While you may not be able to escape the colder weather outside your front door, David Rocco’s latest cookbook, Made in Italy, will bring a taste of Italy to your kitchen. In his third book, he delves further into la dolce vita to bring together a new collection of traditional, regional and best of all, simple Italian recipes. We caught up with him to talk about, what else, Italy.
What do you mean when you say, “I’m not a chef, I’m Italian”?
I’m not a trained chef. I do not have the education or formal training in cooking, but being Italian, cooking Italian food is in my blood, it’s in my DNA. So it’s is kind of a play on that.
What made you decide to bring your cooking to television?
I actually wanted to be a filmmaker and an actor. I saw a cooking show back in the late 90s as being an easy thing to do — certainly easier than a film — and that would be a nice way of getting into the filmmaking business. Little did I know that I would be doing it 10 years later!
You have two previous cookbooks. What made you decide to write another?
I like to say I have only one previous cookbook because the first one [Avventura] was something that was done through another production company, but Dolce Vita certainly was my first baby. I think it was hugely successful, and we just felt it was an obvious thing to do another one. Italian food is so simple and it’s so accessible. And aside from our fan base wanting more, we just had more to say, and I had more to write and more recipes to share, so it’s something that I felt was an obvious kind of sequel.
What makes Made in Italy different from your previous two?
I talk about some of the regional cooking. Some of the recipes are from the island of Sicily, the Amalfi Coast and Tuscany. We have little chapters that reflect the times of season, like the olive harvest, so they’re little vignettes of moments in Italy.
What is your favorite recipe in Made in Italy?
Oh my god, it’s like saying pick your favorite child! I love pasta. I’m a big carbs guy, I love risotto, but probably my favourite recipe is the spaghetti alla carbonera. It has crispy pancetta, fresh cracked pepper — it’s a beautiful kind of natural creamy pasta, so delicious — and I present it with the egg yolk on top. It’s raw and the heat of the pasta kind of cooks it up; everyone loves it! That and fried pizza dough. People think fried pizza dough must be heavy, but it’s these delicious light little fluffs of dough with tomato sauce on top.
What is the most surprising recipe in the book?
I have this one recipe, called caponata (Napoletana), made using stale bread. You slightly submerge it in water, to moisten it up a little bit, add olive oil and then add a few cherry tomatoes, some anchovy fillets, some olives and it becomes this bread salad. When you look at how simple this recipe is, literally using peasant ingredients like stale bread and a couple of tomatoes, you think no, it can’t be this good, but everyone loves it.
How important is authenticity in food?
To me, there’s a reason why recipes endure the test of time. When you have a classic recipe, it’s usually because it works, and people love it. What’s really wonderful about Italy, and I talk about this in the book, is that from region to region, town to town, there will be a slight difference based on that region or town’s take on it, but the base is always the same.
What is the easiest thing to mess up with Italian cooking?
I think, a good tomato ragu, which is a slow braised tomato sauce with mixed meats. It’s done in Italy all the time; cooking mixed meats, braising your meats and then adding your tomato puree and then letting the meat cook in the sauce for about 3 hours. The actual recipe is so simple, but I find that in North America we have a tendency to overcook with garlic. There’s an idea that Italian food is about cooking with garlic, and that’s not the case.
What do you think of the Italian food scene in Toronto?
We have some great pizzerias and great Italian restaurants in Toronto; it’s a great food city. Because of the Italian base you have customers that are Italian that expect it to be authentic. So I think our Italian food scene here is fantastic!
What’s next?
Well I just shot a new TV series called David Rocco’s Amalfi Getaway, which is based on my cookbook. It is filmed entirely in the Amalfi coast. I am also developing a new series in Brazil and we have another series that’s in development as well. So there’s lots of good things going on.
