Mr. Italicano and I have just arrived in the USA! Over the next two weeks we’ll be in Chicago and New York City, where I’ll be doing a variety of “Ancient Grain Farro Cooking Shows” with Smeg USAat Williams-Sonoma, Eataly, Bloomingdales and the IHA trade show. For complete details you can check out my event calendar.I would love to see you there! I look forward to teaching you how to make nutritious meals with this superfood grain. I’ll show you how easy and quick my recipes are to prepare, with Smeg USA’s practical and beautiful 1950’s style appliances.
Every since moving to Italy, I have adapted a Mediterranean lifestyle.I cook simple recipes made with natural and fresh ingredients that explode with flavors. During my last cooking shows, many complaints by the audience was that they are passionate about cooking but don’t have the time to get in the kitchen. I disagree. With the right recipes and kitchen tools,making homemade meals takes less time than going to a restaurant, let alone the meal will cost a fraction of the price! I talk more about this topic in an earlier post.
The art of eating well and feeling good is simplicity. When I got this basic principal down, I didn’t mind getting in the kitchen to cook because it wasn’t a strenuous task, but a way to have fun, relax, slow down and be mindful about what I was putting into my and Mr. Italicano’s bodies. Simplicity also means having a few tricks up my sleeves for our modern lives. Just like I wouldn’t go to the nearest river stream to wash my clothes (thank goodness for washing machine’s!), I also don’t waste my time mashing, kneading, rolling out, chopping and cooking every day. In fact, to keep my life simple, these are recipes that you can make once and enjoy them the following days. I also use use a blender, stand mixer, and a variety of attachments that do a lot of the work for me in rapid time. I heart technology that supports my mission to eat healthy and homemade.
1. Farro Beet Soup with Greek Yogurt and Pistachios
2. Homemade Matcha Pasta with Spinach, Zucchini and Lemons
3. Beet Crepes with Ricotta, Arugula, Blood Oranges and Aged Balsamic Vinegar
4. Spring Farro Salad with a Lemon Dijon Vinaigrette
In the meantime, you can follow along on YouTube!’ I’ll be posting frequent episodes of my day preparing and cooking at these events (and hopefully discovering some good restaurants as well!) I would really appreciate your feedback and support. Please leave us a comment on youtube! Thanks so much!
Ciao ciao!
Cindy
This post is in collaboration withSmeg USA, but all of my thoughts and opinions are my own.
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst”
William Penn
“The quality of life is more important than life itself”
Alexis Carrel
“Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it’s through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed”
Vida D. Scudder
Mr. Italicano and I recently returned from 2 weeks of my cooking demonstrations in New York City with SMEG USA to help celebrate their 10th anniversary in the states. I spent the week catching up on jet leg and reflecting about the comments I received from the people who stopped by to watch these cooking shows.
What I discovered is that that one of the overarching problems for local New Yorkers is that the meal time decision usually comes down to one thing: time. Of course, this is quite a universal problem, but it really struck home while talking with people who live in the city and rarely, if ever, cook. “I just don’t have time,” they would say.
Cooking for me is a sacred part of leading a healthy lifestyle. Not only am I creating, which stimulates sentiments of satisfaction, I also know exactly what I am putting into my body. Why would anyone who wants to lead a balanced and healthy lifestyle refute these two things?
Although many New Yorkers had blamed it on time, I want to help by giving my opinion about the time for cooking simple meals. If you try to compare a simple and nutritious meal that you would make at home to the same kind of meal you would find, let’s say, at an organic restaurant near your home, the factor of time is almost the same. Don’t believe me? Let’s do the calculation together: CONTINUE READING
Today is a great day, a great few weeks actually. First I met Oscar Farinetti, the owner of Eataly, and now my first magazine interview was published this morning on Fine Dining Lovers! (The article is in Italian but there are always online translation sites for those who are curious).
It’s not every day that I see my own face appear on one of my favorite food magazines next to pictures of world renowned chefs and articles about the latest trends, recipes and gastronomical events. There is also a separate International Fine Dining Lovers websitefor all you English speaking foodies. It’s a must read.
I feel so grateful for this opportunity, especially since italicana kitchen launched just a mere 3 months ago. A big thank you to all of you readers who follow and comment on my blog, facebook, pinterest and twitter pages! Without all of you, my blog wouldn’t exist!
If you have ever been to Italy, there is no doubt that there is one thing that automatically comes to mind when you think back on your trip: the food. Although the evening strolls along cobblestone streets with ancient Roman ruins lining your way may certainly be impressive, the mouthfuls of handmade pasta with a flavorful sauce between sips of Tuscan wine are surely more memorable. Tragedy usually strikes your palate when you return back home and crave the freshly grated parmesan cheese, robust olive oil drizzled over salad or cured ham that bursts with flavor. Fret not. Thanks to the genius Italian entrepreneur, Oscar Farinetti, 25 Eataly shops around the world have opened and are offering just what you desired the most: high quality Italian products straight from the motherland.
It was already a great day when I headed to Eataly Smeraldo in Milan. I had just visited the online magazine Fine Dining Lovers who gave me the fantastic news that a few of my articles would be published as well as a personal bio. I was on cloud nine. As I strolled through the Eataly doors I was greeted by curated market stalls that resembled the outdoor vegetable and produce markets that can be found weekly in almost every Italian town square.
Filling the stall were bursts of colorful fruit and vegetables nestled into wooden baskets and galvanized buckets.
In addition to the name and price, each product had its place of origin listed: stubby cucumbers and purple cauliflowers from Puglia, round zucchinis from Lazio and giant fava bean pods from Basilicata were just a few of the produce coming from the different Italian regions.
Passing through the market stalls I found myself amidst rows of jams, marmalades and giant mason jars of canned peaches, reminding me of my mom’s root cellar that was filled with similar garden and orchard treasures.
Following my nose, I found myself standing in front of freshly baked loaves of crusty artisan bread, golden breadsticks and pizza by the slice which you could buy for take away.
For those wanting to sit and enjoy a wood fire pizza, an angle of the building was dedicated to just that.
Scattered around the 3 level building were 15 other corners including various bites of Italy like a piadina stand and a gelato shop;
a dessert corner and a pasta making booth;
fish, meat and cheese counters;
and a large wine and beer selection just to name a few. There is also a luxury restaurant in addition to 3 floors filled with essential Italian high quality goods. If that isn’t enough to make your mouth drop, there is also a book & cooking gadget section, 2 conference rooms, a cooking class space and a majestic piano positioned strategically on a stage in the center of the open space for musical concerts to honor the building’s heritage which was previously a historical theater. Talk about your all-in-one-I’m-in-heaven-experience.
I didn’t want to leave; however, I’m glad I did. As luck would have it, I was in the check out line when I heard the name “Farinetti” pronounced by a grey haired woman behind me. I turned to the direction she was staring to see a kind-looking man in a dark blue trench coat. I paid for my jar of caper berries and followed him out the door. He was saying farewell to two men and as he turned the other direction to leave, I took the opportunity to introduce myself before he started walking away. He politely posed for a photo and before I could ask him a few questions about his business, he started to ask me about mine. Who would have thought that a multi-millionaire, successful entrepreneur would be in the least bit curious about the life of a beginning food blogger.
If luck struck on our first encounter then fate played a role in our second. Although we had said our goodbyes only moments before, 5 minutes later we found ourselves together again at a traffic light stop. I was curious to know more about his life and Eataly and so I offered to walk him and his architect to the metro stop.
“Do you know why I opened this Eataly Smeraldo store in Milan on March 18th?” asked Farinetti.
“No,” I replied.
As we walked through a large square he explained that March 18, 1848 was the first of five days of an important revolutionary event that started a war for independence against the Austrian Emperior who had taken over the regions of Lombardy and Veneto.
“I symbolically chose this date because I wanted to show that if Italians could do something big in the past, then they can also come together and do something important in the present,” Farinetti continued.
We can consider Eataly a modern day revolution against mass produced food and a road to return to the consumption of goods made with care. We can learn to eat better and live better, as Eataly promotes, and it all starts with the awareness of high quality artisanal products.
Every since moving to Italy, I have adapted a Mediterranean lifestyle. I cook simple recipes made with natural and fresh ingredients that explode with flavors. During my last cooking shows, many complaints by the audience was that they are passionate about cooking but don’t have the time to get in the kitchen. I disagree. With the right recipes and kitchen tools, making homemade meals takes less time than going to a restaurant, let alone the meal will cost a fraction of the price! I talk more about this topic in an earlier post. 
The art of eating well and feeling good is simplicity. When I got this basic principal down, I didn’t mind getting in the kitchen to cook because it wasn’t a strenuous task, but a way to have fun, relax, slow down and be mindful about what I was putting into my and Mr. Italicano’s bodies. Simplicity also means having a few tricks up my sleeves for our modern lives. Just like I wouldn’t go to the nearest river stream to wash my clothes (thank goodness for washing machine’s!), I also don’t waste my time mashing, kneading, rolling out, chopping and cooking every day. In fact, to keep my life simple, these are recipes that you can make once and enjoy them the following days. I also use use a blender, stand mixer, and a variety of attachments that do a lot of the work for me in rapid time. I heart technology that supports my mission to eat healthy and homemade.
In the meantime, you can follow along on YouTube! ’ I’ll be posting frequent episodes of my day preparing and cooking at these events (and hopefully discovering some good restaurants as well!) I would really appreciate your feedback and support. Please leave us a comment on youtube! Thanks so much! 
