In My Kitchen with Paula

Chewing the Fat with Melissa Fiorucci: An Umbrian Story

• Paula Mohammed • Episode 2

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Do you want to know what Umbrian cuisine is really about?  Do you think all Nonnas have a passion for cooking?  

You may be surprised by what you learn in this episode.  Listen to Melissa share her experiences with the food, people and culture of Umbria, Italy as she unveils for us Her  Umbria.  Melissa Fiorucci is a talented home cook, host with In My Kitchen and is very passionate and knowledgeable about Umbrian cuisine and culture. Whether you've been to Italy or planning a visit, or just dreaming about it.  You are going to love this episode. 

In this episode you will hear many cooking tips that were passed down to Melissa from her Nonna, you will learn how to make two recipes that are very nostalgic for Melissa, and how to visit Umbria and experience it like a local... plus much more!

I can’t wait for you to hear all that Melissa has to share!

 
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SAY HELLO

In My Kitchen creates connections one dish at a time, by exploring culture through food. I do this through unique culinary workshops, speaking engagements, and of course, this podcast.

I'd love to hear from you! Connect with me in one of three ways:

Paula Mohammed: Hi, welcome to this week's episode of In My Kitchen with Paula. Today, I get to chat with Melissa Fiorucci, talented home cook, host with In My Kitchen and a very passionate and knowledgeable person about Umbrian cuisine and culture. Whether you've been to Italy or planning a trip to go, or just dreaming about it at the moment, I think you're going to love this episode. 

Melissa takes us on a culinary journey about Umbrian cuisine stories about her Nonna, which are full of fabulous cooking tips. And also Melissa shares with us her perspective on the real life of the Italian Nonna. We talk about cucina povera, which is a concept that's gaining more and more traction these days. And finally Melissa shares with us some super insightful travel tips you won't want to miss. So come on, let's dive right in. 

Hey, Melissa. Welcome to the show. I am so excited to be here doing this interview with you today. 

Melissa Fiorucci: Great to be here.

Paula Mohammed: I'm just want to give our listeners a little bit of background to who you are, Melissa. This is not the first time that I've had the privilege to introduce Melissa. Melissa is one of the original In My Kitchen hosts. It's been such a journey. Actually, I think we could do a podcast episode just on these past four or five years. Today we're want to talk about Umbria and explore Umbrian cuisine, cooking culture, Nonnas, and we're going to do that all with Melissa. Melissa is passionate about sharing good food and laughter around the table. Melissa is an avid storyteller and I can add a very entertaining storyteller who spends her free time facilitating a deeper understanding of the cultural impact of cooking and its role in creating community. And in her words, she also spends an inordinate amount of time cooking for her sister's family. So Melissa, speaking of your passion for sharing good food, I can't wait to dig into how this passion started for you of cooking, and especially how it sort of got ignited with Umbrian cuisine. Can you tell our listeners how this started?

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm lucky enough to, to come from a family, where like my Nonna Nonno, my grandparents were quite, quite involved in raising us. Like, don't tell my mom that or anything, but, but yeah, so we were, really involved with my Nonna and Nonno and, they come from Umbria. My dad was born there: central Italy. they came from a very rural setting, uh, had lived on farms, et cetera, and then eventually settled in East Vancouver, and that's where I grew up. So I, you know, like the, the sort of stereotypical, uh, kid that went home for lunch and, and had like a full pasta dinner and, and a little bit of wine in her water glass, that was sort of my experience growing up. We were lucky enough to start going back to Italy when I was four, I think. That was our first time want to back as a family to Italy and specifically to Umbria. Like we weren't going around doing this major tour all of the cities in like two weeks.

We were going to, um, this rural area to see a bunch of oldies and to eat their food and hang out with grandparents and watch people play bocce and that's it. And so some of my like fondest memories, and I was a picky kid too, so I, I wasn't eating much, but some of my fondest memories were of going for these, you know, long, drawn out, I guess you could call them country meals, but they were like these, these meals with my family in, you know, sort of these wood paneled, kitchenesque type restaurants, right? Where a family member would be cooking because they had this sort of rural restaurant and you'd just kind of eat whatever they gave you and it would be, you know, pasta and roast meats and vegetables. It was nothing fancy. It was not sort of what we think of as like Italian food today and all this sort of extravagance or anything. It was really simple. and I don't know if my fond memories are because of the food or because of the community and the people I was with, but that really influenced me and how I want to cook and the people I want to cook with, and who I want to cook for. It's the food, but also sort of the company you share. Does that kind of make sense?

Paula Mohammed: That totally makes sense. It's that whole experience, hey, of being around the table together, enjoying each other's company and just spending time and talking and breaking bread together.

Melissa Fiorucci: It's also the fact that like, the simplicity of it all. Like my Nonna's pasta was so good, Paula, and I think I've told you this, like a bajillion times. And it wasn't loaded with sauce. It certainly wasn't loaded with meat. I mean, meat was expensive to her. And she had grown up not having a lot and, and on a farm. So like meat was something you didn't waste. And my sister and I talk a lot about it and what made Nonna's pasta so good. And we're talking like pastaciutta. That was just spaghetti. Like her tagliatelle, her fresh pasta was really excellent, but that was just a special occasion meal.

But her just everyday spaghetti that she made was so delicious. And we, we were saying, we're like, it's, it was watery. And that sounds so unappetizing, right? But I assure you, Paula, it was so good and it's because she didn't overload the sauce. Her pasta water was seasoned. She used pasta water to kind of dress all the sauce because that was a way to make the sauce go longer, right? Like, or, or to last more. I don't know. I feel so lucky to have eaten like that.

Paula Mohammed: I've known Melissa for about four or five years now. And, if you follow Melissa on her Instagram account, which I'll put in the show notes, you're cooking, you're always cooking, you're, and it seems to be you're cooking different things all the time.

What is Umbrian cuisine? 

Melissa Fiorucci: Italian food is extremely regional, like hyper-regional.

So what you eat in one area is not going to be the same, same thing you eat in another area. The food changes north to southeast to west, depending on how landlocked you are, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, there's definitely similarities. I would say the unifying thing is like pasta pomodoro. Every Italian eats pasta with tomato sauce. But Umbrian food for example is, I mean, I hate to use this term rustic because it's like overused, but it's just, it's this simple, highly flavored farmhouse or country cuisine. It's very much tied to the land. Things like pork products, for example, that pork reigns supreme in Umbria. Things like, you know, pancetta or guanciale or sausages. Their pasta traditions. It also depends where you go. If you're in the mountains or if you're in the city. In the cities, they have maybe more elaborate kind of special things like salsa ghiotta, which is, they call it glutton sauce. So it's this sauce with like capers, anchovies, parsley, and you use it for roast meats and that sort of thing.

A lot of game as well, interestingly enough. So, I mean cinghiale, wild boar, pigeon, uh, all these things make up but these sort of slow roasted braised meats that might not be what you think of. Charcoal fires are a big thing. You'll see people cooking on fireplaces all the time.

Interestingly enough, there's a couple of like my favorite places that I like to go when I'm in Umbria. One of like the typical specialties of Umbria is torta al testo and they have similar things in sort of the central part of Italy in general. But torta al testo is like a flatbread. I can't say it's akin to focaccia or anything, and it comes from Roman, even I believe Etruscan times, don't quote me on that. But it's a flatbread that you would cook, that you cook on a testo, which is an iron plate that you would put on coals. Ideally it's done on coals. And it makes this delicious bread that you, you know, you, you cut and you serve it with your stews, your meats, or you can cut it and stuff it with cheese, greens, prosciutto, all that stuff. 

But anyway, some of my favorite places in Italy, you could almost say they're like fast food places. I don't want to call it a restaurant. It's not a restaurant. It's like a counter service place that you can eat outside. It's Lago Trasimeno and they have all these testos, all these sort of iron things set up on this, you know, charcoal fire. And they'll make you sort of, your, your torta al testo to go. Another restaurant that I love, it's actually up in Assisi and they have this huge like open flame grill fireplace in this like caverny kind of space. And the food is good. It's not excellent. We're not talking like Michelin-starred or anything. It's not like this crazy experience, but, they, they just sit there and they grill. They grill all your meats, lamb, all that stuff. But what I love that they do there is they take potatoes and they cook the potatoes in the ash.

And so you can order these potatoes that are then brought to you hot and soft, that you split and you drizzle with olive oil and lots of salt. 

Paula Mohammed: Speaking of this mouthwatering Umbrian cuisine, I know you've brought, one or two dishes that you're going to talk to us about that you're going to share, and I'll put the recipes for them in the show notes. If you could just share with us what they are and then why you chose these dishes. I hope you remember what you picked, Melissa.

Melissa Fiorucci: You know what, Paula, this is a good question because, you know, do I remember? I do not. But I think, I think one of them was, I, I think a parsley sauce. Did I not? I believe it was the parsley sauce and this is similar to salsa ghiotto but very simple, Nonna-fied version. 

My Nonna had this beautiful garden. It was wonderful. Tons of vegetables. All of our vegetables came from my, my Nonna's garden. And what I've started making now, I've been making it for years. It's sort of that food memory taste thing that you pick that you want to remember. So I've been actively trying to make this more; is my Nonna when she was serving things, I mean, this is want to to sound so boring, but folks boiled potatoes and carrots when your Nonna grows all that stuff, it tastes really good.

So that's like a comfort food for my sister and I: just like boiled potato, boiled carrot. And then my Nonna would make this sauce, which was just finely chopped parsley, which she would chop by hand, a clove of garlic, olive oil, and vinegar. And so this sauce is sort of the simple version of the glutton sauce that I was talking that has like capers and anchovies. But it was just this parsley sauce that you can put on, you know, your vegetables, to, to kind of brighten them up. And it would just be on the table almost like a condiment, but it's also really good for boiled meat. Something interesting about, you know, Umbrian food, it's, it's a lot of soups, a lot of minestra. Your everyday thing would probably be a minestra soup, like a soup with some pasta broken up into it.

When you make the broth, you have a lot of meat leftover. You wouldn't waste that. You would serve it as a second course. So that parsley sauce is also really good on your boiled meats. So that was one of them. 

So then the second one was the crostini, with sort of, we call it, called it, pate di olive. So an olive pate. My Nonna growing up, she used to cure her own olives. Honestly, I a little bit wish there was a time that I could go back and see what she was doing in Umbria on the farm because she was renowned and she used to make cheese and all these things, which, which is a cheese that's actually going into extinction in Italy. But she used to make all this cool stuff and obviously when you come to Canada that changes.

Anyways, here she used to cure her own olives and you'd get them from California or whatever. And I just remember downstairs in the wood-paneled basement, there'd be this huge glass jar. And it would be murky. It was murky and it was filled with the, the olives that she cured. And Paula, my sister and I tried to cure olives like a couple years ago.

It was a, it was a nightmare. So she didn't pass that knowledge onto us. But what she would do then is she would make this pate. She would finally chop the, the olives, like a tapenade. It, it was a tapenade. She'd finely chopped these olives, garlic, parsley, uh, olive oil, and a bit of vinegar. And it's so simple. I can taste that on my tongue and I'm remembering, the sort of lunches at my Nonna's house. And what was interesting enough, what I think we're missing with the olives, they were bitter. They were more bitter.

Paula Mohammed: Melissa, when you talk about food, it seems like Nonna's name goes hand in hand and definitely I've noticed in the last five years this resurgence of the Italian Nonna through social media. And we tend to romanticize, I think, what that might be like. I often have this vision of you in the kitchen with your loving Nonna teaching you all her secrets. Was that what it was like? What was it really like growing up with your Nonna.

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, listen, my Nonna was a tough lady. She was very sweet. She was very sweet to other people. And I mean this in a, in a really kind, loving way, but I mean, she wasn't, yes, we have this idea of the Nonna who's sitting there and she's saying, mangia, mangia eat. Here, you know, you must be so hungry.

My Nonna would feed us. Yeah. But she'd say, you know, in Italian, she's like mangi ancora? Like, are you still eating? My sister and I always had great, like pretty good appetites and she'd be like, are you still eating? And she wasn't lovingly passing on her knowledge to us. She had a job to do. And that job was to cook for, for people and get it done. She didn't have time to like mess around and say, okay, dearest, help me. It's okay if you mess up. If we messed up, there was a wooden spoon on standby that would be used. 

So I, when we were growing up, I think the one thing I remember explicitly that we were allowed to do, uh, was put the potatoes through the ricer when she was making gnocchi.

Okay. So gnocchi are a big thing as well in Umbrian cuisine, particularly for sort of special occasions and my Nonna made really good gnocchi. Also, because the area in which they lived around Pietro and Gubbio, it's really well known for their potatoes. Anyways, that's another aside, but that's why they make that dish. Because their potatoes were good.

So we were allowed to rice the gnocchi. That's it, Paula. Like we weren't sitting there kneading, then we would steal the potato and she'd give us a whack and things like that. So I often say it was sort of learning by osmosis. Like you're learning by kind of being in the same space. But because these women had to work. You know, these women had to work and my Nonna started cooking for siblings, for, for all the people that worked on the farm, for cousins, et cetera, at a very young age.

They had to build her a step stool so she could reach the counter to do whatever it was she was doing, be it making pasta or whatever. So you know, they didn't have a romanticized... and I find that that's sort of where I, where I have this challenge because I have a very romantic version of food, right? And eating and whatever. Theirs was very much one of sort of duty. So they had to do this duty. Work. Labor, right? I understand that now. I think there was a time when I was like, "oh, wow, I wish she would've taught me", but how would she have been able to do that?

Paula Mohammed: Right. 

Melissa Fiorucci: Because you know it was, it was work for her. And you know, training someone else, you don't have a lot of time for it. And that's why people say, "Melissa, you're such a good cook and, and you know, your food is good." I put a lot of time into it.

Paula Mohammed: Right. It's a privilege.

Melissa Fiorucci: It's a privilege. Right. And I'm lucky because I, I have that time and I have a job that affords me the time. And I'm, my, I don't have kids. I'm not running around to do this stuff. So I have the time to do that. My Nonna had the, well, that was her job, right? And I think we have to also start thinking of, you know, the, the things that our Nonnas were doing weren't sort of passions. They were jobs that were assigned at birth.

Paula Mohammed: This is a great time to talk a little bit about the cucina povera. So Melissa introduced me to a book recently which as you're talking about your Nonna, I could picture her being one of the...

Melissa Fiorucci: Oh, you bought it?

Paula Mohammed: I did, I'm just showing Melissa the, it's called Chewing the Fat, an oral history of Italian food waves from fascism to dolce vita.

I found this, I've only just started, I'm, I think I'm about three oral histories in, but the book is interviewing Nonna's from, from, well, one is like over a hundred years old. But it's fascinating because it's exactly what you're talking about too, Melissa. So the whole idea of cooking was work and you didn't waste anything. Can you talk to us a little bit about your perspective on, on cucina povera?

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah, exactly. And really like this, this sort of poor cooking, all this stuff, it's, it's become quite fashionable right now. Right? I'll give you an aside, like nobody wants white bread, right? Everyone wants sort of these, these rustic loaves that are, you know, full of flavor and that's what, you know, that's how bread used to be and it's better, whatever. I'll tell you this, my Nonna and the, the majority of old folks I hang out with in Italy are like, don't give me that brown stuff. I don't want it. I don't want that because they want white bread, because they remember when that was all there was to eat, right?

And they don't have these fond... it, it's memories for them. And I'm generalizing and, of course, and I want to be clear, this is just my specific experience, what I've heard from, you know, them. They're like, give me the white bread. Give me the refined flour. Okay? Because that to me is, I mean, again, I'm, I'm digging too deep, but it's a, it's a memory of their hardship. And, you know, or things that we, we see, and I'm guilty of this as well. I use so much olive oil. I am like, I am dousing it in everything. So I'm calling my stuff, you know, rustic Italian cooking. Meanwhile dousing it with olive oil. My Nonna was so parsimonious. Like she was so careful with her olive oil use because do you think they had olive oil? If they had olives... they were in the mountains in Umbria so it was hard to, to grow olives. But if anyone had olives or olive oil, it would be sold. So they wouldn't use that for seasoning or to dress. They would use rendered pork fat. Um, they would use lard. My Nonna said, oh, you know, I, she got mad at me once because she saw me dressing a salad and we dress our salad with olive oil and vinegar. And of course, you know, I don't care. I'm liberal. I love olive oil. I would bathe in olive oil. And she got mad at me and she said to me, you know, when I was growing up, you know, we had a dribble of, you know, pork fat and that's what we would use to dress the salads. So it seemed wasteful to her. So I just find it interesting that we're going back and we're, and I'm not saying we shouldn't because it, the food is all delicious.

Like the, that rustic bread is delicious. But I just think we have to understand sort of what, what it came with. I had my Zia Pia, I loved her. She was this little, tiny, tiny woman. She was my Nonno's, my grandfather's sister. And she'd always be sitting at the, at the head of the table. And you know, her, her daughter-in-law, Marcella, would bring her her food, she'd eat her plate of pasta or minestra soup, whatever. And then, you know, would bring her her second course, you know, whatever meats, and there would be vegetables on the plate. And never fail. Every time she'd be like, no, no, no, no. Get those vegetables away from me.

I don't want to see them. I don't want them. She's like, I don't, I don't want to see anything green. I don't want to see anything. But why do you think, Paula? It's because that's what they ate.

Paula Mohammed: Right.

Melissa Fiorucci: They didn't eat meat. So now that they like she's since long since passed away, but you know, of course she wants meat.

My Zia Maria, my Nonna's sister who's still alive and she lives on a like tiny, tiny piece of land where she grows vegetables and she has some animals, but she's getting a little older. But she's certainly not wealthy, right? And I think about how she cooked. 

And then I think about sort of how elaborate I make everything. Like one time I made, torte de pasqua, which is an Umbrian cheese bread that you make for Easter. And I made it when I was living in Italy. I, I was there for Easter and I made it for her. And it's really tall. It's super interesting and you make it with Pecorino cheese, et cetera, et cetera. Anyways, I made it for her and I brought it to her. And I was so proud. I was so proud. And she had some and she's like, "è troppo saporito", like it's too flavorful. And it's not that hers is not flavorful. It's just she could tell, I mean, again, I'm projecting here, but I think she could tell that I was, you know, I bought the expensive Pecorino. I had bought all this stuff. I had ex exaggerated. Yeah, that's I think the right word. I exaggerated. It was too much. It was too much. 

Paula Mohammed: Showy.

Melissa Fiorucci: Too showy. Too showy. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be, and that now there's not time to sort of refine and whatever, like, you know, that's sort of, you kind of have to move along and, and whatever.

But it really made me think. And, and it's also like when you talk to my Zia Maria and you're like, okay, what do you put in this? She makes artichoke lasagna. So lasagne al carciofi, which is really good because she has them in her garden, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And I say, okay, what kind of, you know, cheese do you use for this?

And she's like, you know, just some white fresh cheese or whatever. She's not going to buy like fancy, you know, buffalo mozzarella, which sorry, has its place. I love it. I would bathe in it, or burrata or all these things. She has, she doesn't have access to that. So when she says it's, even when she says, you know, like grating cheese, you know, I'm obsessed with Parmigiano and stuff like that. They're not buying. I, I go through so much. They're not buying these huge wedges and just like wasting it. I don't know. It's just, it's really, I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on, I, I don't think I'm want to to change the way I cook, but it's just interesting to see. And if you really reflect on, you know, what, how they cooked and, and the changes now, even though I'm, I cook very similar to them, it's still in sort of this exaggerated way.

Paula Mohammed: I imagine that you are reflecting on the hardships that your Nonna went through that we probably don't think about so much. 

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah, I do. And if you would listen to my Zia Maria and my, when my Nonna was alive and when all the sisters would get together, they'd fight over who had the worst jobs. 

They'd say that my Nonna had it easy because she got to stay in the kitchen. My Zia Maria is really, has a lot of pent up anger about being sent out to work in the field. And she goes, I didn't even have shoes. So, I mean, basically the story is sisters still have throughout history always fought so it's really cute.

Paula Mohammed: I know for our listeners they may not know this, but Melissa, you go back quite often, to Umbria, and actually you lived there just after university, is that right?

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah, so I didn't live in Umbria specifically. I lived in Milan because that's where the jobs were. But yes, after university I moved to Northern Italy, which is where I, there's also, I mean, that's another podcast, but like Northern Italy, Southern Italy, don't get me started, like Sicily, the food there, amazing.

Anyways but I moved to Milan, but then spent considerable amount of time in Umbria to be with my family and also my boyfriend at the time was from Umbria. So we'd go back, back and forth, always.

Paula Mohammed: So today when you go back there, when you see what the restaurants are serving or what people are, you know, come and have a rustic Umbrian meal, what does that look like? Is it going back to what you would consider now traditional Umbrian cuisine or is it sort of that post-war time?

Melissa Fiorucci: Yeah, I would say that everything would be post-war. The places I go to in and around where my Dad was born and these sort of mountain country sort of, I don't, trattoria, or whatever. If you go to the right ones, it's still very similar to like what you would get during a feast day or, you know, at the end of like the threshing season or when everyone would get together to celebrate the end of this agricultural season. So the menu is always pretty similar, right? Like come around you, you get, you know, crostini and you know cured meats. You would get, they would come, they come around and serve you two types of pasta, like a tagliatelle and gnocchi. And then you get roast meats and it's, you know, guinea hen, is it guinea hen?

Yeah or guinea fowl, like, I'm not sure. Lamb, sausages, anyways, this mixed grill of meat, potatoes, salad, that's sort of what it is. And it's wonderful. It just hasn't really changed. It hasn't really changed much, I would say. Also things that are like highly tied to the season. So there's one restaurant that I quite like and it's in the town of Pietralunga and it's called, you know, Osteria Fiorucci, which is my last name and so I'm always like chuffed to bits to, to go there. But it's really good. It's really excellent simple food. They make a dish that I love. They make cappelletti which are, you know, stuffed, they're sort of like tortellini, and in the winter they serve them in, serve them in broth. And in the summer it would be, in, you know, a sauce. So not in broth. But anyways, I, I prefer them in broth. So I was there in August and I'm the only crazy person that was like, can I get these? My cousin knows them. So Volterre says, "Hey, can we get these in broth for Melissa?" And she's like, no. Like, they won't do it for me.

Right? So yes, It hasn't changed in that particular part of Umbria. Things are very tied to the season, tied to tradition, which I'm, I'm not necessarily saying tradition is the right way. I want to be clear about that, but it has it has fond, like it evokes memories of what was in the past, I guess you can say.

Paula Mohammed: And are you seeing that those memories and that generational knowledge, is that being passed forward now? 

Melissa Fiorucci: Well, well, yeah. Everybody loves their Nonna's and their mom's food, et cetera. But I would say particularly talking from experience of my own family, I think it's being sort of lost. It's like we said earlier. It's work. Hard work. Very hard work. I'm just thinking my dad made passatelli, which is another one of my favorite dishes. And it's like a breadcrumb pasta. It sounds very unappetizing, but it's delicious. That you would serve in broth. And they were like, you made passatelli. 

It's also a search for maybe more refined flavors so I would say a little bit it is being, yeah, it's a little bit being lost, plus people have left those areas. Like if you go into that part of Umbria and you drive through, you know, people left because it was a hard life.

Paula Mohammed: Melissa, many of our listeners I'm sure have been to Italy, have been to Umbria. I have been. I would love to go with you by my side. Assuming that's not want to happen in the near future, what would you tell me to see, eat, and or do that would allow me to have a experience in Umbria that's as local as I can get.

Melissa Fiorucci: Hmm. This is a good, good question. Also, I should plug, if you want me to come with you to Italy, literally, and for all listeners, you literally just have to pay for my plane ticket. I will make it happen. This is my dream. I would love to do that. But okay, so to make things as local as possible. Well, I mean, honestly, everything, everyone's going to enjoy different things.

But I would say one, don't go, I mean, this is really hard to say, because if you're, if you have the opportunity to go to Italy, that's a pretty huge privilege. And I recognize also my privilege to be want to back to Italy so often. So I always say to people, oh, why are you going and running around to see all these places? But they're saying, well, this could be the only time I get to Italy, right? So I don't want to sound like a jerk by saying something like, well, what? Just make sure you have a house in the countryside. You know, just go to like, make it your home base and go to small towns. I recognize that that's a real privilege and, and probably not going to happen for everybody.

But what I would say is that if you have the opportunity to have a car, okay, and if you're want to in the summer and also into the fall, you will find on the streets big advertisements, big posters that indicate a sagra. Sagras are community specific food festivals. Outdoor sort of experiences where you can go and have the privilege of lining up, but you, you have this amazing experience where you get to eat this food that has been cooked by members of the community, a lot of old ladies and old men, outside and the money usually goes to whatever community association it is to support. They are, in my opinion, one of the most fun things to do. And they have them all over Italy in the summer, but they're really specific to like Tuscany and Umbria. There's quite a few of them. They are some of the most fun experiences I've ever had.

Generally you get a menu, a sort of, a piece of paper with the menu on it, and you check off what you want and the quantities. You pay for it at a till. Somebody, you find, you find a table, like some are more organized than others, right? And then usually it's kids, kids from the community that are bringing your food to you.

Now is going to to be the best food you've ever had in your life? Well, I'm going to be honest: I've had some of the best food I've ever had in my life at these. But again, I think it's, but some of it's just fine, nothing special. But I would say it's a real amazing experience to see communities together collaborating to feed people.

And you can taste some hyper-local specialties, right? You can try a big mix of a ton of different things. You get bottles of wine. Everybody is pretty happy and excited. So I would say if you have the opportunity, do that, you will get a real taste of Umbrian kind of life. And it's a social activity too. 

Otherwise, what I would do is go to the markets. Walk around a market and get, get a porchetta sandwich. So get a, a sandwich, made with the porchetta . 

Another thing, what else I would do is I would just try to find particularly in the fall, some sort of festival to go to. Like they always have festivals and there will be like food or community or a medieval festival. That's where you really see everybody coming out and having a good time. So, I mean, basically you need a car. You need a fair bit of adventure and just do that. But really it is to see like communities in action enjoying food altogether.

Paula Mohammed: Thank you so much. I love that piece of advice. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for when I go traveling is what you said: community in action. Like seeing that, seeing people and, and feeling a part of it, right, as well. I think that's such a lucky experience to have that if you can get that when you're traveling.

I think that's a perfect note to end our chit chat, Melissa. But before I do, I just want to say I wasn't kidding when I said the food that you make is some of the best I've had. And not only that, it's so easy to recreate. So I'm going to tell you a quick little story. I was just out two nights ago with friends at a culinary event. We were at an Italian restaurant. The food was fabulous. And there was wine tasting. And the friends I was with, when they had a four month old baby, they decided to go to Tuscany, to Umbria and live for four months and travel with a four month old. So all that to say they love their, Italian, Northern Italian cuisine.

Anyway, they've done your class, they did your online class and I think it's when we made the ricotta gnocchi and the pollo in porchetta, which is the chicken done in and Melissa's Nonna's recipe, a chicken done in porchetta style. But as we were in this Italian restaurant having this beautiful Italian food, all they kept talking about was Melissa's ricotta gnocchi. And they were telling the other guests at the table how it's some of the best gnocchi they've ever had. But even better is how it's so easy for them to recreate for their family and for friends. And so they make it all the time with your simple tomato sauce. So just so you know, people are talking about your dishes around town. 

You can find out more about Melissa as a host for In My Kitchen at inmykitchen.ca. And I'll also put a link in the show notes for your upcoming online classes. And for people who are local, melissa also does some in-person classes as well. And also on our Instagram, InMyKitchenwithPaula. And Melissa, where can people follow along and learn more about you?

Melissa Fiorucci: Absolutely. You can follow me. And just to be clear, it's not curated. I am not a sort of a, an Instagram personality, but please you're welcome to follow me on meli_thecook, at Instagram. And it's just sort of fun, my life and cooking when, when I remember to record, but, I, I just like to have a lot of fun and, and bring joy to people's lives. So feel free to reach out there.

Paula Mohammed: Thank you, Melissa, and I'll put those in the show notes as well. Melissa, I can't wait to cook with you again and do this again with you as soon as we can. Thanks so much for spending your time here.

Melissa Fiorucci: Thank you, Paula. That was great. I loved it. And thanks to all the listeners.

Paula Mohammed: Well, what did you think? Please let me know. I'd love to hear from you. You can send me a message on Instagram or an email. 

If you'd like to join me on more culinary journeys, sign up for one of my virtual cooking classes where I interview and cook with passionate, knowledgeable home cooks from diverse cultures. 

You'll learn about the recipes, culture, and people from the places you want to travel to. These classes are the perfect way to explore culture through food with me as your guide, moderating the experience to share it as a fun, smooth adventure. Just click the link in the show notes to see upcoming classes. 

We also have unique corporate team building cooking classes and all of our virtual classes are available for private groups: a great way to celebrate milestones with friends and family from afar. Also, I am excited to offer my free guide, 10 Unique Travel and Food Tips You Won't Find Anywhere Else. The link is in the show notes and there's some really great info in there. 

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. If you have any questions, just ask me. I'll be happy to chat with you. In the meantime, take the first step on your next culinary adventure and sign up for my free guide. 

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