Gaita Fores brings adobo to Italy, her second home

The Westin Excelsior Hotel Via Veneto in Rome, Italy, will always have a special place in restaurateur Margarita “Gaita” Fores’ heart. The magnificent white palace on the sparkling street of Via Veneto was home to Gaita and her siblings during their earlier travels to Italy.

 “The Excelsior Hotel was a part of my childhood. When I was 11, my mom took all of us to Europe for the first time and that’s where we stayed! One of the most unforgettable moments was when I dropped my watch from the window of our room on the sixth floor and I had to run down to the sidewalk to pick it up! As a child I used to frequent Ristorante Doney where I first savored the unique flavors of Italy,” Gaita recalls.

The place is so dear to Gaita that she was ecstatic when she got an invite from Italian Ambassador Luca Fornari to take part in “Kulinarya: Images and Flavors from the Philippines” Filipino food promotion week, which is slated from June 13 to 19 at the Westin Excelsior Hotel.

 “I said ‘yes’ right away. Who would have thought that I’d soon be back at Ristorante Doney not only to dine there but to actually cook Filipino dishes like adobo for its guests?” Gaita enthuses.

A passionate foodie and an advocate of Pinoy food, Gaita believes that Filipino cuisine is on its way to becoming recognized internationally.

 “We just have to have a really unified approach in presenting it rather than being so regional about it,” Gaita explains.

For the food festival, Gaita will prepare some of her original creations in a creative way — sometimes pairing unique Filipino ingredients with the best of Italy. There’ll be adobo, sinigang, pancit, kinilaw and pinakbet with anchovies.

“These are dishes that a lot of foreigners are familiar with simply because we have so many hardworking Filipinas in peoples’ homes all over the world. Their employers and their children already know what adobo is,” relates Gaita.

In whipping up these dishes, Gaita will rely heavily on the recipes featured in the book Kulinarya: A Guide to Philippine Cuisine.

“When you introduce foreigners to Filipino cuisine, you can’t just shock them with the most pungent bagoong, the most sour sinigang or the darkest adobo with chunks of pork fat. You have to introduce these dishes to them gently. Let them try a version that is still typical but is something that their palate will welcome. And that’s what Kulinarya is all about — standardizing Pinoy dishes,” she explains.

A diplomatic reception will also be held on June 12 to celebrate the Philippine Independence Day and the 65th anniversary of Philippines-Italy Bilateral Relations.

Guests can feast on barquillos cylinders with caprino mousse topped with lamb adobo flakes or salmon roe, chicharon curls with kesong puti mousse and prosciutto di Parma crisp, lumpia pillows with smoked bangus and sotanghon in a balsamico and guava jelly bath, among others.

Gaita Fores goes back to the Westin Excelsior Hotel in Rome, this time not just to dine at Ristorante Doney but to cook Filipino dishes for its guests.

Apparently, Philippine Ambassador to Italy Virgilio Reyes has also arranged for Gaita to touch base with some members of the Filipino community to exchange thoughts and ideas about how rich this cross-cultural exchange between Italy and the Philippines.

A Gastronomical Partnership

The “Kulinarya: Images and Flavors from the Philippines” Filipino food promotion week is just one of the components of the three-pronged Italy-Philippines Gastronomical Partnership. The other two are the Casa Artusi Philippines launch on May 30 at The Commissary at Whitespace, Makati City; and the Festa Artusiana from June 16 to 24 at Forlimpopoli, Italy.

The project proposal came from Italian Ambassador Luca Fornari who is so supportive of Gaita’s work. The amiable ambassador cited Gaita for her efforts in introducing real Italian cooking to the Filipino masses via her Italian restaurant Cibo, which she started in the ‘90s. Through Cibo, everyone has developed a palate for “real” spaghetti, and all of a sudden people started ordering pasta dishes like Alfonso, Romana Integrale, Bolognese and linguini.

“Ambassador Fornari introduced me to Casa Artusi, a culinary center in Bologna, Italy, where I took further classes in Italian cuisine twice already,” recalls Gaita, whom Ambassador Fornari believed would be a wonderful choice to represent Italian cuisine here in the country.

Not content with simply providing authentic Italian food to Filipinos through her restaurants, Gaita is also helping Ambassador Fornari and the Italian Embassy in bringing the Artusi legacy to the Philippines.

“The Artusi legacy is a priceless compendium of information on Italian cuisine and culture,” notes Gaita. So to immerse herself in this, Gaita took lessons at Casa Artusi learning about Pellegrino Artusi, the Father of Italian Cuisine; his book, the cooking school, restaurant and library that is his legacy to his hometown.

For the launch, Forlimpopoli Mayor and Casa Artusi instructor Paolo Zoffoli will be in the country for the formal signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Gaita Fores on the establishment of the Casa Artusi Center in Manila.

“Mayor Zoffoi is a mariette. When you’re a certified mariette, you know Italian cuisine by heart and can talk about it in length,” explains Gaita, who admitted that she’s still far from being one. “I still have so much to learn in terms of Italian cuisine and their culture.”

Gaita didn’t go to formal cooking schools. Instead, she learned her vast knowledge of Italian cuisine from the three signoras — Masha Innoscenti in Florence; Jo Bettoja in Rome; and Ada Parasiliti in Milano — with whom she did short courses in 1986.

 “What I learned from them was a more home-style approach to Italian cooking, the real heart of Italian cuisine,” Gaita adds.

The Casa Artusi Philippines is an undertaking that aims to establish Manila as the Casa Artusi center in the Asia Pacific Region. This will be done by offering — starting January 2013 — courses on Italian cuisine and cooking techniques based on Artusi, the 20-year-old book composed of 790 recipes that influenced modern Italian cuisine.

“This will also serve as a medium to boost the promotion of Philippine food ingredients and artisan produce for Italian cooking,” Gaita enthuses.

After the Kulinarya Independence Day food festival in Rome, Gaita will move to Forlimpopoli, Italy, to parcipate in Festa Artusiana. The festival is Forlimpopoli’s annual tribute to its famous citizen, Pellegrino Artusi, the Father of Italian Cuisine.

Festa Artusiana is a celebration of Artusian menu, but this year (for the first time) it will highlight Filipino cuisine as one of its culinary offerings.

“Again, dishes from Kulinarya are what we are going to prepare. I have chosen dishes that have similar dishes in Italian cuisine like our pancit molo that can be likened to the tortellini in Brodo of Emilia-Romagna; a fish kinilaw much like an Italian Crudo typical of many coasta areas; and our sotanghon guisado that’s obviously like many long noodle pastas,” explains Gaita.

Apart from preparing these dishes, Gaita will also be featured as a guest teacher, who will teach students of the Scuola of Casa Artusi, simple Filipino dishes.

 “I really wanted Filipino food to be recognized and get a unified identity. And these events are the perfect venue to do so,” Gaita adds.

The Italy-Philippines Gastronomical Partnership kind of merges everything Gaita worked so hard for in her 25 years in the industry: mastering the art of Italian cuisine, being a representative of the Italian food scene in the Philippines, and building a greater appreciation for and understanding of Filipino cuisine and its traditions at home and throughout the world

 “Having the opportunity to do all these things is such a blessing,” adds Gaita, who is leaving the country this June to embark on a gastronomical partnership with the country she considers her second home — Italy!