Holidays – any holiday – are such a great opportunity to focus on bringing the family together.
Lidia Bastianich
Traditions are our roots and a profile of who we are as individuals and who we are as a family. They are our roots, which give us stability and a sense of belonging – they ground us.
Lidia Bastianich
Everybody can cook. You don’t have to do anything fancy. You can do a nice antipasto spread with sardines, anchovies, some meats, marinated vegetables, fruits, cheese, nuts, and crackers.
Lidia Bastianich
Eating well, being around the table with the family or friends or relatives – it doesn’t get any better.
Lidia Bastianich
Make gifts meaningful by putting the time in creating them, whether baking and cooking, or in making arts and craft. It will all have more meaning for the giver and receiver.
Lidia Bastianich
Food feeds our souls. It is the single great unifier across all cultures. The table offers a sanctuary and a place to come together for unity and understanding.
Lidia Bastianich
Italian food really reflects the people. It reflects like a prism that fragments into regions.
Lidia Bastianich
Italian food is seasonal. It is simple. It is nutritionally sound. It is flavorful. It is colorful. It’s all the things that make for a good eating experience, and it’s good for you.
Lidia Bastianich
I think a ricotta cheesecake is very easy to make.
Lidia Bastianich
When you invite friends over, especially for food, with the food you want to send out a message of affection, of appreciation, of celebration. But also of culture – who your family is.
Lidia Bastianich
I’m simple in my approach and straightforward. I connect with the average person that is interested in food.
Lidia Bastianich
As a chef, I feel that it is my duty to make the most of what the earth gives us.
Lidia Bastianich
For me, it’s the ultimate to be able to nurture and nourish someone. They trust you. It’s a basic form of intimacy in a community.
Lidia Bastianich
It’s in the nature of Italians to live life with a positive tone and to celebrate the invitations that come along in life. Italian food is so conducive to all of that.
Lidia Bastianich
I think traditions change and modify with each generation. With new members joining the family, their customs and traditions have to be respected and combined with the exiting traditions. And the children that follow are part of that new evolving tradition and, as they grow, will have input that will, in turn, continue to evolve that tradition.
Lidia Bastianich
The service of food is to nurture, to please, to nourish.
Lidia Bastianich
When I say, ‘Everybody to the table and eat,’ I mean it. That is the glue, the center that holds the family, that gives security. Good food brings everybody to the table.
Lidia Bastianich
Simplicity in preparation is the Italian way. Make easy dishes, and then you can elaborate the final preparation by decorating with vegetables or herbs or adding a dash of olive oil.
Lidia Bastianich
Make your refrigerator or freezer like a treasure chest.
Lidia Bastianich
My grandmother had a courtyard of animals, like goats and chickens. She made ricotta cheese, cooked with potatoes warm from the garden, grew everything from beans to wheat. It was simple, seasonal food, and we all ate what was produced 10 miles from where we lived. It was that way for centuries.
Lidia Bastianich
My grandmother taught me the seasonality of food. She lived with the rhythms of nature. That’s the way we should live. Why do we need raspberries in January flown from Chile?
Lidia Bastianich
The Caprese salad perfectly represents the colors of the Italian flag. While I am not so sure that the colors of the flag stem from the cuisine, there is no denying that those colors do evoke a typical Italian plate.
Lidia Bastianich
I attended classes and taught classes, in Food Anthropology at Pace University, with an anthropology professor. You can trace history by the architecture and food of a place. Food is one of those things that transcends and stays in the culture.
Lidia Bastianich
Food is culture. Food is an identity, a footprint of who you are.
Lidia Bastianich
I was born in Allied-controlled Pola. At the end of World War II, the victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties and borders with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The Paris Treaty was signed on February 10, 1947. I was born a few days later.
Lidia Bastianich
Food is the common language for all of us.
Lidia Bastianich
Match the right food to the right occasion. Think about what you are celebrating. If you are honoring people, what are their favorite foods? If it is a holiday, what is the food for it? When you give an identity to the party, people appreciate that.
Lidia Bastianich
I was born in Allied-controlled Pola. At the end of World War II, the victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties and borders with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The Paris Treaty was signed on February 10, 1947. I was born a few days later.
Lidia Bastianich
Food is the common language for all of us.
Lidia Bastianich
What I continuously remember is when I was a child in the courtyard with my grandmother and we milked the goat and we made the ricotta. The still-warm ricotta from our goat, on top of a piece of bread, and we used to sprinkle just a little bit of honey or sugar on it. That flavor, that stays in my memory.
Lidia Bastianich
With the Industrial Revolution, the production of food was delegated to big companies in order for women and men to be in the labour force, to come home, stick something in the oven, and eat. It became a big industry that does not have a love affair with food nor is really concerned about nurturing you or giving you the right nutrition.
Lidia Bastianich
Why do you think millennials are so into food? It’s the way they relate to each other.
Lidia Bastianich
Cooking is about the ingredients and responding, but risotto, specifically, is about the technique.
Lidia Bastianich
I think that lunch is one of the most enjoyable and important things in the day. But you need to create the space and the time to do just that. And in Italy, we do that.
Lidia Bastianich
That’s the beauty of risotto. You can make it any flavor you want. It’s a great carrier.
Lidia Bastianich
In 1981, we opened Felidia, and the newspapers, the city papers, the big timers came, and I got invited on the ‘Today Show’ and so on. A lot of food luminaries would come to Felidia – Julia Child, James Beard, they all came.
Lidia Bastianich
I’ll get home from work on Friday night and take out some beans and soak them. The next morning, I’ll put them in a pot for soup, then just keep chopping, chopping, chopping – carrots and celery and cabbage – and in two or three hours, you have this wonderful, mellow soup that fills up the whole house with its aroma.
Lidia Bastianich
I think Chicago’s a great city. Like New York, it’s full of energy.
Lidia Bastianich
It’s important to let children fly on their own. I understood that they needed to create their own life and not be my shadow. Let them make their own decisions, and support them along the way.
Lidia Bastianich
There is a history to Italian food that goes back thousands of years, and there’s a basic value of respecting food. America is young and doesn’t have that.
Lidia Bastianich
You can freeze a nice sponge cake and then have a strawberry shortcake any time.
Lidia Bastianich
Cooking for somebody is very personal.
Lidia Bastianich
What I do is my life, but it’s not like I spend 18 hours a day, seven days a week in the restaurants.
Lidia Bastianich
I just love engaging a live audience – I love that.
Lidia Bastianich
Kids today are really so alienated from the source of food. If they are going to nourish themselves properly, if they are going to safeguard this environment we have and the economy that goes with it and world hunger that goes with it, they need to know about food.
Lidia Bastianich
I am a transporter of the Italian culture – culinary culture, family culture – because I love it, I thrive in it, and I think it’s the right way.
Lidia Bastianich
Whether you talk about the olive oil, whether you talk about Aceto Balsamico, whether you talk about Grana Padano, whether you talk about Mozzarella di Bufala. These are all traditional Italian products that are hard to beat, and they’re easy to transport and buy. You don’t have to do much around it. Just eat them.
Lidia Bastianich
I think people make it too systematic in a way, like it’s a chemistry formula. Food is not like that; food is very forgiving. Connecting and making do with a lot of the food elements can be fun and exciting.
Lidia Bastianich
Choose recipes like a base recipe; make a big pot of soup and freeze it. From then on, you can take it in any direction. Another day put rice in it, or then put corn or sausages. From there, it’s endless.
Lidia Bastianich
I am blessed that the food business is good for me. Good to me.
Lidia Bastianich
I see how people connect with me on different level through my show, how they want to transport what I cook into their home kitchens for their own families. It’s my responsibility to always make sure that is quality.
Lidia Bastianich
Don’t accept what a grocery store has for you. Tell the store to get you want you want. If you want honey from a local farmer, organic honey, you tell them. We are in control. It’s up to us as the consumer to get what we want.
Lidia Bastianich