About

Ciao e benvenuto/a!

 

I’m a 30 year old Italian living in the Middle East. I recently got married and I am trying to lure my husband (La Chauve-souris) into liking Italian food. MWAHAHAHAHAHA! (that was supposed to be an evil laugh, FYI…)

Like many foreigners (he is Algerian), he had the common misconception that Italians eat nothing other than pasta and pizza and that our food is heavy and full of cream and cheese.

For the moment, things are going according to my plan – despite the fact that I’ve gained eight kilos in the process! – and La Chauve-souris says he loves the way I cook and has started to ask me to prepare Italian food.

 

Ergo, this blog is a notepad for dishes I cook at home.

I very rarely use cookbooks or follow recipes I find on the Internet: most of the time I just go with what I have learnt in my mom’s kitchen as a child and adapt it to ingredients that I think might pair well, which is the easiest road to kitchen disaster!

Add to the fact that I live in a tiny apartment and in my smurfkitchenette there’s not even enough space to completely open the oven door, and you start understanding why I feel blessed every time someone praise my cooking.

So I’m trying to keep this diary as a way to remember the tentative experiments which eventually led to the perfectly cooked risotto or that wonderfully-tasting seafood soup, so that I can offer my husband his favourite foods the exact same way he tasted them the first time.

It is known that acquired taste counts a lot, and so does memory: the first time we try a new dish, that is the taste we will associate to that food forever. I know that my grandma’s lasagna is not the best one, still, for me it is the only one worth eating… So, through chronicling my attempts in the kitchen, my aim is to build a foundation for my husband’s taste for Italian cuisine.