The food chose me.
This is what happened and it is still happening.
This has been one of the blessings of my life: finding myself in something I like.
I was born on a little island of the Tuscan Archipelago and I spent a great part of my time at my grandmother’s, in her pink house along the promenade, often sleeping in my great-grandmother’s canopy bed with white curtains all around, woken in the morning by the light of the sea waves reflected on the ceiling.
I grew up between the beach under her house and the restaurant that her sister, the famous Angiolina, started in the 50s, with a veranda on the same beach, just under my grandmother’s windows.
I started to work as a game: with old uncle Giovanni I folded napkins, stretching them along the edges first, getting them ready before zia Angiolina ironed them. I pat dried the silverware, putting forks and knives in order in the drawer. I went to wash the little olive oil bottles – the ones that go on the tables – on the beach, shaking them with sea water and sand to degrease them. I might have been 3 years old. Later on I could cut the chili peppers, learning very early that the spicy substance is in the white inner ribs and in the seeds. I could peel cloves of garlic. I could pick the nicest leaves of the rucola.
I started waiting tables when I was 12 and I was very proud to go to the customers with paper and pen. I spent all my summers as a high school student working as a waitress at aunt Angiolina’s restaurant. There was a boy who worked at his parents’ restaurant in the summer. We finished work at about the same time every night and we used to go dancing together, joining the other friends who were already having fun. I am the one with long hair on the left of the photo. This boy, maybe because of the same summer work schedule, maybe for other reasons, became first my boyfriend, then my husband, then the father of my kids, then my business partner.
Our marriage marked a change in the restaurant: we both had a job (bank and office) in Livorno and we used to spend weekends and part of the summers helping his family in their restaurant.
When we decided to quit our jobs and open our own restaurant we knew enough about restaurant management and food. Our desire was mainly to go back to the island and live there for good, instead of going back and forth just to breathe its air. Going back meant opening a restaurant, which was something we were able to do.
The restaurant was attached to the ancient walls of the Castello; it was named Le Tamerici, in honor of the wild plants that once grew along the beach of Campese and were cut down to make room for a residence of doubtful taste.
After three years the restaurant was listed in the main restaurant guides in Italy. We were the proud owners of a recommended restaurant.
During those years I also earned my second diploma. Following the advice of a friend, I qualified as a Food Technician. I did not need to learn about cooking, but not only did I want official recognition for what I was doing, I also needed to know about diet, nutrition, chemistry and biology: all subjects that still help me in my job.
We ran the restaurant for 12 years, from 1985 to the beginning of 1997.
For the following three years I worked with food, also as chef in a top restaurant in the Ravenna area.
Then, in 2000, we moved to beautiful Florence.
For us Florence meant a new start after family tragedies – the same ones that pushed us to sell the restaurant – and uncertain years. Personally, I decided to quit the world of food, as I felt down, sad and depressed. I found a job in a hotel and started studying to become a manager.
The food chased me once again.
Reading the job page of a newspaper, I saw a company looking for a chef who knew English. I wondered: why should a chef know English? I went to see. The company was a university institute for foreign students looking for cooking instructors. I do not remember saying “yes”. I probably did, as I found myself hired for a professional program starting in January 2001.
I realized how difficult and important my new task was when I was about to enter the first class, where 36 eyes were looking at me hesitating at the door. I was terrified. When I came out at the end of the lesson, I was completely happy, feeling I had found my way in life. I quit my hotel job after a while.
GiglioCooking was, and is, an obvious and natural consequence.
GiglioCooking is the place that represents my idea of food and cooking as a natural daily act and not as a stressful competition: something all of us are born with and have been raised surrounded by… although in different ways.
In recent years my food-life has been enriched by new tastes and new knowledge: meeting a countryman, besides giving me a new perspective on love, is helping me grow in my profession. Through him…
… I get to know, up close, everything about the life of olive trees and…
… the process of making olive oil;
I get to know about the organic cultivation of wheat (and its rotation) and…
…how to feed happy free-range chickens (with it);
how to fill a basket with wild edible goodies during a hike in the countryside.
For all this and more I am grateful to life for putting me, and keeping me, in FOOD.