Who is for you the migrant?
Generally speaking, the migrant is someone who leaves his or her native place for lack of employment and goes in search of a better life in another country. Yet, in a broader sense, the migrant is a person who finds the courage to risk, looking for new opportunities and a better future.
Name two or your favorite dishes, one from your own tradition/culture and another from a tradition/culture different from yours.
Having to choose a dish I like from my culinary tradition, I’d say “risotto”. From other cuisines, I love eggplant alla Salernitana.
Tell us one of your personal experiences related to migration.
Due to my work, I met many people who had fled their country to escape poverty. This is my main personal experience related to migration. One day, while I was working abroad, one gentleman in his seventies came to my office. Faltering at the beginning, then he hesitantly told me: “We share the same last name. This is the first time I meet someone with the same last name since I migrated.” We tried to discover whether we were related. But I soon realized that it was not having the same last name that really mattered, rather to have found something familiar. The gentleman began weeping and thanking me. In his eyes, I represented the life he had left. I reminded him of his family and the village he had left many years earlier and never seen again.
What products of your culinary tradition do you miss the most when travelling?
Gnocchi, Amarone wine, and Ripassato Valpolicella.
The theme of the first edition of IMAFestival is Food and Migration. What images, sensations, memories and emotions does this theme bring to your mind?
Images and memories of Italian towns, of the popular traditional festivities with music and the square full of people… here people meet, socialize, have fun, share good and natural food cooked in front of their eyes. Images of the Mediterranean scenery with the typical aromatic scent of the local flora… The food is an important component of our own culture, as personal history and unbreakable tie to our roots… Sensations of beauty and nostalgia of that part of ourselves that transforms in order to survive.
