company of which she produces and hosts her own Emmy-nominated and James Beard award-winning cooking show series, Lidia's Italy, since 1998.
Anyone who's watched her show on public TV might notice some resemblance between Bastianich's show and the show of the late master chef Julia Child. The two were friends for many years, and Bastianich says much of her current success began with the help of Child.
"Julia (Child) invited me to do a show with her, two episodes, and the producer said 'You're pretty good, would you consider having your own TV show?'" Bastianich says. "I wanted to do it from my own kitchen -- Julia (Child) had a studio in her own house -- so actually I can credit her with me being on television. Also because I think the mannerism of which she did her shows is something I wanted to emulate, she was a mentor in how I do mine now."
The recipes Bastianich prepares on both her show and features in her cookbooks are not only "beyond simple" and affordable, she says, they're true Italian recipes.
"I strive to retain that respect for food and the immediacy of connection to food in its natural setting," she says. "I try to recapture those flavors that I recall that are part of the Italian heritage -- all the things my grandmother did that was important."
Bastianich was born and raised in Italy until she was 12 years old, before coming to the United States. She says she started cooking with her mother and grandmother in Italy.
"Some of my fondest memories are of Mom in Italy -- harvesting warm eggs from the chickens, still-warm potatoes from the garden, making the oil and baking the bread," Bastianich says.
On both her TV show and in her cookbooks, she says she focuses on education just as much as cooking -- where the product comes from, the region and climate it was grown or produced in, basically "the artisan of the product."
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