Reprinted from: http://www.asiacuisine.com.sg/Nacws/1998/5/154/index.html
| May - June 1998 |
Lidia
Bastianich
By
Peter
A. Knipp
The
"First Lady" of Italian cuisine appeared at the Highlands Inn in Carmel,
California, the venue for the recent Masters of Food & Wine.
Bastianich’s association with the Highlands Inn and the Masters of Food & Wine goes back four years. That this wonderful festival is in a beautiful setting is part of the lure that brings her back. "It’s extremely professionally organised and responds truly to professionals in the industry, from chefs to producers. It’s an opportunity to meet my peers and friends, to look at what we’re doing, to look at our philosophy and also to enjoy one another’s food."
During the brilliant cooking lessons which Bastianich conducted, she made a dish that intrigued the audience: orange-braised lamb shank. It was a general reflection of her philosophy to use primarily secondary cuts. "I love secondary cuts. I love long cooking techniques. I love gelatinous muscle meat. I love oxtail and tongue. I think this world has yet to be discovered. It’s much too easy to take a fillet and sear it. But if you can take a piece of tough muscle and make it succulent, make it stick to your finger, it’s easier also for digestion. That’s where the character of the cook comes in. That’s where I can really be instrumental. I have man-ipulated that piece of meat. This piece of meat becomes me. The flavours, the herbs, the spices and everything, really reflect my personality."
When
in 1971, Bastianich opened her first restaurant she was just 24 years old.
"The passion of doing, the need to express oneself without the limitation
of being directed by somebody, an entrepreneurial drive and being young
and not realising all the faults of the industry made me just go ahead
and do it," she recalls. She came to the States when she was 12 years old.
Back in Italy her grandparents had an extension within their own home,
as was common in Europe during that time, where they made their own wine,
prosciutto, polenta and so on. "That’s where my consciousness of products
originated from, because I actually was part of the process, from slaughtering
the pig to production of the prosciutto."
For someone who had no formal culinary education Bastianich was doing extremely well. All she did was two years of biological studies where she developed her chemical understanding of what happened in the cooking process, which in her own words was "absolutely wonderful" and also essential.
To supplement her schooling during these days, she worked in restaurants. She got married at 19. Her husband, Felice, was also working in the F&B industry but more focused on the front of the house. He also had the ambition to open a restaurant and together they did so.
There
are many successful restaurants that are run by husband-and-wife teams.
Very often, the husband is in the kitchen and the wife in front. In their
case it was exactly the opposite. She attributes the success of the restaurant
to the fact that it was a husband-and-wife team where each looked after
different areas. "It’s such a personalised business. The customer needs
to feel special like they are entering somebody’s home, so therefore if
they felt that the two major parts of the business were controlled by parts
of the family they would feel quite comfortable. Being a woman in the kitchen
is not so unusual in Italy. I had no preconceptions of there being something
different because a woman chef is not a novelty there." She is mostly asked,
"What were the difficulties in becoming a woman chef?" And her reply is,
"In retrospect it was a major difficulty, however I prepared myself well,
addressed it professionally and I did what I had to do in order to succeed."
Bastianich’s restaurants have been based all these years in New York, however she is now planning to open a new restaurant in Kansas City later this year. Her son Joseph, who joined the business about six years ago, developed the vision to expand nationally. "The East Coast and the West Coast we felt were a bit saturated, but middle America still needs good and authentic Italian restaurants. We were looking at a mid-west city with a medium population of about two million. We knew the managing partner David Wagner in New York and he is from Kansas City so it came as a natural choice."
So if you should ever have a stop in Kansas, Bastianich’s magic will be there for you to enjoy and treasure.