The Dinner Special podcast

046: Valentina Solfrini: Olive Oil and Italian Countryside Living

by Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about olive oil and Italian countryside living.

Hortus Cuisine

On her blog, Valentina writes as she explores a more natural form of cooking and food, which is always real and locally harvested. She focuses on unprocessed ingredients from her farm and makes simple traditional Italian meals with a creative, modern twist.

Hortus Cuisine was recognized in the 2014 Saveur Food Blog Awards for Best New Blog Editor’s Choice.

I am so thrilled to have Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine joining me here on the show today.

On Where She Currently Lives, Writes and Cooks:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about living in the Italian countryside and moving to New York City.

I am placed in between two regions in Italy, one is called Marche and the other one is called Romagna, and I’m right on the border.

So each region in Italy is very different but it’s really nice because I get the best of every world. I’m right at the seaside, and I have the woods next to me, and the hills, and the countryside. So I have a little bit of everything and it’s really a great place to live in, in my opinion.

On Moving to New York City:

I wanted to really explore the world and I felt like New York City had it all condensed in one place.

So especially back then, we don’t really have much internationality, so to speak. I really wanted to explore the Asian world and the Mexican world. I wanted to know what everything was all about. I had the chance to do this trip to New York and I fell in love with it.

It was amazing.

I knew that there was a lot that I couldn’t impossibly know about other cultures, about the world and everything, but it was so much and it felt so overwhelming but in a very good way. Every time I went out the door and I walked into the street, everything seemed just so huge and I loved it.

On What Drew Her Back to Countryside Living:

Life here is quieter. The pace is much slower especially compared to New York where everybody is super-fast. Everything here is quite laid back. Nothing is really a big deal for Italians.

So sometimes we help my grandparents tend the garden, the vegetable garden or when winter comes, we go to collect the wood for the fireplace.

I have a desk job but our life really revolves around this little moment when you have to plant a seed or collect some vegetables, or me to go forage for wild herbs and stuff like that. It’s all very, very close to nature.

On Her Interest in Food and Cooking:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her interest in cooking and food.

Food was one of those things that fell into the realm of the things that I took for granted because it’s something that always happen in my house.

My mom and my grandmother, they were always cooking, always. I’m lucky because I was in one of those families where women can stay at home and take care of us and the kids, and they’d be cooking, making pasta or baking something or anything.

I pretty much always learned to appreciate good food. We never really had anything processed or we didn’t buy snacks or anything even as kids because we felt that we didn’t need them. We never liked candy or anything just because my mom made amazing sweets at home.

I love to look at my mom doing stuff. I wouldn’t always do something but I would always stay there and look or sometimes would maybe shape the cookies or shape the pasta.

I would help or sometimes I would eat when she was cooking or lick the bowls. I was always there watching and eventually it grew on me.

When I went to New York, I was surprised that nobody was cooking. It was, “Are you serious? What, you go and buy salad that’s already been cut?”

On What Natural Cooking Means to Her:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about what natural cooking means to her.

To me, natural cooking means cooking with ingredients that have not been processed too much. Sometimes, if you learn to read the labels, you’ll see that some foods have really unnecessary ingredients.

If you buy a jar of mayonnaise, you’ll find that it has preservatives and maybe food coloring or even sugar.

So to me, natural cooking is cooking with a list of ingredients that doesn’t have a list of ingredients.

On Her Blog:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her blog.

So that was a very interesting process because when I got back from New York, I realized that I had absorbed so much of other cultures that I was starting to forget about my own.

I realized that Italian cooking is actually quite healthy by itself. It has always been full of legumes and vegetables and there were so many recipes that are Italian and perfectly vegetarian, so I thought it would be interesting to rediscover my own culture with natural food. And I thought of combining those two things and it worked wonders.

I started the blog as a way to explore my own country. I realized that I didn’t understand Italy because I was feeling so good in New York and I didn’t really feel Italian. And then in the process, I rediscovered cooking and I really started to learn about the foods that we used have as kids and to really, really fall in love with it.

On Olive Oil:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about olive oil.

Once the olives are at a good ripeness point in November, it’s usually November, you lay huge nets below the trees and you have little rakes and you rake through the branches and the olives fall out. Then you collect those huge nets of olives and these olives are cleaned.

You separate leaves from the olives and this is quite important because if your leaves get into the olives, then the olive oil taste like grass, and that happens a lot. So you have to be careful with that process.

And then we take it to the mill. I call it a mill. It’s just basically this huge stone, you have two grinding stones, pretty much like flour, and that’s why it’s called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. The very first layer of fat that you get out of this cold pressing, grinding between two stones, then the olive oil just filters out and you get this bright green beautiful thing but it’s actually murky. It’s not as clear.

Olive oil actually gets that golden and that clear when it’s about four or five months old. When it’s super fresh, it’s bright green and quite cloudy. And that’s it, that’s virgin olive oil.

Then you have other kinds of olive oil that are lesser quality. You can obtain by pressing what is left by pressing extra virgin olive oil.

And then you have another press which is regular olive oil.

What I’ve always seen in Italy was extra virgin olive oil. It might be very bad quality extra virgin olive oil, with olives they are not Italian that come from other countries, but we only cook with extra virgin olive oil essentially.

You have great quality extra virgin oil and you have so so quality extra virgin oil and you use the so so for cooking, for stir fries and for stuff like that, and the best quality for dressing.

That’s my experience at least.

I think that the best olive oil, it has to be quite a strong character. It’s really difficult to tell maybe by the color or the smell because it really depends on the kind of olive or on how old the olive oil is.

But usually the green sort of cloudy olive oil is really the best and it’s actually quite difficult to plant and sell because that’s going to be very expensive.

I saw that some supermarkets or some stores had a little sampler with bread that you could try, and at the end of the day, if it’s virgin olive oil, you should just taste it and see if you like it.

You can tell olive oil from extra virgin olive oil because regular olive oil is much clearer and it has a more pale color. So that’s how you tell.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love to watch Jamie Oliver. Just whatever he does, he puts such passion in it that I just love watching his enthusiasm.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There are so many. I love Green Kitchen Stories. They got me inspired to actually start a blog. They were probably the first bloggers that I started to follow seriously.

And then there is another one that’s called In The Making By Belen, which is a healthy food blog. She is a yoga teacher who shares vegetarian recipes. They are really awesome.

And then there is Beth Kirby from Local Milk. She is like pure aesthetics. I love her blog so much.

And then Skye McAlpine’s blog From My Dining Table. She talks about Venice in such a beautiful way.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I follow definitely Beth Kirby, again, on Pinterest. She has a well-organized Pinterest account. It’s so so beautiful.

And then I love to follow Japanese photographers on Instagram. I’m not sure about the names right now but just a bunch of Japanese people. I really love the bright style that they have.

My favorites to follow on Facebook are probably everybody who has something to do with healthy food and Mimi Thorisson from Manger, the French blog. She is amazing. She really has quite the sense for aesthetics as well.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My Vitamix. It’s unusual for Italy because actually when I bought it, it wasn’t available here and I had to buy it from Germany but I love it so much.

It’s probably the best spent money of my entire life. I use it every day, two times per day. I love it.

Some ingredients are really hard to find in Italy, so I have to make my own like almond milk.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

That has to be sesame oil or sesame in general.

I wasn’t into sesame probably because it’s not that known in Italian cooking. It’s not an ingredient that we use. But then I started to experiment with Asian cooking and Middle Eastern cooking and, of course, sesame is there.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Actually, the cookbooks I cook from are those old cookbooks made from the 50s or from the 70s that have those very nice recipes that I love to reinterpret in a healthier way.

And then I have my favorite cookbook to look at is probably Isa Does It. It’s a vegan cookbook that is so so full of fun ideas. I don’t think it’s always healthy but it’s amazing.

I also love to read the Julia Child’s cookbook because it’s amazing. Just so well done. It’s my kind of cookbook.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a song in particular. I guess all French or Italian songs get me in the mood. There are a bunch of French songs that really getting me in the mood for cooking.

Old French songs, maybe like Edith Piaf. You know these people but maybe the happier kind of songs. Not the super romantic French songs.

On Keeping Posted on Valentina:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

You can follow me on Facebook at Hortus Cuisine, Pinterest, then I’m on Instagram, and I love receiving comments of all kinds. I look forward to hearing from people who write in on my blog.

 

Subscribe to The Dinner Special podcast

024: Meike Peters: How Mediterranean Cooking Can Be Simple

by Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast on How Mediterranean Cooking Can Be Simple

Eat in My Kitchen

On Eat in My Kitchen, Meike shares her culinary journey which is inspired by her mother’s passion for cooking and food, and her connection with Malta in the Mediterranean. Her photography is amazing and transports us to her dining table in her apartment in one of Berlin’s wide boulevards.

I am so thrilled to have Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on the show today.

On Her Blog:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

I’ve always loved food and cooking. I’ve been cooking for almost 20 years now and we always have lots of friends over. Sometimes I cook for ten, 15, 20 people. After our dinner parties, people always ask me for recipes, they just give me a call during the week like, “Can you give me some inspiration and tell me what I can cook?” So at one point I thought I can also share all of this on a blog.

I also love photography, I love writing. The blog brings everything together. Now you can just go to the blog and see what I cook and get some inspiration from there.

Cooking is definitely easiest. I don’t even have to think much about it; it just comes naturally. Photography and writing, it depends a lot on my moods, especially with writing. Sometimes when I’m in the right mood or sometimes even when I’m lying in bed in the morning, I have a whole text in my head. But when I’m not in the right mood, it can take an hour, two hours and it just doesn’t come out.

With photography, it depends a lot on the light. So since I take all my pictures with daylight, I depend a lot on how the lights change. Sometimes the food and the light and everything works perfectly, and sometimes it doesn’t, and then it’s a bit more work.

For me it’s important that the food looks quite natural and even of late, I don’t decorate much. With my food, I’m not the kind of person who gets five plates and five fancy spoons. What you see on the photos is what I use for cooking and the plates we eat from. It’s very practical.

On Her Mother As an Inspiration:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her mother as her inspiration.

We talk on the phone two, three times a week and very often we just talk about recipes, what we cook.

She travels a lot and sometimes she calls me from a restaurant and tells me, “I had this amazing pasta here in Sicily with truffle. You have to try that.”

We both have this huge passion for food; for cooking and good ingredients. And very often it comes very natural that we talk about it other than mother and daughter. Others may talk about clothes and shoes and handbags. We talk about cabbage, carrots, soups, and pasta.

When I visit my mama, we sit at the table and we drink wine, we eat. Sometimes we meet in the kitchen at five in the afternoon and we just cook and chat. Although my family is German, it’s quite Italian.

On Mediterranean Food and Cooking:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Mediterranean food and cooking.

It doesn’t need many ingredients, but the ingredients are very good. It starts with good olive oil, good vegetables, ripe vegetables, something that’s hard to find sometimes here in the north of Europe, in Berlin.

But in the Mediterranean, they pick the vegetables and fruits from the trees and they are perfect, ripe, sweet. So whenever we go to Malta and I come back home to Berlin, I’m a bit disappointed with what I find here. The cooking is varied because they have these amazing ingredients; they don’t actually need much. You throw together what you have.

Whenever we are in Malta my cooking is very quick.  The seafood is amazing; we just throw some fish on the barbecue and some great bread and olive oil. A quick salad and that’s it; doesn’t need much. But what you have is very, very good and it’s very pure.

I use a lot of fennel seeds in my cooking. That started, was it ten years ago, when I moved in with my boyfriend because they have amazing fennel seeds in Malta. So there are more fennel seeds in my cooking. And citrus fruits like lemon zest, orange zest, I use that a lot. These are ingredients that everybody really knows but once it really fits your taste buds, you might use it a bit more. So for me, it’s citrus flavors and fennel seeds.

The best thing is to travel to Italy, to Malta. Find a nice mama who opens her kitchen for you and cook with her. I think it’s like with any other style of cooking as well; that it’s always best to meet someone who is from this country and to cook with this person.

Because a cookbook, a blog, they can inspire you to try out things that you might not have tried before, but the best thing is always to cook with people who come from this country or from this area, and to learn from them. That’s what I believe.

They know more of the secrets because it’s the cooking that comes from their mother or grandmother; all these recipes that are given from one generation to the next. And I love to learn like this.

On Food Culture in Berlin, Germany:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food culture in Berlin, Germany.

It’s very multicultural and there are these trends like in any other big cities. At the moment, there’s big hype for Korean food, burgers as well; a big burger hype.

There are always new people coming to the city and bringing their culinary background with them. But it’s really very inspiring because it’s permanently changing and developing.

The locals here, they love a dish that is called Königsberger Klopse. It’s like a meatball and it’s cooked in a broth. The sauce is a bit thick and creamy with capers. It’s sweet as well. For some people it’s quite a challenge. If someone prepares it well, then it’s really, really good.

What is very famous here is currywurst. Everybody knows currywurst, it’s a sausage. It’s light with a curry ketchup. I’m not a big fan of that.

On Her Blog Series, “Meet in Your Kitchen”:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about a series on her blog called Meet in Your Kitchen.

The idea is that I meet other people in their kitchen because on my blog people just see what happens in my kitchen.

For Meet in Your Kitchen, I meet other people in their kitchen, people who inspire me. Some have culinary backgrounds, some are artists, designers, friends. The idea is to show a process through the eyes of their kitchen.

We cook one dish together; the recipe will be, as always, on the blog and as well, they choose if they want to bake or to cook. I spend a few hours with them in their kitchen and we talk about their lives, the projects, food. Also culinary memories, how they learned about cooking and the food culture in their family.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None, I don’t watch any. I’m sorry.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

I love Manger by Mimi Thorisson. I mean, it’s very popular. I love France. I love the food. I love the pictures. It’s a very popular blog.

I love What Should I Eat for Breakfast Today by Marta. She lives in Berlin as well. I did a feature with her and I love her photography. I love her writing, her start into the day, and I love her blog.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

Okay, I follow Marta What should I Eat for Breakfast Today, she makes me happy.

I follow Manger as well, Mimi Thorisson because she shows France.

I like to follow travel bloggers. I don’t know their names, but I love to see when they go to the Caribbean and it’s like going on holiday for a split second.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

Everybody should have good olive oil, good flour. I use spelt flour, like white spelt flour, for all my baking and that’s really good. Yeast for baking, also.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Something I cannot live without is bread. I love bread. If that’s the only thing I can eat for the rest of my life, I’m happy. I love bread.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love the Nigel Slater cookbooks because I love his approach to cooking and his diary form of the books.

I like Ottolenghi although I don’t cook much of his recipes, but I find him inspiring.

There is a new cookbook that I got for Christmas, Persiana; this book is great too.

I like Nigella Lawson’s baking book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Jazz music, in general, Wes Montgomery. Yes, jazz music, definitely.

Sometimes I need something loud and wild, sometimes classic music. It depends a lot on my mood really.

Keep Posted on Meike:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.

The blog, that’s where I share pictures on Instagram, on Pinterest, on Facebook, on Twitter as well. You get the recipes, the pictures, all on the blog.

Have Meike's Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now: 

    First Name (required)

    Your Email (required)