...Vegetarian journey dedicated to my grandparents...
This journey comes from a true story.
Mine.
It comes from the people who raised me, before I could even choose who I wanted to become when I was three months old my mother entrusted me to my grandparents and I grew up with them.
Until I was six or seven that was my home, that was my childhood.
My points of reference were my grandfather Antonio Natola and my grandmother Maria Zizzi.
I still remember their scent every day a scent of home, of cooking, of the land, a scent you never forget.
My grandfather Antonio was a man of the land, he woke at dawn when everything was still and went out to the countryside and I went with him.
I walked beside him through the vegetable gardens, in silence watching, listening, learning without even knowing it.
We gathered what the land offered, we did not choose, we did not decide, but we accepted.
Every day was different, every season had its own rhythm.
Then we went home where my grandmother Maria was waiting, a great cook, a true one.
She took what we had gathered and transformed it into something extraordinary.
Her vegetables were delicious, simple, but perfect nothing else was needed.
The kitchen filled with aromas that I still carry inside me today, aromas that accompany me every day even now.
I was there, in the middle of it all between my grandfather's land and my grandmother's hands.
And without realizing it, I was becoming who I am today.
Today that memory has become cuisine. This vegetable journey is a return to those days.
A return to that truth, that simplicity that life made of essential things.
Here vegetables are not a side dish, they are the protagonist, here seasonality is a rule, not a choice.
Technique is here, but it remains at the service of the product.
Because everything I do today comes from there, from those mornings in the fields, from those aromas in the kitchen, from those simple gestures but full of meaning.
This is a journey of memory, of identity, of roots.
A tribute to Antonio Natola and Maria Zizzi.
And to everything they taught me, with love and simplicity.
The journey
With a welcome glass of Prosecco and two glasses of wine.