Abstract:

As many Italians, I grew up in a house where my mother cooked every day. When we get together, we eat food. So there was already that, but that's part of everybody’s experience around the Mediterranean. I think in Turkey it may be basically the same. Later, when I was working as a journalist in international affairs, I traveled around the world, mostly Asia. And while I was traveling, I was eating, of course, and exploring new places. I started being surprised by the variety of food and the different traditions; I got interested in food as a way to also understand the way people lived. When I was doing this work in international affairs, I started collaborating with a food and wine magazine in Italy called Gambero Rosso. At first, they asked me to write little reviews of ethnic restaurants in Italy, because I had lived in China and Japan, traveled anywhere from Turkey and Syria, to the Philippines. And so I started writing these little texts, professionally. Later, the publisher Stefano Bonilli (who sadly passed away a few years ago) asked me to write longer feature pieces and he sent me to Spain, France, and England. The fact that I spoke different languages helped, of course.