ABOUT ME

Hi. I am Antonietta, a self-confessed tomatoholic and, as my old-fashioned and distinctive name reveals, a native of Southern Italy, a part of my identity which is utterly inescapable.

First and foremost I am a London-based brand and marketing strategist and a success performance coach. Yet there are many more strings to my bow:

I am an amateur cook, a WSET-trained wine lover, a traditional recipes enthusiast, a pasta freak, a regional food devotee, an organic produce admirer, a keen experimenter with new flavours, a born epicure, and a ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ militant.

Food drives me. Travelling inspires me. Cooking relaxes me. Farmers’ markets thrill me. Learning new things nurtures me. Sharing them delights me.

Welcome to my blog.

ABOUT THE BLOG

I am a food lover who learned to cook by watching my mum at the stove – creating new recipes and handing down the old family ones is a magical and ancient gesture repeated down through the generations. Like my mother before me and my grandmother before her, I couldn’t get enough of the enchanting atmosphere of the family kitchen. If I close my eyes I can still clearly see the old wooden pantry, that chunky pestle and mortar and the green water jug with those bright poppy flowers, sheltering from the scorching summer days in the refreshing shade of the large room.

In that kitchen – my childhood one- there was always something sizzling with a cheerful smell in a pan. A triumph of my Mediterranean origins flooding the room and delighting all my senses – these are my earliest and very much treasured memories.

A drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil from the local cooperative, the sweetness of a red onion, a bunch of ruby-red cherry tomatoes, the pungent aroma of the basil leaves, some bread just taken out of the oven or a fresh piece of fish,  caught that morning, were of some of the elements of  this culinary alchemy. The formula was always utterly simple: a little bit of this and a little bit of that, mixed with instinct and affection, produced perfect recipes to keep our taste buds dancing.

So I was raised in Italy, on home cooked meals and eating together as a family – all of us enthusiastic eaters with a visceral passion for food. Given these conditions I guess it was inevitable that I would develop such a deep love for cooking.

For me, food is all about pleasure, sharing, conviviality and the joy of eating is an integral part not only of my culture, but also of my daily life, even away from my home country. Although I grew up in Italy, I currently live in the kaleidoscope that is London and I have also done a fair amount of globetrotting, so I can proudly say that I have been lucky enough to taste superb food from numerous countries and that I still want to taste more and more, never getting tired of that excitement.

The idea for this blog though came about as I was browsing the Internet for a quote with which to christen my new Moleskine and I chanced upon the following:

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

To answer a question like this is a demanding task. Naturally I could come up with ridiculous answers, and some that were downright absurd. I’m sure you could all imagine such ideas, but for the sake of decency and self-respect it is best they are not shared.

Among these ideas one seemed less foolish than the others: writing a blog.

I don’t know if I will succeed but I have decided to give it a go anyway. Here I am, wish me luck and enjoy.