Welcome to a special Saturday Spotlight here on The italyMONDO! Blog where we are turning the floor over to Michele Carbone, author of Venerdì Sera, Friday Evening: Creating La Dolce Vita, one bite at a time. Michele was pleased to sit down and answer a few of our questions and share with italyMONDO! readers about her love of Italy, travels in the bel paese and how she plans on bringing La Dolce Vita in her home for this Christmas season. Welcome, Michele!

What is the Italian connection in your family? What part of Italy does your family come from?
My husband’s family live in the Val di Non near Trento in Trentino/Alto Adige (his grandmother and grandfather on his mother’s side emigrated to the US) and in Piana degli Albanese outside of Palermo in Sicily (his grandmother and grandfather on his father’s side emigrated to the US). We have a family tree that goes back many generations on both sides, and includes the Italian-American descendants here.

Where have your travels in Italy taken you? And do you have a favorite place to visit?
We have been to Milan, Venice, the Val di Non, Florence, Rome, Sicily. I think if I would come back to Italy to live I would pick somewhere in the north, perhaps the lake country or the Italian Riviera. I like to be near water. I love Florence and Venice because of the history, culture and art. I would like to be a few hours away from our relatives. But Rome, all roads lead there…

How have the different landscapes, regional cooking and travels in the bel paese inspired your cooking?
One of my most inspirational moments is when I asked my cousin what kind of cheese we were eating, and he answered, “Our cheese, from here.” It really made me realize that Italian food tastes so incredible because it is always fresh; it doesn’t need to travel anywhere but directly to your table. Once, I saw a open pickup truck filled with lettuce driving in the hot sun. I thought to myself, “I can’t believe they are not using refrigerated trucks.” They didn’t need to preserve that lettuce; they were going to eat it that night! The other thing is, they take the time to make things from scratch, so their food is always better. We asked where could we get a good bottle of Grappa to bring home, and they told us, “You can’t buy good Grappa, you have to make it.” Here, in the States, we are tending to buy everything prepared. (Not me, of course.) The quality is always sacrificed if it is made ahead of time.

What aspects of la cucina Italiana are the most important part of your family cooking?
Striving to create perfection…making the dinner an art form…spending time at the table with my loved ones, sharing great food, a glass of wine, a cold piece of melon, and stimulating conversation…and chocolate.

How will you bring la dolce vita into your daily life and for your family for the Christmas and holiday season?
In a nutshell, enjoy fewer things, but make them of the best quality we can. We will give up some of the frenetic pace items that we often feel compelled to do even though we don’t want to do them. We will slow down, take long walks, catch up with our younger daughter who is returning from college. We will spend more time in conversation, bake something together, enjoy popcorn, prepare many feasts and savor them. Use the crystal and the china.

How would you describe the perfect venerdì sera?
The perfect venerdì sera starts at 8:15 am with friends and dogs; followed by a trip to the farmer’s market, the butcher, cheese shop and bakery. Around 3 pm, I’ll start prepping the food, with anything roasted being slow cooked in the oven. When everyone else arrives between 5 and 6:00 pm, I’ll pour them a glass of wine, too, and I’ll start preparing the antipasto. We’ll sit at the table around 7 pm, starting with soup, a pasta course, the piatto principale, insalata, and finally the dolce…Somewhere around 10:00 we will leave the table and I’ll start the dishes; luckily, I can see the TV from the kitchen. Some Grappa, Porto, or Vin Santo…

Tante grazie, Michele!

To purchase your copy of Venerdì Sera today, please visit Pentola Press.

One chilly venerdì sera (Friday evening) not long ago, the mailwoman with her friendly yellow Labrador helper buzzed at my gate. She had a special delivery for me that evening, which I eagerly unwrapped. I couldn’t help but smile as I read the title of Michele Carbone’s book: Venerdì Sera, Friday Evening: Creating La Dolce Vita, one bite at a time. It couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect time.

Beautifully illustrated, Venerdì Sera is just as much as mouth watering to look at as the menus described within. Before you think you already have a stack of cookbooks in your kitchen, read on. Rather than a list of recipes to follow, perhaps with a bit of commentary thrown in, Venerdì Sera is a book sharing Carbone’s unique way of bringing La Dolce Vita into everyday life. It isn’t for those looking for detailed recipes and it doesn’t pretend to be your one stop Italian cookbook. It is instead something else entirely, which is both the book’s strength and also what makes it a delightful read.

Rather than one recipe after another, Venerdì Sera introduces us to the Friday evening family meal in the Carbone family. The book was born out of a tragic upheaval in the family when Michele transitioned from a corporate engineer to a full time caregiver for her daughter. Life dramatically and suddenly slowed down for Michele, and soon cooking became both a creative and nurturing pastime for her and her family. She tells us: “I decided to write down what I’ve learned. My hope for you is that no matter what your kitchen is like, and no matter how busy your lifestyle, you’ll realize that living La Dolce Vita is an achievable reality, not just reserved for dreams and vacations.” By sharing her family’s Friday evening meals over the past years, she shows how she creates La Dolce Vita for her own family by focusing on the hallmarks of Italian cooking – freshness, simplicity and family meals surrounding the dinner table.

“My hope for you is that no matter what your kitchen is like, and no matter how busy your lifestyle, you’ll realize that living La Dolce Vita is an achievable reality, not just reserved for dreams and vacations.”

Michele Carbone

A few chapters in, Michele’s inspirational writing starts to get inside you, bringing reflection on our own kitchens, shopping and cooking habits, and the role of food in our daily life. It is an inspiring read in numerous ways – encouraging us to think creatively when it comes to cooking. But above all to think! With family stories and beautifully crafted words and images, Michele encourages you to think about each meal you prepare. In today’s hectic lifestyle where multi-tasking is how we making it through the day, how could we possible have time to prepare a 7-course family meal? Think. How can we buy both the freshest, healthiest ingredients and create the least impact on our communities and environment. Think. Michele reminds us that being conscious of what we are preparing and the time we can enjoy on a daily basis with our families are the first steps to bringing La Dolce Vita into our lives.

Michele also inspires readers to think creatively as well. She tells us how her Venerdì Sera menus are based on the freshest ingredients picked up at the local markets, and when she can’t find what she’s looking for, she improvises! She encourages us to step outside our recipe boxes and take a look around the local market and pay attention to what is fresh. This is how people shop in Italy, but it doesn’t have to happen only in Italy. Michele also encourages us not to be afraid to substitute ingredients if some are not available or you have things waiting in your kitchen to be used up. The more you create and think creatively, the more aware you are of what you’re doing. For Michele, this is the secret to “cooking your way to the good life.”

La Dolce Vita comes quietly. It is in those moments when you enjoy the little things – a fresh mandarin shared with family members after dinner, the glass of wine with friends and the laughter. Venerdì Sera, Friday Evening: Creating La Dolce Vita, one bite at a time is truly an inspirational account of how food can bring people together and bringing La Dolce Vita into your own home.

To purchase your copy of Venerdì Sera today, please visit Pentola Press.

La dolce vita—the sweet life—often brings to mind images of relaxation and the quiet appreciation of life’s many beautiful moments. It is different for everyone, but for those who have experienced it in La Bell’Italia, it is hard to forget. Perhaps it was an evening stroll as the town church bells echoed through the hills, or the warm Mediterranean sun on your shoulders while enjoying a creamy gelato. In today’s chaotic and hectic world, who couldn’t use a little bit of that it their daily life? As the pace of life moves forward at an ever-quicker pace, more and more people are discovering those little secrets of enjoying moments of everyday life that the Italians have known for generations. La dolce vita comes from slowing down to savor good, fresh foods and sharing time with family and friends. In Italy, cooking is a fundamental (and delicious!) part of la dolce vita. But how can you bring that into your own home?

Personally, I know when I moved to the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy’s Campania region just how much of a challenge it can be learning to cook in another culture. Every day I learned about new recipes and ingredients, but trying to recreate them in my own home was often an adventure. Those beautiful home cooked sauces simmering on the stoves certainly don’t prepare themselves! Never mind the metric scale for measuring everything and the oven marked with Celsius temperatures, what presented the biggest challenge was learning all the new cooking traditions here in the Naples area.

What did I do? Well, after a bit of panicking, I discovered what quickly became my “secret weapon” in the kitchen, the wonderful cookbook Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania by Arthur Schwartz. There it was right in front of me, all the inside tips and tricks for preparing the local specialties. This wonderfully researched cookbook was also fun read, and it taught me about the culinary history here in the region that I now call home. It not only made me feel more comfortable cooking in another culture, but also improved my creativity and approach to cooking. Most importantly, it helped me learn how to bring la dolce vita into my own life and to my own table in Italy.

Living La Dolce Vita (v.)
1—To enjoy the moments of everyday life 2—To slow down to savor good, fresh foods 3—To share time with family and friends

A cookbook at its best is not just a written record of how to prepare dishes. It is also a place to record stories—both family and historical—and shows us that why we eat the way we do is often just as interesting as how it is made. With the increasing popularity of Italian food and the Italian lifestyle, there are now an abundance of books available on subject. From Rachel Ray to Giada De Laurentiis, the shelves of your local bookstore are lined with cookbooks to teach us about Italian cooking.

This is why we at italyMONDO! want to help you find the best and most inspiring cookbooks out there to help you learn more about Italy’s fascinating food culture, history, traditions and regional recipes. Every so often throughout the year, we will be presenting our favorite cookbooks—the ones that really wow us—that we know our readers will really enjoy. Each series will feature book reviews and interviews with the author, but also spotlights on some of our favorite recipes and other selections.

Stop back by next Friday as we begin our first cookbook series with Venerdì Sera – Friday Evening: Creating La Dolce Vita, One Bite at a Time by Michele Carbone. What a perfect way to remind ourselves, as this holiday season whirrs into high gear, about the importance of slowing down, enjoying time with our families and friends, to savor every bite, and, most of all, to remember to bring Italy’s la dolce vita into our lives!

Photo Courtesy of “jenniferrt66” at Flickr