Silvia Nacamulli
Jewish Flavours of Italy: Spotlight on Hanukkah
Summary
Silvia will present her new book, talk about the culinary history of Italian Jewry and do a short cookery demonstration with Chanukah in mind, focusing on Italian traditions for the Festival of Lights.
Silvia Nacamulli
Silvia Nacamulli is a master in the art of traditional Italian-Jewish home cuisine. London-based, born and bred in Rome, Silvia grew up surrounded by Italy’s culture and love of food. She went to Israel to study political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then moved to London where she obtained a Msc in politics of the world economy from the LSE, but eventually her passion for food prevailed and in 2002 she set up her business, Cooking for the Soul, where she has established herself as a much-loved professional cook, lecturer, and food writer. Silvia has given hundreds of cookery demonstrations and lectures at cookery schools, universities, charities, synagogues, fairs, and festivals worldwide, and she is on the advisory board of FOODISH, the culinary wing of ANU - the Museum of the Jewish People. Her first book, Jewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook, has just been published by Green Bean Books.
Perhaps it would be still very much kosher food, but more international and daring outside of the Italian realm. So that if anything, it might be that, because a lot of things that I do in my, during my cookery demonstrations or if I do the food deliveries, there’s actually on my website there is a list of food that I do for delivery. You can see that there’s a lot of recipes. Some of them are Italians and some of them they’re not. And that’s because my cuisine kind of combines sometimes somehow both.
Yes, so I teach either privately. So I go to people’s home and I teach as one-to-one or to group of people or on, I’ve done a lot of Zoom classes or I work a lot with charities or synagogues. So for example, in January I’m going to be at the South Amsterdam Synagogue, in February I’m going to be in Radlett and so it’s, I tend to kind of work with larger organisation and try to organise like a large cookery demonstration. So last month I did one for the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Lauderdale Road, that’s my synagogue where I belong to, is the closest that I have, not geographically but closest to my right Italian, right somehow. And generally if I have something on, I send a newsletter about once a month. I hadn’t sent a newsletter for very long time while I was finishing the book, but now once a month I send a newsletter. So if any of you is interested to know which lessons are coming up, then you can sign up on my website Cooking for the Soul for newsletter and I will, I just sent them one out for December. But I will in January. And if any of you is on Instagram, it’s Silvia_Nacamulli. And there also, I usually put to all the events that I do and I put like stories and anything that I might be cooking on the day and I may put this later most. So that’s at the moment I’m cooking, I’m teaching a whole different kind of location.
So I love vegetables. Like in our house there’s probably about between five to 10 vegetables on a regular kind of Friday night dinners and two to three vegetable every meal. So aubergines are very special for Italian Jewish cooking and the Caponata di Melenzane maybe it’s one of my favourite. Melanzane parmigiana, pasta alla norma, do it all with aubergines, the Carciofi alla Giudia definitely, definitely, definitely. Oh, pumpkin risotto. I love pumpkin risotto. Pasta Figiolo, the one that I told you earlier, the gnocci of my nonna Biancas, They’re really special to me. Bigoli in salsa. I really like Bigoli in salsa. Bigoli in salsa is a Venetian Jewish recipe. I do it with a whole wheat spaghetti and has a lot of onions and a lot of anchovies. So you may have to want to like that, but if you do, then definitely give it a go, it’s quite easy to make and quite a winning point. There is a Pappa Pomodoro, it’s here for Pesach, I do like a Pizza Dadzima, which I really like. Of the meat. Oh, the meat there is, this is called Abbacchio Brodettato which is lamb with a lemon and egg sauce, which is really delicious or the Pollo Ezechiele which is so easy to make, perhaps it’s one of the easiest recipe and it’s always a success. With tomato, olives, fresh herbs and red wine. So you can see there’s quite a lot of favourite recipes.