Paola Cimmino, the House of Talents home cook from Naples
I am an Italian and grew up in Naples; the chaotic, colourful, mad city in Southern Italy. My passion for food and cooking comes from my family. My mother is a great cook and so was her mother.
When I was little, I asked my mum to let me cook with her so that I could learn. I wanted to make sure that one day, as a grown up woman, I could still eat delicious food without relying on my wonderful mamma.
So I spent many days in the kitchen with her, helping out and asking questions. My fondest memories are of these days cooking, chatting and eating, every dish marking the season with its rites, smells and flavours.
The beauty of seasonal food! Like the last day of summer, for example, which was dedicated to preserving tomatoes for the winter*. A family affair with everyone involved; boiling, peeling, then filling the glass bottles with the rich red succulent mixture of ripe tomatoes and basil.
Or on hot summer days mum frying aubergine for the summer parmigiana dish, just before heading to the beach or to the boat, where we could have our little feast on a table set up at the stern, under the blazing sun.
In winter, eating the gorgeous Sicilian red Tarocco oranges with that beautiful tissue paper - usually a drawing of a woman wearing what looked to me like a gypsy’s attire, but who was actually a pin-up – wrapped around each orange like a special gift.
My family used to own a renowned pasticceria (cake shop) in Naples. I love to watch the pastry chefs making and decorating cakes, mesmerized by their artful skills and entertained by their fast Neapolitan chatter.
Then I would go home and attempt to make the same cakes. When my father finally sold the shop in the 1980’s, I grabbed as many relics, photos and recipes I could lay my hands on, distraught to part from this family institution. You see, it wasn’t just a shop - it was the story and tradition of my family, imprinted onto my DNA. Soon after, I started baking cakes, often with my dad, for all our family and for any occasions, turning my mother’s kitchen in a small laboratory. The endless joke was ‘Dad, should we open a pasticceria?’
For my first dish next week, I will be showing you how to make the classic Spaghetti puttanesca, which I don’t believe, as some do, is named after a whore, but something very different.
*The bottled tomatoes are very simple; just tomato and basil. The tomatoes are thrown into boiling water just enough to allow peeling then pushed into super clean recycled bottles with just basil, then hermetically seal with bottle caps. You can bottle the whole tomatoes or the puree. These would last all winter providing tomatoes with very tasty sun-blazed trapped flavours to cook tomato sauces.
Paola is our in-house cook, here at the House of Talents. She is offering Italian inspired Italian inspired cookery classes for adults and kids.
Times: 3pm on Tuesdays and Fridays (60 mins).
We are asking for a £5 donation for group sessions (with a minimum of 5 people per session).
Please get in touch with Paola to sign up for one of her group classes, or to book a one-to-one session.
Email: paolacimmino3@gmail.com
Instagram: @cucina_cimmino
The House of Talents is home to a community of professional artists, writers, actors, musicians, performers and mental health coaches, who are offering affordable online creative courses for adults and children to learn at home. Classes include portrait painting, performing, public speaking, creative writing, self-publishing, meditation, mindfulness, nutrition and more. 10% of what we earn goes to charity.
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