“It’s my kind of pasta Bible, if you will. Lidia’s Pasta Bible,” said Lidia Bastianich, who will release her new book, “Lidia’s The Art of Pasta,” on October 14. She will be signing books on November 1 at the Southampton Inn as part of James Lane Fest’s Cookbook Authors Brunch. “I want [readers] to take this book and make it their own,” she said.
She will join other celebrity chefs, including Dennis Prescott, Palak Patel, and Joni Brosnan, at the event hosted by James Lane Post and Bridget LeRoy, Editor-at-Large. Guests can enjoy a three-course brunch with the authors, followed by a book signing.
Lidia Bastianich is a television host, celebrated chef, best‐selling cookbook author, successful restaurateur, a founder of Eataly, and the owner of a flourishing food and entertainment business. Becco, her famed Restaurant Row establishment, is a New York City institution. Among her many awards and honors are seven James Beard Awards and two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Culinary Host.
She has written dozens of cookbooks, and within them, there are many pasta recipes. However, she realized that most of the questions she received from readers were focused on pasta. “Pasta is loved by everybody,” she said. “It makes nutritional sense, it makes economical sense. I go through the old traditional dishes, the story of it, and then I give them the recipe, like Cacio e Pepe, which is in vogue now.”
“I go from pasta with tomato sauce to pasta with seafood, pasta with vegetables, dried pasta, fresh homemade pasta, scuffed pasta, baked pasta,” she continued. Another example in the book is the story of amatriciana, a classic Italian dish. “I give a traditional recipe, but also, I make my own little addendums to the recipe.”
When asked if there is a story or recipe in the book that feels most personal to her, she answered, “I include my story with food and pasta, and the pastas that I made with my grandma.”
Lidia was born in Pula on the Istrian peninsula, which had been annexed from Italy after World War I. When Bastianich was a child, her family was forced to flee the communist regime. They escaped to Trieste and spent two years in a refugee camp before relocating to New York. She learned to cook as a young girl by watching her grandmother, who prepared a lot of fresh pasta.
“My recollection as a child is of making gnocchi, making garganelli or fusilli, making tagliatelle, all of these fresh pastas. I go through how you can use different wheat, different flour — you can use barley flour, you can use chestnut flours — you can put vegetables within the dough, like a puree of spinach, and so on.”
She shares a part of her story that she’s continued to pass down to her grandkids: making gnocchi.
“Potato and flour and a few eggs, all the things that my grandmother had in her garden, in her chicken coop, and making them on Sunday was usually the family meal. I remember rolling them and shaping them.”
When readers are cooking from the book, what emotions or experiences does Lidia hope they will feel?
“I really want them to gain confidence in making pasta, especially making fresh pasta,” she said. “Oh, fresh pasta. It is so simple. Yes, I used to knead it with my grandmother, but they didn’t have a food processor. But now you put flour, eggs, and a little bit of water in a processor, and it will give you a great dough. You let it rest, and then you just roll it. And they have the rolling machines. It is so simple and so rewarding.”
“Making pasta with everybody around the table, I want them to feel that they can do it, that it is not complicated… You make spaghetti, garlic, and oil, you throw in some clams, you’ve got a wonderful meal in no more than half an hour,” she continued.
What excites Lidia most about teaching people to cook through her books is the connections people build through food and how it can nurture loved ones.
“Food for me has been a connection, a way of showing that I care, that I love giving, nurturing people. I learned it from my grandmother, and I saw how she, in the aftermath of the war, really cared and nurtured. How much food really meant to all of us sitting at the table and having a good meal that grandma prepared. Preparing food for somebody, for me, is really a connection of nurturing, of love, of humanity,” she said.
“There’s no better place than the table with some food for people to gather and to really connect. You know, I always say that we should have food diplomacy… Sit down together, eat, and talk.”
When asked if there was one meal from the book she could cook for her family tonight, she said it would always depend on the seasonal ingredients and what she was growing in her garden.
“I’m very much seasonal,” she explained. “I have a garden, and my tomatoes are so beautiful. There’s nothing better than a marinara sauce from garden-ripe tomatoes… The eggplants are also there, so maybe I’d make a nice pasta alla Norma, which is actually eggplant, tomatoes, and some basil. It’s all in my garden.”
Lidia is no stranger to the East End. She lives on the North Shore and has attended chef events in the past. She looks forward to meeting guests in Southampton on November 1. “I’m a Long Islander. I’ve lived most of my life in the city, so I enjoy connecting with my Long Island neighbors in different ways,” she said.
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