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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the Italian-American cookery writer credited with introducing the public to the techniques of traditional Italian cooking and is widely credited with starting the craze for balsamic vinegar?
She was born in 1924 in the village of Cesenatico in Emilia-Romagna and earned a doctorate in natural sciences and biology from the University of Ferrara.
Her 1956 marriage to an Italian-born New Yorker who subsequently gained fame as a wine writer eventually brought her to the US. Although she had never cooked before her marriage, having to feed a young, hardworking husband made her recall Italy, where her parents and grandmothers cooked.
She began by using cookbooks from Italy, but then realized that she had an exceptionally clear memory of the flavors she had tasted at home and found it easy to reproduce them herself.
She began giving cooking lessons in her apartment and opened her own cooking school, The School of Classic Italian Cooking, in 1969.
In the early 1970s, Craig Claiborne, who was then the food editor of The New York Times, asked her to contribute recipes to the paper. She published her first book, The Classic Italian Cookbook, in 1973, winning Britain’s Andre Simon Prize. A sequel, More Classic Italian Cooking, followed in 1978; and the two books were eventually published in one volume, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, in 1992. In 1997, she won the James Beard Best Mediterranean Cookbook and the Julia Child Award for the Best International Cookbook.
Her cookbooks concentrate on strictly traditional Italian cookery without American or British influences. Her recipes tend to use only ingredients that would actually be used in Italian kitchens (with some concessions to ingredients that are not readily available outside Italy). They are also designed to fit into an Italian menu of two balanced principal courses followed by salad and dessert.
Her recipes emphasize careful attention to detail. She recommends preparing food by hand rather than by machine, and prefers the stovetop to the oven because it allows the cook to engage more fully with the food. However, her recipes are not necessarily complicated. One of the most popular consists simply of a chicken roasted with two lemons in its cavity. She has been credited for starting the craze for balsamic vinegar.
In 1998, she retired from her cooking school, and she and her husband moved to Longboat Key, Florida. There she found that she could no longer get some of the Italian ingredients she had taken for granted in New York, and she decided to write a cookbook for people in the same situation in 2004.
She continues to teach courses at the French Culinary Institute and received the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the James Beard Foundation in 2000 and the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2004.
She also has been honored in her home country with the Maria Luigia Duchess of Parma Gold Medal, and in 2005 she was knighted by Italy’s President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
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Last week’s question: Who is the celebrity chef known as the Irish Cooking Queen who also has her own line for Tipperary Crystal?
Answer: Rachell Allen
Winner: Christina Viduya of QC
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