Category: Uncategorized

How One Neon Artist’s Works Shine Beyond Expectation

When you step before a Caroline LaCava Lemon Lamp, you may simply see citrus slices. But for the neon glass artist, like most of her work, there’s so much more than meets the eye. The continuous tubes that form the shapes connect her to her Sicilian roots.

The New York-based artist’s journey began when she took a neon class at New York’s Alfred University that illuminated a whole new world of art, connecting the concept of two-dimensional line drawing to three-dimensional displays. It was a way to stretch beyond the traditional, leading to some of her edgier pieces that pay homage to the feminine body and lean into optical illusions. 

“I was drawn to the lemon,” she says. “And I knew it was important to me just based on the foods that I have grown up eating at the Feast of the Seven Fishes and stuff like that. So much of it is citrus-based.”

Three of Caroline’s paternal great-grandparents came from Filicudi in Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, and one emigrated from Calabria. That Calabrian great-grandfather worked as a glass engraver, something Caroline wasn’t fully aware of until she began glasswork herself.

One day, while taking a course at Washington’s Pilchuck Glass School following her studies at Alfred, she was asked to create a piece revolving around her heritage.

 

“I thought, ‘This is just getting crazy at this point,’ because how did I just end up in a class for glass engraving that’s also supposed to be inspired by your background when my great-grandfather from Italy was a glass engraver?” Caroline says.

 

These coincidences led her to explore her heritage more in her glass art.

 

Caroline shared more about her work, inspiration, influences, and what she hopes viewers take away. 

 

 

What drew you to the world of art?

The fact that my parents are creatives definitely played a role. They’ve always heavily encouraged my art career.

 

My dad is primarily a musician. He went to music school but ended up just dropping out. He worked for a company and also is a clam digger. He’s lived 20 lives, but playing music is what he does every day.

 

My mother is a studio art teacher and 2D artist. She teaches dark room and studio art. She also does printmaking, photography, and painting outside of work. She dropped out of art school to raise my brother and me, then returned to finish while I was in high school, which was cool to experience with her. 

 

My earliest memory of creating is my earliest memory ever. Creativity was the solution to everything during my upbringing. I went through so many battles in my head when choosing art as a career. You always end up circling back to the things you want to do as a kid. I was always passionate about so many forms of art, but being able to keep to myself and be in my own world really drew me to visual arts, especially when I was young and angsty.

 

I had all these careers in mind that were forced upon me in high school just to be “realistic” in the arts. Like, “I could get into art therapy or be a teacher,” and all these backup plans. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I just wanted to be an artist. 

 

Caroline LaCava’s Lemon Lamp series reflects her Sicilian heritage.

 

How did you transition from hot shop glass blowing to neon?

At the school I went to—Alfred University—you have to take a hot shop course before getting into neon. Not that one’s particularly harder than the other. I think it is just because the electricity side of neon is a bit more dangerous. So that’s why they try to get you in the hot shop first before you do neon.

 

It was very much a last-minute decision for me to take Intro to Glass. I’m pretty sure I chose it because my friends were in it, and I wanted to try something different and challenge my sculptural abilities. 

 

Before taking any class like that, it was hard to visualize how to make glass into art. That’s why I was initially not that interested. I was just picturing cups and goblets in my head.

 

The same goes for neon. I was like, “How do you even turn flat signs into something that could be considered art?” All I could imagine were “Open” signs, which certainly didn’t interest me.

 

I ended up really just falling in love with the invigorating process. The second I was able to take a proper gather from the furnace, it clicked, and I said, “I’ve got to keep going.”

 

I took that class in the spring of 2017. When I came home for the summer, I decided to do a studio internship at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. I went there once or twice a week, and they let me take a neon class for free.

 

I had made something sculptural in the class, and once I started lighting things up, I was like, “This is no boring sign!”

 

Now, I have a strong production signage background. I’ve worked on plenty of signs, which I think are very cool. But as far as my own artwork goes, once I was able to make something sculptural and a little bit unconventional and realized how you could really push the boundaries of this medium, I said, “There’s no stopping now!”

 

Each of Caroline LaCava’s works consists of a single continuous tube. 

 

How does neon allow you to express your creativity differently from hot-shop glass-blowing?

I’ve always been interested in very linear drawings in general. This is why I am mainly intrigued with the medium, even when it comes to traditional signage.

 

Neon always appealed to me just a little bit more because it was just a great way for me to mesh my interest in 2D and my interest in 3D, and considering so much of my drawings were so line-based, it just seemed natural for me to take the next step to unravel those drawings and make into a sculptural lamp with one continuous tube.

 

You have to look closely at a traditional neon sign to be able to tell that it’s one continuous tube because we block out so many parts with paint. But I always say that approaching the making of a neon sign is very similar to how you would do a contour line drawing, as far as the mental gymnastics of it all goes. 

Similar to how you would try to draw an image without picking your pen up off the paper, you approach a glass-bending layout in a similar manner. You’re trying to figure out how to make that image or word with a continuous tube of glass. Unlike in signage, I don’t block out certain parts of my neon sculptures with paint. You’re seeing the whole tube all the way through.

 

There’s more than initially meets the eye with Caroline LaCava’s Cunt Chandelier.

 

Tell us about your use of optical illusions.

My interests in illusions and double image began when I was in high school. I looked at famous artists like Salvador Dali, and I used to make double-image drawings.

 

The first time I did some sort of optical illusion in neon was with the Cunt Chandelier, and that was in college. It felt like a self-portrait to me. I knew I’d be evolving this piece even after college, but I never would have guessed that I’d apply that same process to other forms of imagery. 

I was inspired by how I’ve navigated the world and how people approach me in life. How people make judgments at first glance. Even when the latest Cunt Chandelier went viral over the summer, so many comments said they were confused or unimpressed at first glance until it hit them.

 

I realized that’s how people have approached me in life. They look at me, especially in the glass industry, and underestimate me. Or even when people take advantage of my initial kindness and quickly realize I’m not going to put up with that. There are so many stories I could tell with this piece and so many situations in life that can be applied.

 

I was trying to channel my personality into it in general, having a soft and harsh aspect to the piece. It’s something that appears graceful or delicate at first, and then you look in the mirror and are confronted with this harsh word. And you’re forced to look at yourself in the mirror. The Cunt Chandelier is how I check people. It’s an “expect the unexpected” sort of thing. I think many women can relate to all this.

Caroline LaCava reveals the hidden message reflected below the Cunt Chandelier.

What do you hope viewers take away?

I would hope that people view my lights as conceptual works of art rather than “just a lamp.” I think with neon being newly considered an art medium, I used to worry some people might not see what I see. Thankfully, a lot of people do. Then there are others who think I should have sold 10,000 cunts for $50 a pop, and they just miss the point completely. That’s part of the fun, though. People get to know me, and I get to know them.

 

I hope some sort of storytelling does come across when people look at a piece like the Cunt Chandelier. The whole unraveling of the image and not being able to see it quite clearly at first holds meaning to me. So, I’d like that to translate to the viewer as well. 

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

Honoring My Nonna, Concetta Agnello, the Heart Behind The Last Letter from Sicily

Today would be the 105th birthday of my Sicilian nonna, Concetta Agnello. Her story of being separated from her boyfriend, Gaetano, between 1938 and 1946 inspired The Last Letter from Sicily. 

Nonna was 18 when she moved to Milwaukee from Porticello, Sicily, with her family. She enjoyed crocheting, cooking, playing cards, and singing along with her opera records. She was gifted in mathematics and had considered becoming a bookkeeper. However, such a role was hard for immigrants to come by, especially in the late 1930s and early 1940s. 

She got a job at Milwaukee’s Junior House garment factory. Conditions must have been rough, with poor ventilation and temperature control, but Nonna never complained about her experience.

Instead, she made the best of things, enduring separation from the man she loved while navigating a new world marked by prejudice and uncertainty. Those years apart were even more challenging when Italy declared war on the U.S. 

But somehow, the couple made it through to the other side. They reunited and married in Porticello.

Together, they sailed to the United States in 1947 aboard an ocean liner called the Marine Shark and settled in Milwaukee, where they had four children and 11 grandchildren, including myself.

 

 

Concetta and Gaetano Agnello on their wedding day

 

I was fortunate to have Nonna in my life throughout my childhood and into my late twenties. When I was three years old, she taught me the lyrics to “Maria, Marì,” which we sang along with her beloved Luciano Pavarotti.

 

We’d visit every weekend, with her often serving my favorite broccoli pasta (ditalini rigati con broccoletti) or pulling out a tin of sesame seed cookies (biscotti regina). She’d call the local radio station during its Italian hour in time for the announcer to read our names along with her song request on air. After supper, which she’d cook for us and her two dogs, we’d sit in the living room and play Scopa.  

Nonna remained an important part of my life when I went to college. Having her on the other end of the phone was a comfort, as were our continued, albeit less frequent, weekend visits. She prayed a novena when I told her I was moving to New York for a magazine job.

For years, I delighted in hearing her heavily accented voice in our long-distance calls. Once Nonna met my then-boyfriend, Matt, she closed those chats with, “Give a big-a big-a kiss to Matteo!”

The last time I spoke with Nonna, I shared that Matt and I planned to marry. Her voice was weak, her breath labored, but joy radiated through the line.

 

She passed away within days of that phone call, but she was there with me on my wedding day the following year. I printed and laminated three photos, one for each set of grandparents and my Great-Aunt Josephine, and attached them to my bouquet. 

 

Three photographs dangled from my bridal bouquet, including one of my nonni.

While Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily is fictional, I wove in elements of my grandmother’s strength, intelligence, and resilience. As Nonna was for my family, Concetta is the story’s heart. I’ll never forget this sweet, funny, and generous woman and celebrate her today. Salute, Nonna!

 

Concetta and Gaetano in Taormina for their honeymoon

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

Sicilian Holy Week: Pani di Cena and Family Tradition

The tradition of La Settimana Santa, Holy Week, brings people out of their homes to watch and participate in various daily processions of statues through the streets. It’s also a time to enjoy sweet bread, often flavored with anise, which is typical of the Lenten season. Among the favorite bread recipes is pani di cena—really cookies—which are shaped like crosses. While this “bread” is often served on Holy Thursday, you can enjoy pani di cena year-round. 

Food writer Enza Whiting features a pani di cena recipe on her blog, Enza’s Quail Hollow Kitchen. Enza was born in Palermo and lived in the town of Valledolmo for the first four and a half years of her life. 

We discussed pani di cena and what Enza hopes her family and readers will take away from her recipe.

 

 

Tell us about yourpani di cenarecipe.

My grandmother made these cookies for us when we were kids. She would shape them, cutting them in the shape of a cross. They were always served on Good Thursday, right before Easter.

It was a Sicilian tradition in the church that the elders made these cookies. They would have these church communities or church groups aside from the priests, and whoever was the head of that community or that committee for that year would make these cookies for all of the other members of the committee. So they would make the pani di cena.

They were always made on Good Thursday, and they would get a sugar lamb. It was part of the tradition that they sacrificed for their community by creating these cookies and giving them out in all the towns. 

My mother told me the story about when my great-grandfather was the elder, and it was his turn to make these. My grandmother was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and she was the one who made them all. 

They didn’t all have ovens in their homes, so the town had ovens that everybody would use. All the women would get together, bake the cookies, and then take them to the ovens to bake them in their local oven. I guess that’s how they used to make their bread, too, because they didn’t have ovens in their homes; they had to use a public oven to bake their bread. So it was very communal.

The other thing my grandmother would do for us was make the little crosses, but then she would also make pupa cu l’ova using the same dough. She would put a colored egg in it and bake it. My favorite thing on Easter was getting the hard-boiled egg with my cookie. 

Pani di cena is actually more of a cross between bread and a cookie. My grandmother’s recipe is more of a cross between bread and a cookie. I call it a cookie; my mother calls it bread. When you bite into it, it is somewhat crunchier on the outside and tender on the inside. However, the inside has more of a soft cookie texture than the texture of bread that you would normally think of as soft bread. It is made with yeast. So, it is a yeast recipe, but the texture is different from that of some of the breads you will see. 

 

Why did you start Quail Hollow Kitchen?

Being Italian, food is a big part of your tradition. It’s how we celebrate things; it’s how we communicate with each other. 

I remember when we were kids, we had dinner together as a family every night, and my mother would make meals with whatever she had in the kitchen or the refrigerator because there wasn’t a lot of money growing up. So, they had to be creative and use what they had available. But dinnertime was always sacred. That was a time when we sat down as a family.

My dad was really big into talking to us about what was going on in the world because he wanted us to really understand what was happening around us and how it impacted us. During those dinners, my parents also spent a lot of time talking about where they came from, what life was like for them growing up, and how different it was for us here because it was important that we appreciated all the sacrifices that happened to get us to where we were.

So, for me, food and our traditions have always been really important. We continue to talk to our kids about those things because I don’t want them to forget about their heritage, their history, and what life was like for other people so that they can enjoy the things that they enjoy today. We do all of that around food. It always seems to be the center of these family functions, celebrations, and communications. 

I started Quail Hollow Kitchen mainly because my grandmother had passed away, and I was really worried that as my mom was getting older, I was going to lose all of her recipes. So she was able to carry on my grandmother’s traditions with food, and I wanted to be able to somehow memorialize it so that even when I’m gone, my kids can still have access to all of that information. And it’s named Quail Hollow because that is the street that I live on.

When I got into it, I realized that I really enjoyed all the different aspects of this website. So it’s grown from there, but it still centers around all of our Italian dishes and foods, and really makes sure that all of our Sicilian foods are front and center, somewhere our family has access to.

 

 

What do you hope at-home bakers will take away from this cookie recipe?

Personally, for my family, because it’s been a part of our family, and we have made this every year for as long as I can remember, I hope they understand that this has been handed down for many generations.

For other readers, I hope that they want to try it because it may be different from something that they’re used to. Maybe they will learn something about how other people have enjoyed foods around the Lenten holiday and Easter that might be different from how they’ve celebrated it. 

It’s really about keeping that Sicilian heritage and history going. I have other blogger friends who do similar things within their cultures. I think many of us out there hope that as the world continues to progress, we don’t forget some of the things that made our families what they are. 

 

>>Get Enza’s recipe here!<<

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

Preserving Nonni’s Wisdom: Keeping Sicilian Traditions Alive Through Experience Assaggio

Chiara Barbera considers herself blessed to have grown up surrounded by all four of her Sicilian grandparents (nonni), who emigrated from the Catania Province to Australia about six decades ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she found herself reflecting on the impact they’d had on her life. 

“I have this fear that our grandparents are going to leave this world, and we’re not going to remember all of their traditions,” Chiara says. “And I basically wanted to capture that and keep those memories alive.”

 

Her solution? A digital platform called Experience Assaggio where subscribers can tap into the best insights nonni have to offer. Viewers can “pull up a chair” at the Assaggio Traditions Table and witness a collection of nonni, including her own, sharing traditions, recipes, gardening tips, and pastimes. 

 

Chiara and I chatted more about her brainchild, challenges, memorable stories, popular videos, future plans, and more. 

 

 

What challenges did you face starting Experience Assaggio?

I was in Italy during the pandemic, and that was very challenging. I had all of my grandparents in Australia, and I really craved spending time with them and making sure that I could capture everything I could from them and learn as much as I could. So basically, the idea was born in Italy, and then I actually came back to Australia after the first wave of the pandemic. 

I spent 14 days locked in a hotel room during quarantine, which was actually my saving grace. I got to work on something productive while I was locked in this tiny little room. And then when I got out, I was just so excited to get started.

 

People ask me if it was a challenge to get the nonni on board, but it actually wasn’t. And I think that’s just a testament to the type of people nonni are because they were just like, “Oh, whatever you want to do. I will make you happy.”

 

Viewers can tap content ranging from recipes to gardening tips.

Can you share a memorable story from producing the experiences?

Caponata was one of our first recipe experiences that we recorded. I wanted it to be as natural as possible so they could just feel comfortable. And at one point, the nonna was like, “Can you see what I’m doing?”

 

And I was like, “Yeah. Go around the camera and have a look.” 

(And I’ve actually left this in the recipe experience. I wanted people to see this. It was just such a beautiful raw moment.)

 

So she turns around, walks around the camera, and looks. And she’s like, “Oh, yeah. They can see me.”

 

It was just amazing because they weren’t born with the technology. I think that was probably one of the cutest moments. We’re really blending the two worlds with technology and nonni.

 

How do you select thenonnito feature on the platform?

They have to be 75-plus. And I’m very strict about that because they’ve lived through incredible life events. And besides that, it’s really open to any nonni who can share their recipes and traditions.

 

What videos resonate most with viewers?

The most popular videos have been the caponata, cotoletta, and sugo and meatballs. I think they’re probably the most popular because the caponata is very easy to make, and people want to connect and bring people together for a meal. 

 

Your platform features music. How do you choose the playlist for each class?

I have personally curated each one with intent, and all of them kind of give you a romantic, carried-away feeling that you’re in Italy and experiencing all of those beautiful feelings of the older times. Most of them are actually songs that I sing with my grandparents. 

 

What are your future plans for Experience Assaggio?

I’ve got a platform now called Vera Italia, which is basically Assaggio’s big sister and serves to connect local Italians with travelers. It’s a way for people to travel to Italy but also to connect with the local people and really live that true Italy, which is why it’s called Vera, which means true in Italian. It gives locals a platform to share what they’re doing and connect with people who really want that immersive Italian experience. And we’ve got some incredible people there. 

Obviously, we’ve got a lot of cooking classes. Then we’ve got everything from fishing tourism, where you can go on a fishing boat with people and see how they fish, to basket-making with this beautiful man who learned how to make baskets from his father. 

It’s a way to ensure that these humble people are seen and noticed, and they can be rewarded and encouraged to continue sharing their traditions. 

At the moment, we’re in Calabria because my great-grandfather, who was Sicilian, migrated there, and soon we’ll be looking to expand that to Sicily.

 

Experience Assaggio aims to preserve and share traditions.

What do you hope subscribers take away?

I hope they take the chance to dedicate some time to connecting with a recipe, a pastime, and the grandparents who have so much to share. I hope they’ll take away the love, warmth, and wisdom that I’ve been so blessed to receive from these grandparents and share a little bit of nonni magic with them as well. 

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

Live Like a Sicilian Aristocrat: Inside the Gastronomad Experience

Mike Elgan has a secret. He and his wife/business partner, Amira Elgan, are hosting their first Gastronomad Experience in Sicily. He can tell you that you’ll spend a week “living as a Sicilian aristocrat.” You’ll enjoy authentic cuisine and wine enriched by Mount Etna’s volcanic soil. But the rest is largely under wraps. 

It’s part of the fun—and the highly exclusive experience. Drawing from their own gastronomist lifestyles, the pair offers behind-the-scenes access to local food, wine, and cultural experts that typical tourists cannot access in Italy’s Venice and Prosecco Hills, France’s Provence, Spain’s Barcelona and nearby cava wine country, Tuscany, Morocco, Mexico’s Oaxaca, Mexico City, El Salvador, and now Sicily.

Amira has worked as food and beverage director for hotels in Los Angeles and New York City, including Mondrian, the Bonaventure, the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel, and the Doral Hotels in Manhattan. A board-certified holistic health counselor, she is also the creator of The Spartan Diet and has written about food, nutrition, and health for decades. Meanwhile, Mike is a technology and culture journalist and the author of Gastronomad: The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything.

Mike shared more about the Gastronomad Experience, why they chose to include Sicily, what makes their offerings unique, and what he hopes participants will take away.

 

 

What inspired the creation of the Sicily Gastronomad Experience?

Around 2006, Amira and I took a vacation with our kids, and I’d been reading all the stuff about digital nomad people, and this idea that you could travel while working was really great. I decided to do an experiment for a column I was working on for Computerworld.

The experiment was that I would be in remote areas of Central America, looking at ancient Mayan ruins with my family. I wasn’t going to tell my editors or anyone else that I was doing this.

I went to meetings and did all this stuff. Nobody noticed that I was not in my home office. And so there was this revelation: “We’re going to travel full time.”

 

My wife was working for AT&T at the time, so we decided to take a vacation. We went to Greece and loved the life so much that my wife called and quit. We just stayed in Greece, traveling on islands for six months, and we’re like, “OK, we’re doing this. That’s it.”

 

Over time, we got rid of our house and put all the stuff in storage. With the exception of two years when we lived in Petaluma, Sonoma County, we’ve been traveling full time.

 

Fast-forward to 2014. I was always posting on Google Plus. My wife’s a food person. She’s headed food and beverage departments for high-end hotels like Mondrian. She always connects with chefs and winemakers. She goes to the farmers market, makes friends with farmers, and is fascinated by organic farming. 

 

We’re tasting wine in winter in Provence and chilling the rosé in the snow—beautiful stuff. People were constantly saying, “Gosh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could join you and do what you guys do.”

 

At some point, my wife said, “What if we took six months of really fun stuff that we did and did it all day in one week?”

 

We had all these friends in these specific places. So, in 2017, we did the Barcelona experience, which was the first one. And it was amazing. We had this really beautiful apartment in Barcelona. Nowadays, we stay in the wine country and drive into Barcelona, but back then, we stayed in the city, and it was just a cool group of people: self-selecting super foodies who love traveling and wine.

 

We offered the most amazing peak-life experiences three or four times a day for a week. It’s an incredible concept, and it works great. So we’ve been doing that since then, and we do between five and 10 of these a year in a bunch of locations.

 

An exclusive dining experience near Oaxaca, Mexico

 

How do your experiences differ from other culinary travel offerings?

We are so obsessed with exclusivity that on many of these experiences, participants don’t even see a tourist. For example, we do Prosecco Hills and Venice. Typically, you’d go wine tasting at a tasting room. We go to the home of the winemaker. We have very close friends there who are winemakers, and one of them is an absolutely brilliant winemaker whose home is on the top of a hill, and the whole hill is her vineyards. We spend four or five hours with her talking about wine, the history of the region, and drinking and tasting wine.

 

We have friends in the same area who live in a beautifully restored 400-year-old farmhouse way up in the forest. The husband in this couple happens to be a brilliant chef.

 

The people we bring are treated like family; they’re just incredible experiences you can’t buy as a tourist. We often find ourselves in situations where if you do see tourists, they’re like, “Why do they get to do that thing?”

 

It’s very common for a chef to open their restaurant just for us when the staff has the day off, and he’ll serve the food himself. These are famous restaurants.

 

One key and interesting differentiator is that everything’s a secret. So when people sign up, they don’t know what we’re going to do, except in the vaguest of terms: We will do food stuff.

 

When they get up in the morning, we tell them, “Make sure you bring your sunscreen, sunglasses, and swimwear.” They don’t know what we’re going to do until we’re there doing it.

 

We find that people love this aspect of it. There are no decisions to be made. It’s like all the good things with travel without a single bad thing. If people have an allergy or dietary restriction, there’s no fuss about it. Everything that they are exposed to is within the realm of their dietary restrictions. It’s just easy, super fun, and beautiful.

 

We do this in the most beautiful places imaginable. I’m a professional photographer, taking pictures the whole time. And then they end up with this incredible album. They can put their phones away, forget about the world, forget about politics, forget all stuff, and just live the way they would live if everything were exactly how they wanted it.  

 

Gastronomad Experience takes guests to Mount Etna’s wine country.

 

You offer experiences in several places. Why Sicily?

We selected Sicily for the same reason we selected all the other places: It’s a place we love and where we know some really wonderful people. We’ve been going to Sicily once, twice, or three times a year for years, and the experience kind of formed itself.

 

We are great friends with this biodynamic winery on Etna; they love us, and we love them. We realized there were enough things that we could do there that we should have an experience.

 

The first one is in May. It was so popular that it just sold out instantly. Then we added another one, and that’s selling out.

 

We travel around a bit, but the star of the show is the Etna wine country and that half arc on the eastern side. We don’t go to Palermo. There are a whole bunch of places in Sicily we’re not doing, and there are a whole bunch of beautiful things in Sicily that we’re not doing for various reasons.

 

Luxurious accommodations are important for us. In the case of Sicily, they’re both in vineyards. You can’t find that kind of thing in Palermo or many other places. There are many beautiful places with amazing little villages, and you can find good food, but there is really not enough there to do four or five peak-life experiences a day. So we don’t do that. My wife and I enjoy those places, and we will linger there. We love them, but we need a combination of incredible scenery, incredible luxury accommodations, and high-end restaurants.

 

For example, there are Michelin ratings in Mexico City, so we’ll do the best restaurant in the Americas, the highest-end, most luxurious, highest-rated restaurant. And we’ll have high-quality street food. So we do the range. We want the very top, but it amounts to home cooking.

 

I won’t go into any details, but we do super high-end and super-real stuff. For example, in Oaxaca, Mexico, where half the population is Indigenous, there’s no phony anything. We are in an Indigenous community with people who speak Zapotec in their homes. And so we do that, but then we do super high-end stuff as well.

 

Guests of the Sicily Gastronomad Experience enjoy haute cuisine.

 

What do you hope participants take away?

About 90-plus percent of our guests are Americans. We live in an industrial food system, and this is what we know very well. So, the degree to which we really understand what makes good olive oil or natural wine good and all the details not really known even to foodie-oriented people, by the end of it, they’ve gone through a very pleasurable but detailed masterclass in these details. When they go home, they’re just throwing stuff away and starting over. And now, with the newfound knowledge and appreciation for the best things, they become snobs about that—not in a bad way, but they just have much higher standards because they have the knowledge.

 

Another thing is just peak-life experiences. We are on this planet for a very short period of time. If you want to experience Sicily and have one week, we want you to see the most magnificent landscapes, try the most incredible food, and get to know local Sicilians who are not in the tourism industry.

 

Travel is on the rise. Most people who go on vacation never speak to somebody who hasn’t been paid to speak to them. The conversations they have with the people they meet are products. A tourist is a consumer who consumes the products and services of people who cater to tourists and travelers.

 

We live predominantly outside of that. So people spend a lot of time talking to locals who are just our friends, not in the tourist industry, and they get to know them really well.

 

How many Americans, for example, have had extensive conversations with Mexicans? The country’s right there. We know Mexicans as migrant workers and immigrants or their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, and we really should know them much better.

 

When our guests go to Sicily, they’ll meet our friends. Sometimes, the friends are cheesemakers or chefs or people like that. But we often know people we just invite to dinner. So our group is there plus one or two or three of our local friends. We just have a dinner where there’s lots of conversation, and they get to know people.

 

You’ve really been Sicilian for a week. You’ve lived as a Sicilian aristocrat for one week. And that’s quite an experience. That’s not tourism; it’s very different. You’re not just buying goods and services from people. You go straight into the inside of the culture. It’s really a life-changing experience.

 

 

Raise a glass of biodynamic wine from an Etna winery.

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates.

The Spaghetti Sisterhood on Pistachios’ Sicilian Legacy and Culinary Versatility

Native to Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia, pistachio trees were first introduced to Europe by the Romans in the first century AD. However, archaeological evidence indicates that the seeds have been consumed as far back as 6750 BCE. Pistachios appear in the Book of Genesis and the writings of Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder.

 

Today, global pistachio production is nearly 2 billion pounds, with Turkey, Iran, and the United States representing the lion’s share. Far lower in quantity but prized for high quality, Italy’s Pistacchio di Bronte from the Sicilian town of Bronte is DOP-protected and a popular ingredient in regional recipes ranging from sweet to savory.  

I recently corresponded with Simona and Cristina, the dynamic duo behind The Spaghetti Sisterhood, who have family involved in pistachio production. The Italian-born sisters shared more about these culinary nuts, providing insight into pistachios’ role in Sicilian cuisine, sourcing tips, their signature pistachio cream (and favorite way to enjoy it), and more!

 

 

Tell us about pistachios’ significance in Sicilian cuisine.

We come from a small city in Sicily very close to Bronte, the land of pistachios. A lot of people would argue that a big part of the production of Bronte’s pistachio actually happens on adjacent territories, most of which are in the small city we come from. Aside from this, though, pistachios have always been such a spectacular ingredient to work with, and they are so versatile we just love them: savory and sweet alike, these are just a focal part of Sicilian cooking because of the various influences over the years from different cultures and such.

 

What are some traditional Sicilian dishes that feature pistachios?

From the granita to paste di pistacchio and savory dishes like arancini and pasta, these are some of the most traditional dishes you can replicate at home with pistachio. But less traditional, yet delicious stuff like the pistachio cream is what people love nowadays, so you gotta give people what they love!

 

Pistachios by Paul Wence

 

How do you source your pistachios, and what should people look for when buying them?

We are lucky enough to have family producing pistachios, so we get to buy them from them, but their production is quite a small one, and considering harvesting happens every other year, we tend to have to source from other people around our small city. We do end up buying from vendors on the street as well. When we do so, we have had the pleasure to discover most differences between, say, the Iranian pistachio and the Sicilian one: the size and color matter more than we ever expected, given that the Sicilian pistachio is smaller, chunkier, and a less bright color than the Iranian counterpart, which is slightly slimmer, longer and more bright.

 

Tell us about your pistachio cream recipe and how you use it.

This recipe for pistachio cream was passed on to us by our aunt, who loves cooking as much as we do. I guess you could say we have it running in the family! We have used it in different ways, including as a base in a granita, but our favorite way is as a spread over pandoro. Or even, by the spoon, straight from the jar—we gotta admit it.

 

Do you have tips for home cooks who want to incorporate pistachios into their cooking?

Pistachios work on so many dishes; you just have to try! From salad toppings to creams and anything else in between, you just have to add them. The flavor is delicate and will never overpower any other ingredient in your recipe in any way.

 

What do you hope people take away from your recipes?

We would love for people to learn something from our recipes, whether that’s about a culture they just love or one they descended from. We try and make them as easy as it gets so that everyone can replicate them.

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates! 

Bringing Sicily to Life: La RosaWorks Turns Heritage into Unforgettable Journeys

When asked about her connection to Sicily, La RosaWorks Sicily Tours and Travel Founder Karen La Rosa holds up a wooden last her Sicilian great-grandfather used for making shoes.

 

She keeps it on her desk as a reminder of her heritage. Her family came from the southwestern part of the island, around the areas of Castelvetrano and Santa Margherita del Belice. 

Growing up, she was always fascinated with the idea of Sicily and what she saw in the photos her family had around. But she’d never been there.

 

“We couldn’t afford to go to Sicily on our honeymoon, and then we had kids,” Karen remembers. “When I finally went, it was a real eye-opener.”

That initial trip, a bike tour from Palermo to Agrigento, awakened something in her.

 

“I just felt like I was part of the ground,” Karen says. “I felt like I belonged. I saw things I related to, and I couldn’t even explain why.”

 

She wanted to share that feeling with other people. When it came time for her to plan a trip with the New York Choral Society as membership chair, “It was sort of a no-brainer that we were going to go to Sicily.”

Karen arranged a trip for 130 people that included touring and three concerts—something she calls “baptism by fire.”

But while it was challenging, it started her on a new business journey. Word got out about the well-organized trip, and she started getting referrals.

Today, LaRosaWorks Sicily Tours and Travel hosts, designs, and arranges small group tours and bespoke experiences on both sides of Sicily. Karen seeks to highlight not only the wine and food but also the richness of the region’s history and traditions. This led her to launch a trip to the Naples area, where guests can trace the roots of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, along with the ruins of Pompeii and the temples of Paestum. 

Visit larosaworks.com, and you’ll discover a wealth of Sicily travel resources. There’s a lengthy page of books to add to your TBR list, ranging from history written by scholars, including Jacqueline Alio and Louis Mendola, to historical fiction by Stefania Auci and Carlo Treviso, and classics by Leonardo Sciascia and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. She even features a primer on Sicilian grapes and pointers on driving in Sicily. And check out her list of music to build your Sicilian playlist. 

Karen clearly has a passion that she seeks to spread to the rest of the world. She shared more about how she got here, what sets her tours apart, off-the-beaten-path destinations, and what she hopes guests take away. 

 

 

What’s your background, and how did it prepare you to plan and operate tours?

I majored in finance and art history and worked on Wall Street for a short period of time. The company is gone with the wind. It wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight, and back then, that’s what you had to do if you were a woman. As strong as I am, I just didn’t want to go down that path. So, I went into the nonprofit world, where I felt more at home doing accounting and finance stuff.

 

When the kids were small, I left the day job and took up working on boards. I was president of an arts education board. I was on the board of a theater company for many years, and then ultimately, I joined the board of my kids’ school to help them with their capital campaign to expand the school.

 

My kids were my priority, so doing it like that allowed me to be there for them when I needed to be. And with three boys, you need to be around!

 

Doing tours requires real organization. You can’t be all over the place and do this. You have to be focused; you have to be committed.

 

We had a group of friends from my husband’s college, and we started vacationing together. For 24 years, we vacationed together every year with a growing number of people. And I was the organizer because I was organized, because I was the one who was going to get it done, and get it done well. That’s how I learned how to do this.

 

With the combination of being very organized and having some idea of how to create budgets, I think I was prepared to do this kind of work. Plus, you do need a passion.

 

La RosaTours itineraries include information about Sicily’s symbols, like the trinacria.

 

What sets your tours apart from those of other companies?

Well, it’s partly the hands-on stuff. Clients know I am there for them, and everything is done with my eyes and voice. I’m not interested in cutting corners. I’m also interested in sharing a broader approach to Sicily. If you’re going to go, I’m going to immerse you. Here are the books you should read and the films you can watch. All my itineraries include information about what you should eat, what you should wear, what the flag means, and what that funny symbol you see all over Sicily is.

 

I want to give them some idea of what Sicily is about. It’s special, and it’s still in a stage of its tourist development that is not all manicured like Northern Italy. Almost to a person, people return to say, “I had no idea!”

 

Temple of Concordia in Agrigento

 

You emphasize that you have tours to both sides of Sicily. Why is that important?

Because they are different. The eastern side of the island favors more of the Greek history, and because it was visited more often for a longer period, it’s also more tourist-ready. The west side, to me, is a gift. It’s still so under-visited, it’s equally beautiful, with so much to see.

 

I’ve had many clients who have come with me on the eastern side and then come back to go on the western side. Everybody remarks that it’s a different atmosphere, it’s a different feeling.

 

I’m a believer in the need to be responsible as tourist leaders. I try to go off the beaten path.

I did a tour up to Northern Sicily. We started in Catania, went across the northern part of the island, and finished in Palermo. We visited the Nebrodi. I don’t know of any other tour by any other company that visits that area. At first, I thought, I hope I’m able to sell this. But, again, I had repeat clients, and they loved it because we saw new views, tasted local foods, and visited small villages that had so much to offer, including local people who wanted to share. It’s just very different. The Nebrodi are different from the Madonie. They look different; they feel different; the wine is different. So you try different things. Everyone loved it.

 

I have a tour for September that I call the Beating Heart of Sicily Tour, which will basically go from Palermo to Catania through the middle interior. There are always highlights and important visits but I continually try to visit places where we will be immersed and apart from other tourists.

 

Gelato in Castelbuono

 

What other off-the-beaten-path experiences do you offer?

In the north, one of my favorite little towns is Castelbuono. Most people will go to Cefalù and go no further.

 

Castelbuono is a gem. In its 14th-century castle, it has one of the artist Serpotta’s most amazing chapels. It also has a contemporary art museum that’s really astonishing, inside that same castle! It has some beautifully preserved frescoes in the mother church. It’s also the home of the Fiasconaro brothers, who make the famous panettone. They always have tables out for you to taste different things. The town is such a charming place to walk around, and for a small town, it’s got several very good restaurants thanks to its location in the Madonie Mountains.

 

Learn about writer Leonardo Sciascia in Racalmuto.

 

Another place is a town called Racalmuto, about an hour north of Agrigento. It’s where Leonardo Sciascia comes from. He was Sicily’s most important 20th-century writer, political activist, and playwright.

 

In typical Sicilian fashion, the government does not fund the place where he lived. They get no money, and it’s opened only by appointment. A private citizen keeps it, which is just astonishing. And it looks like Sciascia just left, almost as if there were still cigarette ashes in the ashtray.

 

It’s a wonderful place to visit because, for a small town, there is a lot to see. There is one of the typical theaters of the late 19th century that were opened all over Sicily in an effort to bring culture to the masses. They are small jewel box theaters made in a fashion similar to the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, and they are beautiful to see. There is a castle that is now a museum and visitor center, and a wonderful permanent exhibit by a local artist whom I’ve met. They have sweets particular to this town. There are two places we go to watch them make these sweets and taste them.

 

The Sicani Hills near Sant’Angelo Muxaro

 

I do another day with another guide, which is also fabulous. He grew up in this town, Sant’Angelo Muxaro, in the Sicani Hills. He introduces us to the townspeople and takes us to see the old and the new. He sings for us—the song they sing during the procession on their big feast day. The locals open their doors for us, feed us at the old bakery in the old style, and we learn about life in a small hilltop town, remote from so much.

 

Sandro demonstrates making caubaita (almond nougat) in Racalmuto.

 

When you go with guides—and I really believe in guides—not only do they open your eyes to the historical things you’re seeing, but you’re with people who live in Sicily, who grew up there, and understand the place. They’re all very knowledgeable and licensed, and the conversations go many places when clients ask questions. That’s part of the immersive experience. I always try to include guides. They’re all really special people, mostly archeologists, art historians, sommeliers, naturalists—really top-tier people that 16 years of experience have brought me to. They make the days and activities terrific.

 

Tell us about your Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Tour.

A client of mine who’s been to Sicily three times asked me to do something different. Naples was that. I read Antoinette’s Sister by Diana Giovinazzo, which I loved. Of course, Lou Mendola has written about this period a lot. And I’ve seen a couple of films that intrigued me. I thought it would be a very interesting thing to do. All but one person on the tour is a repeat client.

 

We’ll spend half the time in the area around Paestum. We’re going to visit a cheesemaker and a white fig producer. And we’re going to the ruins. We’ll do a cooking class and go to some small villages. (I always try to vary the itineraries so you see many different facets of the place.)

 

Then we’ll go to Naples and spend two full days there doing city things. We’ll go to Caserta, where the Royal Palace is, Capodimonte for the incredible art collection, and Pompeii, of course. There will be winery visits and fried pizza, a local specialty. 

 

A new friend in Randazzo

At the end of a tour, what do you hope participants take away?

The generosity and hospitality in Sicily are legendary, and it is a richness that I haven’t found in too many other places. Whenever I’m flying home, I always stray to the same thoughts: Sicily has been coveted and conquered by everybody. Many of those people came to take things away from them, but they also left a bevy of material and immaterial things that are today part of Sicilian culture. Sicilians are a real mix of everyone who has ever come ashore. 

 

Maybe that’s one reason they have strong family values and why they care for people. It’s a nucleus of which they have control. People come first.

 

Walking through a small village once, an older woman saw our little group. She stopped to talk, and hearing we were visitors, she took out the bag of cookies she had just purchased and gave them to us, smiling as we enjoyed them.

 

I also never feel the culture and pressure of “more” that I feel in America—more cars, more computers, more money. They value the land and tradition, and taking care of what they’ve been given in modern ways is a main focus. They’re very concerned with climate change and sustainability. The land and its fertility are so important to them. 

 

I could go on and on, but in short, I hope people leave Sicily having seen the history, beauty, and richness with their own eyes and having felt the generosity and hospitality of the people we meet along the way. I also hope they leave with a feeling of the real humanity in Sicily, with an appreciation for the effort and sometimes sacrifices it takes to be committed to their traditions, the land, and these values. I think there is something to learn there. And I think that’s marvelous. 

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates! 

Casa Italia: Preserving Italian Heritage and Uniting Chicago’s Italian American Community

Founded in 1998 in Stone Park, Illinois, Casa Italia aims to be the home for all Italian-American organizations in the Chicago area. Through cultural enrichment activities, presentations, and exhibitions, the organization pursues a mission of preserving the past, celebrating Italian heritage, and ensuring the passage of values to future generations. 

The 501(c)3 nonprofit has embarked on a new chapter as it undergoes facility renovations. Once the upgrades are complete, its Italian Cultural Center will fully reopen to showcase museums and exhibits, including the Sicilian Heritage Museum, Italian-American Veterans Museum, and an impressive 1:100 scale hand-carved model of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Meanwhile, the community is invited to attend author events and film screenings, make Carnevale masks, dig into genealogy, play in the bocce league, and dance at Ballo Sotto le Stelle. The organization also offers language classes for adults and children. Casa Italia’s Kids Camp, also known as La lingua e cultura d’Italia, is a two-week Italian culture and language immersion program where youth can engage in games, songs, sports, skits, cooking, and formal and informal language lessons.

I spoke with Casa Italia Chairman Peter Volpe about the organization. Peter grew up on the northwest side of Chicago with family from Sicily and Bari. His Sicilian family hails from Porticello, which happens to be where my family and Gaetano and Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily are from.  

Peter shared more about Casa Italia’s cultural center, the organization’s offerings, and what he hopes to give back to the community. 

 

 

How and why was Casa Italia founded?

Twenty-five years ago, the Scalabrini Order was going to abandon the property. A small group of Italian business people, headed by the Turano family, said, “Don’t let that happen. There’s just too much history here. Rent it to us. We’ll take care of the property. We’re going to perpetuate our culture. We’re going to bring museums, and we are going to be the home for all Italian American organizations.”

 

That’s how it all started. The Turanos, Gambinos, Stramaglias, Brunos, and others got involved in bringing Casa Italia together.

 

If you look at the Chicago environment for Italian Americans, we have a million organizations, but we don’t work as a single power. And that’s our vision: We’re trying to get everybody together so we can have a unified voice and represent our community with the true power that we possess. The Italian American population is one of the largest in Chicago as far as immigration goes, and we are just too independent of each other. All our organizations have different purposes; if we just keep inside our lanes and follow our direction on what we want to accomplish, we could do so many good things together.

 

Casa Italia has hosted art shows in its gallery.

Where do things stand with your facility upgrades?

We had 19 acres of land and six big buildings that needed renovation. But our grounds are phenomenal, and we can hold festivals and host events.

 

The problem is that the buildings became so deteriorated that they were no longer up to code. We didn’t have the resources to fix them. So, the village of Stone Park ended up purchasing the property, and now they’re our new landlord.

 

While we no longer control the 19 acres, we have our two most important buildings. One is our cultural center, which houses all our museums, our library, and a nice meeting room. The other is our community center, which has a banquet hall, a kitchen, several offices on the second floor, and a gymnasium.

 

We got both of those properties from the village under a long-term lease, and they will do the exterior renovations of the cultural center. There will be a new roof, windows, fire escapes, and brickwork. We are charged with bringing the interior and exterior of the other property, the community center, up to code.

 

We are in the middle of a fundraiser, for which we’ve raised over $600,000 already. They’ve taken the sledgehammers and air hammers and are going to work on it.

 

There’s an incredible amount of work that’s going to be done. In how we envision that property, we hope to  bring the gym floor up to the main floor level. If we can accomplish this we’re going to expand our banquet facilities to hold 400 people. We’ll have a full-sized kitchen. And on the second floor, there will be a conference room and storage space for our clubs where they have mini offices.

 

We’re attacking one building at a time. The community center is our focus right now because it brings in the revenue we need to sustain ourselves. We expect that to be done in late summer of this year. Once we can get that done and raise additional capital, we will switch our efforts to the cultural center.

 

We’re looking for donors; they don’t have to just be from the Chicagoland area. We invite anybody who wants to see our culture continue and propagate to look us up. 

 

Casa Italia Kids Camp provides language and culture immersion.

Tell us about your language offerings.

We’re offering language classes at five different sites all over the city area to make it convenient. The classes range from conversational Italian (if you’re going to travel) to beginner level and up. We have some great instructors who are professors of the Italian language.

 

With COVID, we expanded that a little bit and did a lot virtually, and that stayed with us. We’re still doing both in-person and virtual.

 

Our summer Kids Camp is coming up. It’s two weeks before the 4th of July, and it’s a 10-day immersion for the children to learn everything from language to traditions to cooking to gardening and everything about who we are as Italian Americans.

 

Enjoy a game with Casa Italia’s bocce league.

What do you hope to share with members of your community?

We want to support individual clubs and organizations by being their home. We don’t charge a membership fee. Just come and be part of Casa Italia and host your meetings and events with us. We welcome you and want you there. We are not there to compete with you; we’re here to work with you.

 

As far as the neighbors and the people in the area are concerned, “Hey, get to know us.” Our facility is off the beaten path. It’s not on the main street. It’s in a neighborhood. It’s one square block—that’s how huge it is. Come on in and see it.

 

Everybody who comes can’t believe what we have there. The richness of our library, the artifacts in all our museums, the information we share, the events we do… it blows their minds when they see what’s going on, and they never knew it was there.  

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

RSVP: Casa Italia’s June 11 Zoom Author Event Featuring Lindsay Marie Morris

Cooking with Rosetta: Sharing a Passion for Southern Italian Cuisine

Rosetta Costantino’s deep connection with food began in her early years in Verbicaro, a wine-producing hill town in Calabria. Her father was a master cheesemaker and winemaker, and her mother and grandmother grew vegetables, baked bread, and made pasta from scratch. Their ability to live off the land and produce simple yet delicious cuisine characteristic of the region inspired Rosetta.

That passion followed her to San Francisco, where her family emigrated when she was a teenager. It sustained her during her college years at the University of California, Berkeley, and into her career as a chemical engineer. It was always there in the background until she started teaching cooking classes after 20 years of working in Silicon Valley. 

Rosetta had a chance encounter with San Francisco Chronicle food writer Janet Fletcher, who wanted to know more about Calabria’s food and culture. Once that article, “Calabria from Scratch,” was published, Rosetta’s phone started ringing, and she suddenly had a vibrant business offering cooking classes.

 

She teamed up with Janet to write a cookbook, My Calabria, which was published in 2010 by W.W. Norton and nominated for an IACP cookbook award. Three years later, she published her second cookbook, Southern Italian Desserts, with Ten Speed Press, which was also nominated for an IACP cookbook award.

Rosetta described her early experiences and how they inspired Cooking with Rosetta, her cooking classes and culinary tours of Southern Italy.

 

 

Tell us about your upbringing and how that shaped you.

I grew up in a small, agricultural town in Calabria. Both my grandparents and my parents literally lived off the land. My dad was a winemaker. He had vineyards, but he was also a master cheesemaker. They grew everything, so we really didn’t buy anything when it came to food. 

I spent a lot of time with both of my grandmothers, and that’s really where the love of cooking started because I wanted to be with them in the kitchen. When I was four or five years old, they would let me do simple tasks.

 

I was nine when I first learned how to make homemade pasta. My mom taught me, and then it was kind of more of an “I can take care of myself, I know how to cook” attitude. And it just stayed with me. 

When we moved to California, my parents brought all their seeds, and my mom even brought her bread starter in her purse. So they were very set in their ways. It was like, “This is how we’re going to eat,” and “We’ll do whatever we have to do to find what we need,” which in a way was great because if they had blended in, I probably would’ve lost a lot of that.

 

They started growing all the vegetables. My dad made all the salumi because he was also a master butcher, and my mom tried to figure out how to make ricotta here. We canned our homegrown San Marzano tomatoes from the first summer we were here. So all those things stayed. 

I always tell people in my cooking classes that California was where I learned about the rest of Italy because I only really knew about the foods of my town. I didn’t even know the food outside of Calabria. It’s so different from my town. We had neighbors from Northern Italy and Puglia, so I kept learning. And then I met my husband, who is from Sicily. So that got me into a totally different cuisine than I’ve been exposed to.

 

What led you to start Cooking with Rosetta?

I just kept learning on my own because I loved it, and it was my favorite hobby. But I didn’t go into cooking or culinary school or anything. I went to UC Berkeley, graduated with a chemical engineering degree, and landed a job in Silicon Valley. My career was in high-tech in Silicon Valley, and I used to travel a lot. Any time I would travel, it was always about food for me.

 

My husband gave me Julia Child’s set of French cookbooks. Again, that was foreign to me. I only knew about Italian food. I cooked through all those recipes and just kept learning on my own. 

I had two kids, traveled a lot, and worked what felt like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I decided I would quit in 2001, but they didn’t let me quit. I ended up working from home, and during that time, I said, “I want people to know about the foods that I grew up with.”

 

Even today, in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, there’s nothing that I call authentic Italian. It’s more what I call California Italian. I really wanted people to know about the foods that I grew up with and about Calabria because I felt no one even knew where Calabria was. I decided to teach two cooking classes just for fun. That was 2004.

 

I never thought it would lead to this. Janet Fletcher, a well-known food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, heard about me and called me.

 

She said, “Would you mind if I interviewed you? I heard that you are from Calabria. I don’t know anything about this region and its foods.”

 

She came over and spent the day with my mom and me, and we fixed a bunch of recipes. Then she said, “I want to write an article.”

I told her I would like to teach two cooking classes because no one knows about the foods I grew up with. And she said, “Oh, you should list them in the article.”

 

I said, “I don’t know if anybody will even show up because most people don’t even know where Calabria is.”

 

She said, “Do you know how many people wear Italian hats? They’ve never even been to Italy. They claim they’re Italian chefs who cook Italian food. This is the real stuff. You should do it. This is the Bay Area. There are a lot of foodies here, and people might be really interested in learning something they’ve never heard of.”

 

I said, “OK, I’m only going to do two classes. Go ahead and list them.”

 

A day or two before it came out, she called me and said, “We’re ready to go to print, but I think you should include your phone number if you want to sell those two classes.”

 

I said, “My phone number is not listed. I really don’t want to list it in the paper.” She said, “Not everybody has access to the internet. ” This was 2004, so I said, “OK, fine.”

 

I still remember that first morning because I had not seen the article, and the phone rang at 7:00 a.m. I was trying to get the kids ready, and that morning, I was going in to work.

 

I picked up the phone, and an older gentleman was just thanking me. “It’s like the first time I’ve ever seen an article about Calabria and its food.” He started telling me about his grandparents and how they used to make this and that, and I said, “Can you call me back?”

The minute I hung up, I remember I went across the hallway to wake up the kids, and the phone was ringing. I said, “Kids don’t answer the phone. The article came out, and people are calling about the classes.”

 

I was inundated with phone calls and emails, which kept me busy for two weeks, because the article went around the country. We ended up taking in 200 people: 10 classes, 20 per class. The classes sold out right away. I kept adding and adding, then said, “OK, that’s it. This is going to take me into November.”

 

I really did not expect the response that I got from that article and the number of emails. All these people were writing to ask if I knew their relatives or if they knew what this dish was. That gave me the idea of the cookbook because there was nothing written about Calabria at all.

 

I said, “I need to get all these recipes down, Mom.” With everything that my mom made, of course, nothing was written down; everything was just in her head, so you’d cook and taste as you go along.

 

Norton bought the rights in February 2005. I started teaching in September, put the proposal together, and worked on it. When the book came out, it was supposed to come out in 2008. But then, because of the financial crisis, they held it, so it was published in 2010.

I did my first culinary tour that year. Of course, we had planned it in 2009 because my students were hearing about Calabria. I would bring products back from Calabria, and they would get to taste them. And they would go, “Will you take us?” I said, “OK, I’ll do one tour.”

 

We did one and a second. Then my husband came on the third, and I said, “I’m not doing any more tours by myself.”

 

When he came with me, and everyone got to meet him, they found out he was from Palermo, Sicily, and they went, “Oh, why don’t you take us there?” So they convinced us to do the Sicily tour. 

During that time, my agent twisted my arm to do book number two, Southern Italian Desserts. In that one, we covered all five southern Italian regions.

 

Then, that was it. I said, “That’s it—no more books.” And I did quit work, and then I just focused on the culinary tours and the cooking classes.

 

We also ended up doing Puglia, and almost all of my guests have gone on all three tours. 

Guests sit down after a Borgo Saverona, Calabria, cooking class.

What can attendees expect from a tour?

If you were to talk to anybody who has gone with us, they would tell you that they get to see it from someone from the place. So you’re not getting a lot of touristy food or following the tourist track. It features a lot of people that we know that you would never meet. So it’s authentic, whether in Calabria or Sicily, as far as what people would eat. And that’s what I want them to try. So I am not going to serve you a steak because we don’t eat steaks. It’s not part of our cuisine. They try all the specialties of the areas we visit. 

With the Calabria one, we tend to visit more wineries because I wanted people to get to know the wines, which are not very well known. For seven years, I just did a culinary tour, where we had two cooking classes, and then there were one or two wineries. Then, in 2017, I changed it to a wine tour. So we visited two wineries every day because I wanted people to get to know all the indigenous varietals. We sold out two years in a row.

 

By the third year, a bunch of people started writing to me, saying, “I wish there could be more cooking.” So I changed it to a culinary vacation tour, removed two wineries, added cooking classes, and have sold that every year since then. 

We did the same thing in Sicily. We stay at Planeta, so they make wines. We get to taste all their different wines and visit Donnafugata, where they get to taste their high-end wines. We go to Cantina Florio in Marsala and visit Cantine Barbera, a local winery run by Marilena Barbera in Menfi. It’s a woman-run winery; she makes great organic natural wine. But the tours are all based around food. 

We go to the salt pans and taste salt in Sicily. In October, we get to watch the whole process of making extra virgin olive oil and taste it. We also visit Maria Grammatico and take a cooking class with her.

 

I tell people it’s a culinary tour. It’s not just a tour to a museum or going to galleries; we do that, especially with Sicily, because there’s so much to see there. Of course, we also incorporate that into it, but a lot of emphasis is on the food.

 

In Sicily, they get to try all the street foods of Palermo and the traditional dishes of the area. Calabria is sort of the same thing. We move throughout Calabria, and the food is very different. We go to the wine region and right to the border with Basilicata and the Pollino National Park area. Then, we go down to Tropea and Spilinga, where they make nduja. They get a feel for the entire region in Calabria, whereas Sicily has just so much to see and do that I would have to do two separate tours: the east and the west. So, we cover the western side of Sicily. 

 

In all my tours, we also visit a local shepherd/cheesemaking place so my guests can taste fresh, warm ricotta as soon as it’s made, and of course, the other cheeses they make. This is a unique experience that nobody gets to have in the U.S., as ricotta is not made the same way in Italy.  

 

 

Cleaning anchovies in Calabria

What are your favorite dishes to introduce to your tour participants?

A lot of them are in My Calabria. They get to have the traditional Calabria pasta, which is shaped with a knitting needle. In my town, they’re called fusilli. But for most people, the Italian name is maccheroni al ferretto. I take them where they make the nduja so they can see how it’s made. And then we have dishes with nduja.

 

We eat a lot of seafood because Calabria is surrounded by the sea. Also, I have them clean fresh anchovies because most people think of preserved anchovies. Fresh anchovies and fresh sardines are totally different. So, in one of the cooking classes, they clean anchovies, and we make a dish with anchovies, which is also in my book. They’re layered with flavored breadcrumbs and baked.

 

They have baccalà and many vegetables—peppers, eggplants, tomatoes. We do polpette melanzane, which are eggplant meatballs, but there’s no meat. Another traditional dish is potatoes and peppers, which you find throughout Calabria. I also try to get them to have baby goat.

 

We do wild greens. We do a salad of purslane. I have octopus on the menu, too.

 

Depending on when we go, usually in the fall, they get to taste porcini, the wild mushroom. I base the menus on whatever is in season.

 

We do the same thing in Sicily. We do one night more Michelin-style just for fun, so they see you can have your traditional and you can have sort of invented dishes. We do two cooking classes with Angelo Pumilia at Planeta’s La Foresteria. He is an amazing chef who can do everything from Michelin-style to traditional cooking. But we do very traditional because I want them to learn how to make those dishes. We’ll do the caponata; we’ll do the arancini; we’ll do the cassata; we’ll do the busiate pasta by hand. We do all things that are traditional in the area.

 

 

A visit to Capo Market in Palermo for seasonal ingredients

What’s been the response?

People are surprised, especially by Calabria and its wineries. They don’t like that they can’t get a lot of the wines in the States because they would definitely buy them.

 

And most of the people have never been to Sicily. When they see Palermo and what it has, it just blows them away. In terms of Monreale or Palazzo dei Normanni, it’s just the beauty of what’s there; it’s unbelievable. People don’t expect that. They think that of Rome and Florence in Italy, and that’s where everything is. People are surprised when they see what I say are the jewels we have in Sicily and these amazing temples that are better than those in Greece.

 

People just love the people and the places we visit more than anything else. Everywhere we go, there are people who are dear family friends, so it doesn’t feel like you’re a tourist. 

 

Guests finish a cooking class in Altomonte, Calabria.

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!