Chemistry was my college interest. Cooking is about chemistry.
What I learned being a young child was respect for food. Don't throw anything away.
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.
When I started as a young chef, I was Italian, and I was a woman, and everyone else in New York was French and a man.
Julia Child came to my house and wanted a lesson in making risotto.
You should just feel comfortable with food and your own culinary culture, whatever your mother and grandmother know.
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.
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.
I started in the restaurant industry when I was 22, so I've had quite a long tenure, if you will.
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.
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.
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.
When you are the host, you have to take the party into your hands like a conductor.
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.
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.
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 is all about the story of a people through the ages.
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 love telling stories. You know why I love it? Because people love listening.
I cherish my beautiful Italian heritage.
