Lidia Bastianich’s life is seared on to America’s culinary history. As the head of one of the country’s foremost restauranting families, she owns or part-owns more than ten eateries across the United States, including Felidia in New York and Lidia’s in Kansas City. She’s also an Emmy- award-winning television culinary broadcaster with her own production company, multi-cookbook writer and children’s author. In 2010 in the USA, along with her son, Joe, she was a co-founder of the hugely successful Eataly, the global Italian artisanal superstore.

Born in Pula on the Adriatic (now in Croatia, but once part of Italy), Bastianich’s parents emigrated to New York in 1958 when she was 11 years old. Thirteen years later, she opened her first restaurant with her husband and soon took the momentous decision to learn to be a chef on the job. She never looked back.

Both her restaurants and her home cooking, naturally, showcase authentic Italian cuisine – honest, simple, gutsy food. And it’s not only Italian cooking that she references. Bastianich also likes to sip a ‘well-made espresso’, but with a little something to intensify the experience; the ‘bittersweet’ taste of high-quality chocolate and, possibly, ‘a drop of Pyrat rum to rinse the coffee cup when done’.

Seafood is a ‘hands down’ family favourite, especially lobster risotto, perhaps preceded by a salmon or tuna tartare and followed by salad and grilled fish. The buzz of gathering all generations of her family around her while she cooks, from her 94-year-young mother to her grandchildren, is integral for Bastianich. ‘I feel I not only transmit the knowledge of how to cook but also love and the meaning of sitting around a table with family and good food.’

Over the years, Bastianich has been showered with accolades for her restaurants, broadcasting and charity work, including two James Beard awards, the most prestigious hospitality awards in the USA. Despite this, she herself regards cooking for the former Roman Catholic pontiff Pope Benedict XVI, to be a pinnacle of her illustrious career.

Whether she confessed to the Pope her guilty pleasure of eating the odd peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, only they know!

Secret Food Haunt

Farmer stands on the North Fork of Long Island, some 130-odd kilometres out of New York city. Farmers sell direct to the public: local, fresh, seasonal produce.