What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is what I call the unexpected. This is because, although a lesson can be planned, studied, and organized in detail, teaching always drives you inside a flow. It is quite like the sea waves that do not allow you to know exactly where they can arrive; at the same time, when you enter the class, there is a point of departure and an ideal point of arrival, but then the dynamic of the class leads you to explore unfamiliar shores, but always guided by the concept of sharing.
My favourite part is sharing information with the students. Especially if they are international students, because that is really when you get where no one would have imagined you could get.
What are some current projects you are working on?
Today, I am responsible for the Gastronomic Library of ALMA, which counts more than 12,000 volumes focused on the theme of gastronomy, and it represents a true flagship for what concerns the book heritage on this subject in Europe.
It is an important centre of gastronomic culture in itself, so I am working in the direction of making this heritage as accessible as possible to students. I am continuing what has been done in recent years by those who have preceded me, ensuring that the library is also a place of study and participation, and therefore also a classroom in its own right.
What is your organization's mission and how do you continue to work toward it?
Alma's mission, among others, is certainly that of promoting Italian agri-food products around the world and raising awareness of what is made in Italy in the agri-food sector, alongside the common sense of training the new generation of international chefs, "the cooks of Italian cuisine", therefore what we also call the next-generation chefs.
Every day I see this objective clearly focused. I truly believe that by training these young chefs we can actually work towards the creation of an agri-food system, including gastronomy that is competitive, but above all sustainable, in line with the needs of a planet that is changing and a world in transformation, in which we are participating in a positive direction.
What do you hope participants take away from your programs?
Above all, curiosity, so the real lesson I think is this: the idea of learning to read food, so not just cooking it and eating it, but stopping every time in front of a raw material and learning to ask yourself why that raw material is here in the kitchen where I am. To understand how I can contribute to transforming it into a unique dish and why, but above all to learn to discover every hidden aspect of food that goes beyond its form, aesthetics, and taste, and therefore everything that it contains.
As Maestro Marchesi used to say, "Simple is never trivial", so even when faced with an apple, which can be considered one of the simplest products of all, we can actually discover that there is an infinite number of other stories to be told, and therefore curiosity in reading what we eat and prepare for others.
What questions do participants often ask you, and how do you typically respond?
Certainly among the most popular questions are: Who invented pizza? And: Who invented ice cream? These are very interesting questions that lead us to think about the origin of a product or a raw material, and I usually answer this question by asking another question, which is always my favourite answer, for example, "do you know of other products similar to pizza?", which can then lead us to think about a possible solution to the initial question.
In the end, you realise that we have so many similarities with other peoples and cultures. The origin counts for much less than the roots, because they take you back in time and space, so from Italy you may find yourself on the other side of the world. That said, pizza was invented in Italy.
Why is it important for people to travel abroad and experience new cultures?
Here I connect to what I was saying earlier. Sometimes we set out with the idea of discovering something completely different from us, instead, I think the goal of the journey is really to trace the similarities. I travel to discover that, in the end, there are few things that differentiate us from others, as humankind and as human beings, so I like to go and find the points of contact that are always also elements of difference.
Maybe we change a few details, but I am surprised when I find out that on the other side of the world there is a grandmother who makes recipes that are practically identical to the ones my grandmother used to make, just by calling them something completely different. This is what travelling is all about. I often travel to get to know myself better and I do it through others.
..there are few things that differentiate us from others, as humankind and as human beings.
Why do you think learning a new language is important?
In Italy, we say: "Speak as you eat". It means to speak clearly, simply, because eating should be the simplest gesture, in which a man discovers the world. Actually eating is very complicated if you want to do it in the right way; speaking a language is just as complicated if you want to do it well and for this reason, I believe it is important, especially for those who want to “eat” another culture, to know its language, because food is a language.
If we understand the language, with which the other people express themselves, we can also better understand their rituals and traditions. Therefore, the basic concept of food as a cultural element from our point of view is necessary and fundamental.
What does meaningful travel mean to you?
I hate spot travel—that is actually what was very fashionable until recently. Leaving, knowing that you will come back, makes the trip a parenthesis, something that opens and closes, that lasts very little. At the end, even in my experience when they happened for work or for necessity, these occasions are always nice moments of discovery, but you never completely immerse yourself in the culture.
For me, a meaningful journey is a journey in which I can stay, rest, listen, watch, read, eat, go shopping in the right markets; that means to live the lives of others and put myself in the shoes of my hosts. I think that travel requires staying and living an experience, rather than constantly moving around.
What does ethical global engagement mean to you?
I am a convinced supporter of the theme of sustainability in the kitchen, in fact I really believe that every day we can make a difference in our daily choices, from the way we dress to the way we travel, to the way we eat and cook, we can trigger mechanisms of change. My idea is that acting locally means global change and that is why the dimension of my global ethical commitment is precisely to do good here and now.
I am convinced that in my small way, just as in the end we little ones daily destroy the world, seeing it from the other point of view, we little people on a daily basis can do the world good or try to do it as much as possible. So every day we live to do something different, possibly respecting others and the planet. That is my commitment.
