“When the pot of water was boiling, everyone had to be at the table”

“Some time ago, I decided to write a book about my grandmother Mamé. She was a nurturing woman, in every sense of the word, who always told us “eat, otherwise you will be too skinny”. I wanted to bring together in a book all his recipes, the moments of life, the stories that nourished me and made me as I am, without my realizing it then.

Of Italian and peasant origin, Mamé did simple and straightforward things – she was a powerful grandmother who lived until the age of 97 on the farm next to our house, in Salon-de-Provence, and with whom we would eat very often. Every summer, we went to his native village, to Aisone, in Piedmont. It smelled of mountains, mushrooms, chestnuts, undergrowth, nature…

We sat on the low wall of the village to taste gelati, the cows came to see us, curious. We went to visit my grandmother’s brother and sisters, we had gargantuan meals, dozens of dishes followed one another, antipasti, meats, ravioli, gnocchi…

Eating has always been closely linked to Italy

Gnocchi is our festive dish par excellence, the one that most corresponds to the joy of getting together and cooking to delight the other. First of all there is the time ahead, where we prepare, almost as important as the party. Mamé took out her huge boards, we ran to help her, I participated by rolling the rolls of dough and turning the pieces on the fork to shape them. Then I went outside to play.

Mamé and the others sat chatting around the floured table. The next day, there were often about twenty of us, we bustled about, we set the table in the courtyard, everything was simple and joyful. When the pot of water was boiling, everyone had to be at the table, because gnocchi can’t wait. Mamé arrived, conquering, carrying the dish at arm’s length, we were ecstatic over the softness of the gnocchi and the sweetness of the sauce. It was happiness.

So, for me, eating has always been very much linked to Italy. Everything takes on another flavor, a new scale, a poetic, aesthetic dimension. During my teenage years, I had difficult times with food, I went through a period of mild anorexia. Back in Provence with my grandmother, I started my food rehabilitation, rediscovered pleasure, reconnected with memories, beauty and the taste of things.

A form of continual wonder

Then I met Jean-Yves, the father of my children, an excellent cook, and, fifteen years later, Pierre, my second life and work companion, also passionate about food. All this has contributed to bringing gastronomy into my daily life. Little by little, I focused my work as a cultural and event curator on cooking, because it is also culture.

The link with the landscape, nature, agriculture, producers: cooking is also a way of telling what we see, what we experience, what we feel. It’s a form of continual wonder, a link between worlds, between people. What connects us to the earth and to the living.