Before Lidia Bastianich had her own cooking show, she was the chef of a successful Italian restaurant. Her fate changed the night a guest started asking questions about her risotto. The guest was Julia Child.
“She wanted to experience the risotto. She wanted to know how it’s made. She came back the next week. And before you knew it, she wanted me to teach her how to make risotto,” says Bastianich.
A friendship born over risotto led to PBS asking Bastianich if she would cook for a television audience. She had one condition: That they film in her actual kitchen, not a studio.
A quarter century later, Bastianich is still inviting viewers into her home.
Today, On Point: Lidia Bastianich and the art of Italian home cooking this holiday season.
Guest
Lidia Bastianich, Chef and host of the cooking show Lidia’s Kitchen. Subject of the new PBS documentary 25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee. Author of Lidia’s From Our Family Table to Yours.
Transcript
Part I
(MONTAGE)
LIDIA BASTIANICH: Pasta, pasta, pasta.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: She’s a familiar face to millions of Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: Please welcome Lidia.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: Lidia’s like Madonna. You don’t have to say her last name. An icon of Italian food.
DEBORAH BECKER: That icon, Lidia Bastianich, is celebrating 25 years of cooking on public television. The Italian celebrity chef, restaurateur, and award-winning cookbook author has merged food and family to create a wildly successful empire.
But the road to success hasn’t been an easy one for Bastianich. Her family fled what became communist Yugoslavia after World War II, then lived in a refugee camp in Italy before immigrating to the U.S. and becoming a symbol of the American dream and the Italian American palate.
I’m Deborah Becker, in for Meghna Chakrabarti. And this is On Point. This hour, Lidia Bastianich and the art of Italian home cooking. Lidia, welcome to On Point.
BASTIANICH: Oh, thank you, Deborah. What a pleasure being with you.
BECKER: Well, 25 years, Lidia. I mean, when you think that it’s been a quarter century being on television and all the years of cooking and what’s happened during that time, how do you reflect on that wild success?
BASTIANICH: It’s like life. It goes fast. But there’s a lot of memories and there’s a lot of good things that happened in between in those 25 years. My growth, ever more out in connection with the American public, it’s something that’s really heartwarming, being an immigrant and coming to and not speaking the language, coming to a new country, not having family here. I remember as a 12 year old wondering, “How are we gonna do? Are we gonna do okay? Are we gonna be accepted?” And surely enough, we were not only accepted given this great opportunity. And I went right in, head-on, right in.
And what it is is this wonderful connection, an extension of almost a family that I have out there. In whose homes — my essence, my flavors, my smells kind of permeate the homes of these homes that I might never see. And yet, I am in their homes. And that’s a great satisfaction, Deborah.
BECKER: Right. But you alluded to the fact that this was not a smooth paved road for you, right? So let’s tell a little bit of your story, in case folks don’t know. You were born 1947. Tell us a little bit about where you were born and why you left.
BASTIANICH: Okay. So if you look at Italy, the boot, in the right hand side, across almost from Venice, there’s a little peninsula that’s called Istria. Istria is not Croatia, but it was Italy. Istria and part of Dalmatia was Italy. And we were Italian. Although, when you’re close to a border, there’s different ethnicities and one does speak different languages and one has this different ethnical, if you will, influences.
But Italy lost the war in 1944. And then it took about three years for the allied forces to decide, and the English to decide, where the border would go and what would the winning, which was the newly formed communist Yugoslavia, they expected some terrain. Istria and Dalmatia, the part of Dalmatia, was given to the new formed communist Yugoslavia.
I was born in 47. So the Paris Peace Treaty was in February of 47. I was born in February of 47 — a few days after, I think it was in 28 I was born on the 21st — the actual Paris Treaty delineated the border and what would be given to Yugoslavia and what will remain under Italy. And so we were given to Yugoslavia. We were given away, if you will.
The border went up, and things changed rapidly. Now, I was young, I was just born, but I grew up somewhat, because we lived in Istria until I was 10. And then my parents decided to — we needed to go back to Italy and ultimately had to escape. But in those years, I recall, I mean, communism set in, we couldn’t speak Italian. We couldn’t go to church. They changed our names. And so a lot of things were a bit difficult for my family. My mother was a schoolteacher. My father, a mechanic. He had two little trucks and they were taken. He was deemed a capitalist, put in prison —
BECKER: The trucks were taken because he was deemed a capitalist, right?
BASTIANICH: Exactly, exactly. And so food was not all that available. Actually, my mother put my brother and I with my grandmother, maternal grandmother, who lived a little bit outside of — now it’s Pula, but it was Pola, the big city. And there, you know, Grandma had chickens and had geese and had pigs and had goats. And she provided the food because food was scarce.
So my growing up was close to family and maybe even closer because we cling together because of these changes. But it was difficult because at home we quietly spoke Italian. Out, we couldn’t speak Italian and so on. So it was a difficult identity growing up. You know, “Where am I? What am I doing? Who am I as a person?”
And then ultimately, my parents decided, “Well, maybe we need to do something and change this.” Now, when the border went down, part of my family remained in Italy, in Trieste. We had an aunt. And my mother, my brother, and I went to visit the aunt, supposedly just a family visit. They wouldn’t let the whole family go. My father had to remain back almost as a hostage. But ultimately, after about two weeks, he escaped the border — literally escaped — the dogs chased him, and he was shot at. But we reunited in Trieste and became the immigrants.
BECKER: In Italy?
BASTIANICH: Yes. Trieste.
BECKER: And then you went to a refugee camp in Italy.
BASTIANICH: Well, so here we were in Italy. Our names had changed. We didn’t have the papers because my father escaped. If you were caught without papers or whatever, you were repatriated. So my parents went and asked for political asylum, explaining our situation and they went to the police station and ultimately they put us in a camp.
We became a refugee with the number, with the name, that was given to us and then changed. But we stayed in that camp for two years awaiting for an opportunity because my parents decided that maybe we should move on in the world, a place that would take us maybe. The places that were open for immigration at that time were, of course, America, Australia, Canada. But we are lucky enough to be accepted in America. And that was —
BECKER: Yeah, when was that? When did you come to the U. S.?
BASTIANICH: That was in 1958.
BECKER: So you were 11.
BASTIANICH: Mm-hmm.
BECKER: And what was it like then to come to America after all that?
BASTIANICH: Well, it was exciting. Because, you know, a camp is a camp. And the camp that — now it’s a museum — it’s called San Saba. So if anybody visits Trieste, they certainly can go and visit.
BECKER: And it was a former Nazi concentration camp, is that right?
BASTIANICH: It was. So it was very dim and very, you can sense, and especially as a young child like that, not understanding being closed. You know, you couldn’t go out unless you were given a permission and you were literally closed in there.
In 1958, Dwight Eisenhower was the president and he opened immigration for refugees fleeing communism. And I guess we were a young family and we were given, we were granted the visa. And it was very exciting. But Deborah, you have to understand, we didn’t speak the language. We had nobody in the United States. So it’s kind of the unknown, but when you were 11, 12, it was exciting getting out of the camp.
By then, you saw pictures of New York, of America, hopefully that one day you’ll go there. So for my brother and I — my brother is three years older than I am — it was very exciting. My parents, I think, in retrospect, had a lot of difficulties in the uncertainty of the trip.
BECKER: Right, right. And you actually sort of maybe got your start in really working in food, right? You started working part time in a bakery in Queens when you were 14. And it was Walken’s Bakery, owned by Christopher Walken’s parents?
BASTIANICH: I did. I did. And we’re still friends with Christopher. And in the special, he came, we had dinner. But yes, you see, way back in Istria, even being with Grandma, helping her milk the goat, make the cheese. We harvested the olives, made the olive oil, the garden. I was always kind of a little runner in the kitchen and with food. And really seeing food, from how it grows and how you produce it. And then, in camp, actually, when I was in camp, I was put in a school, in a nun school. And they put me in the kitchen, even though I was young. In the morning, in the beginning, before school, I would clean the potatoes, clean the apples.
And then I came to the United States, and I was, uh, 14 when I went to — we lived across the street from Walken’s Bakery in Astoria — and I always kind of was a big girl — I said, “I’m gonna try to get a part time job to bring something, uh, a bit, a bit of income for the family.” But also, as a young girl growing up, I needed the stockings, I needed things like that. And I said, “I need to work a little bit here.” And I went and Mr. Walken, who, he was a German immigrant, and a great baker, and a successful bakery, took me on. And so Friday night, Saturday night and Sundays, I would work.
And he had his — Christopher Walker had two other brothers, so there were three brothers. He had the three boys also working on weekends and that’s how we became friends and we met and Christopher was the lively one. He was, do you know, he was, he was in charge of — we still laugh today when I see him — he made a mess all the time stuffing the donuts with jelly, that was his job.
Part II
BECKER: Lidia, we were talking about the story of how you became such a celebrated chef. And we got to the point where you were a teenager and you were working at a bakery in New York. But let’s jump to your — then you get married. Let’s jump to opening your first restaurant in New York, an Italian restaurant in 1971. And I’m wondering, did you decide to open this restaurant because this was the food that you knew, because of your Italian heritage or because Italian-American food was really popular at the time in New York?
BASTIANICH: Well, Deborah, it was 1971 that we opened our first restaurant. And it was actually my husband, Felice, who was in the restaurant business. He was an immigrant also, and worked, as we called it, in the front of the house, and always wanted, dreamed of a little restaurant that he would open. Now, as I went on in school, and so my cooking was almost always my extra go-to job and work. And I loved it. And I really, really enjoyed cooking. So, you know, we got married and I actually already had Joseph, my first child. And of course, family, my mother and my father lived with me in their own little apartment.
So I had the opportunity. I said to my husband, “I will help you out. This is what I love. I will help you.” But you know, I wasn’t a chef yet at that. It was young and we hired an Italia American chef because we looked around at all the menus and what was popular. Italian food was very popular. Americans still love Italian food as I think the number-one ethnic food.
BECKER: Yeah. Yeah.
BASTIANICH: But it was the Italian American cuisine. It was a cuisine that — we didn’t cook like that in the regions of Italy. Italy has 20 regions. But this Italian-American chef had all the bases of Italian cuisine, but was Italian American cuisine. And, I decided, well, I had to learn this, so I got in the kitchen with him and became his sous chef.
And for 10 years, I worked with him in the kitchen, prepare, cook, and some outside, some welcoming the people, in and out. But for 10 years, so I really honed my skill. I went also back to school because I was interested in all aspects of food and the science of it and so on.
And then we would also go back. We went back to — after 10 years, we went back to Italy. I would travel around Italy and work with chefs in Italy because I said, “I gotta get this. I gotta be good at this.” And we were very successful, so successful that we opened another one. So we had two. And after 10 years, in 1981, we decided to sell both of those and leverage that the profits to open Felidia in 81, where I became the chef. And that was in 58th Street in New York City.
BECKER: But it wasn’t just about cooking, right, Lidia? I mean, you had to know, obviously, how to run a business, how to run these restaurants, and certainly how to get to where you are now. So it was also your business acumen, as well as your cooking skills that allowed this to happen, wouldn’t you say?
BASTIANICH: Absolutely. It’s well aware today, it’s not only the actual cooking, the finances, but it’s also the marketing and, you know, how do you present yourself and the image and all of that. All of these things I was curious. So what I didn’t know, I asked, I got people, consultants on board or people that were successful. I wasn’t ashamed to ask or to go — I took different classes also in marketing.
It was strange because I realized needs to grow a business. And yes, I had the artisan tree, shall we say, of the Italian cuisine, but then, I was going to school here as a young immigrant. America offered the business sense, the marketing sense and all that. So I had kind of the best of two cultures, which I pulled together. And I guess that’s part of my success.
BECKER: And of course, you also got a start in television, which talk about marketing, right? I mean, that’s one great way to market your brand. And it was really from another celebrity chef, from Julia Child. So tell us, how did you meet her and how did you get on her show?
BASTIANICH: Deborah, it’s — Felidia opened in 81 and here I was, this young woman. I became a chef because by then, I had enough on them. But I always had assistants. It was never that I was alone out there and I was open. I loved that. I would come out of the kitchen. I would talk to my customers. I would accept interviews. People, you know, how journalists are, don’t you, Deborah?
BECKER: Right. A little bit! (LAUGHS)
BASTIANICH: (LAUGHS) They’re curious and whatever. And so I always, I was willing. I was happy to share my story. I wanted America to know the opportunity that we were given. What we were — immigrants that brought our culture here and how accepted it was and how it was getting successful. And at that point, I guess Julia Child heard about it and she came for dinner and guess with whom she was with? James Beard. The two of them.
BECKER: Wow.
BASTIANICH: Two big, towering figures. Because they’re both big. And she wanted to know what risotto was and how it was cooked. And she had it once, then she came back again. And that’s how our relationship started.
She says, “Lidia, you’re gonna teach me how to do a risotto.” And she was very inquisitive. She wanted to know. And so we did. We became friends. She came over the house, we cooked the risotto. Ultimately, she asked me to be on her show. She was doing the Master Chef series there with different chefs. And we did two episodes, which were quite successful, well received. And the producer says, “You know, Lidia, you’re pretty good. How about a show?” And she encouraged me, and she actually stood by me, kind of telling me how and what is best and whatever.
BECKER: You know what, Lidia? We have a little clip of the show with Julia Child, your first television appearance back in 1993. Can I play a little bit of that?
BASTIANICH: Absolutely!
BECKER: Okay, here we go. Let’s listen.
JULIA CHILD [Tape]: Lidia’s kitchen was filled with the aromas of all this great food. A real Italian family meal right here in the U.S. of A. Everyone gathered around the dinner table having a good time. Three generations and a couple of friends. This is the way to live and to eat. That’s the son of the house, Joseph. And the grandmother, Ermina. And here’s Felice, Lidia’s husband.
BECKER: And then you go on to have your own show. I mean, what did it feel like to have Julia Child in your house in that first appearance?
BASTIANICH: I think sometimes you’re naive about different things and maybe that’s the best because you accept things naturally. And there’s a real affection for her, real admiration for what she did. And I was so proud of what I was doing. So it felt good. It wasn’t that I was kind of afraid. Ultimately, what I was afraid is of the big studios, the TV studios. And I asked them to produce it in my home, which we did. And still to this day, the show is produced in my kitchen.
BECKER: Now–
BASTIANICH: The kitchen that Julia Child came to!
BECKER: (LAUGHS) Right. And you, you prefer it that way, I guess.
BASTIANICH: You know what, Deborah?
BECKER: Go ahead.
BASTIANICH: The viewers got used to it. They came into my house. And you know, sort of organically things happened because my daughter lived not too far. My mother was upstairs. The kids came. And so as everybody passed by, a home is a home for the Italians. You’re not excluded no matter what you do in that home. And the show was going on. The kids. So we got the kids involved, we got Grandma involved, and everybody kind of fell into place. So it was not only about Italian food and the cooking, the recipe, but it was also about the Italian family and I think people really related to that.
BECKER: Mm. And do you think, I mean, I can’t imagine the amount of change you’ve seen, right? In cooking and food and in your 25 years of cooking on public television. And a lot of folks say the palate of Americans has become more sophisticated now. Everybody is a so-called foodie now, right? And folks know a lot more. Has that influenced your work at all, do you think, Lidia?
BASTIANICH: Oh, absolutely. You know, you’re in connection with the heartbeat of your audience, but not only just of the audience that are watched, but also the food. I began to revert to the place with Grandma, you know, and how authentic food was and how natural food was. And in my, in those early years of my business, you realize that not much real cooking was being done in the homes with real food. Big industry was feeding America.
And, and so I actually saw that, how Americans — via television, via journalism, via environmental, worrying about the environment — things have changed. And I think, I always say to all my restaurateur businessmen how Americans have really changed. They’re extremely knowledgeable. They are curious. They research. Everything is sort of — finding things is very accessible. So it’s for me, it’s a wonderful time kind of going to a place where I kind of started almost and to be part of that. Deborah, you know, to be part of being that, that conduit, that instructor.
Because the emails that I get: “Lidia, you gave me comfort. You gave me security. You told me that I could do it. I didn’t think I could cook.” All of these kind of feedbacks that I see, that I am instrumental in making the viewers out there cook. And the cooking is not that complex, especially Italian cooking. You have good products. You have them in season, and you don’t elaborate him too much. And you can get a good, good meal on the table.
BECKER: Yeah, stick with that, right? I should say, I just have to tell you, my family, my husband’s family, both Italian roots, right? But my family’s from the north. My husband’s family’s from the south. Different regions of Italy, different foods, different cooking. But I remember my husband’s grandmother saying that a lot of the dishes were at one time called “peasant food,” right? It was what you could forage and get from your garden. But you would inevitably make it delicious. Would you say that’s sort of your recipe, Lidia?
BASTIANICH: Yeah, absolutely. Going to forage, I used to forage with my grandma all the time — springtime, the wild asparagus, the wild spinach, the mushrooms, certainly the gardening and all of that. So yeah absolutely. It’s a simplicity of a cuisine. And it’s also a cuisine that respects the not wasting, utilizing, and here is nature that gives you these beautiful gifts, using them to nurture ourselves. So all of this is kind of — now it’s maybe called environmental planning or whatever, but, you know, to me, I think as a chef, you can — if you connect with nature and respect nature, nature really gives back.
And the Italian cuisine is simple, straightforward. Yes, the courtyard animals, we call it. We don’t use big pieces of meat in the Italian cuisine, as you would say. Rather chicken or a rabbit or something like that, small, that kind of environmentally makes much more sense.
BECKER: Have you had to modify though, recipes? Have you had to make them different for an American palate, would you say?
BASTIANICH: Well, in the beginning, when we made the first restaurant, but also Felidia, I really went back to the regions. So I wanted — I said, “Okay, the Italian-American cuisine is what we did for the 10.” It was proved a success. People loved it. And it is a delicious cuisine. But in Italy, in the region, the Italian cuisine is different. So that’s what I brought to Felidia. A lot of the regionality, whether it’s the risotto, whether it’s the osso bucco, whether it’s, you know, all of those recipes that are made in the houses of Polenta, in the Italian homes. But here were not known because the cuisine was Italian-American.
But then Deborah, you know, we opened Becco restaurant on West 46th Street. And there I realized the Italian regional cuisine and Italian American, and there we have almost a combination, the importance and how much the Italian-American cuisine is loved. And that is a cuisine of adaptation. So it’s a cuisine of the early immigrants at the end of the 1800s, when they came, Italian immigrants, and how they cooked with what they found, because cooking depends on your ingredients. And they didn’t have extra virgin olive oil. They didn’t have grana padano. They didn’t have prosciutto di parma. So they made do with what they found, and that’s how the Italian American cuisine was born.
BECKER: I wonder also, though, Lidia, like how much psychology motivates you when you look back at your background, when food was sometimes scarce, when you want to hold on to an Italian heritage that may have felt threatened, and when you cooked as a way to express feeling and community. How much of those things do you think also influenced you?
BASTIANICH: Oh, very much. So let’s go back again when I was with Grandma and we went to Trieste and we remained there as immigrants. I didn’t know at the time that I wasn’t going to go back because, you know, parents don’t tell you these things. And I missed, tremendously, that place, that country, my animals, Grandma. I didn’t say goodbye to Grandma.
And on in life as I was cooking, I asked myself, “Lidia, what is this passion for this food, especially the food of this region?” I soon realized that that was my recall to a memory, to a place. That food — the smells, the aromas, bring back, you know, we have a library in our storage of memories and food and aromas bring it back. But not only that food and aromas, food is nurturing, loving somebody, caring for somebody. When you give somebody food, you want them well. You want wealth for them. You want them to nourish, to grow. So food is a great connector with people in many different ways. And as I came to America and I realized that the Italian American food had a message, that the regional Italian food was beginning to have a message because people were traveling a lot. And they knew the difference.
Part III
BECKER: In this part of the show, we want to focus on recipes and it is the holiday season. So the traditional Italian Christmas Eve Feast, the Feast of the Seven Fishes, in some households, it’s a tradition on Christmas Eve. And I’m going to be a little selfish here, Lidia, my household is among them. So I have to really start working on this if I’m going to pull this off in a few days. (LAUGHS) But let’s see, I’ve heard a lot of different ideas about why seven fishes. And all of them seem to have some sort of religious significance to them. But do you know why it’s seven fishes, Lidia?
BASTIANICH: No, it’s either seven or 13. And Deborah, that is a tradition of southern Italy. Now, you said your family’s from the north. So with time, they might’ve gotten this tradition here in the States. But in Italy, on the northern part, doesn’t have to be 13 or seven, you need to have the fishes.
And some of the fishes are absolutely essential, like bacala. You know, you need to have bacala. And then capitone, which is an eel. That’s another one. And then some form of fried fish, whether it’s the little smelts, calamari. And then of course, some sort of pasta with fish, clam sauce — and again, clam sauce is very much from Naples and from that area if you go back to tradition. It’s now eaten all over, but of course, and it’s one of my favorites.
Linguine, clam sauce, spaghetti with clams to the south. And north, we make a brodetto, a brodetto usually with monkfish, scapefish, all this kind of odd fishes, whatever the fishermans had, and polenta, we serve it then.
BECKER: So what do you do? You make that in a sauce over polenta, tomato sauce over polenta, or how do you do that?
BASTIANICH: Yeah, you make it — like you take, let’s say monkfish. And monkfish is a great fish to cook because it doesn’t have the small bones. It has one central bone and it’s kind of gelatinous. Although it’s one central, you take it right off or you can cut it like medallions with the bone in the middle, like a little osso bucco, if you will. And you cook that with a little bit of onion, a little bit of shallots, you brown it with a little bit of flour, tomato paste, bay leaves, a little bit of vinegar and water. And it’s not all that complicated, but it makes a nice, — good olive oil — it makes a nice, rich kind of red sauce and not very loose.
And then you make your polenta separately and you spoon your polenta and you make like a little volcanic tip there, where you set your brodetto with the fish on top of it. And brodetto is always — we make it also with cuttlefish, brodetto can be made almost of any fish. But that’s a given for Christmas Eve.
BECKER: So we need to talk about the bacala actually.
BASTIANICH: (LAUGHS)
BECKER: So I have most of these traditions from my husband’s family, I will say, which is the south, right? He’s in the south. So I found it very difficult to make the bacala and get it the right consistency to make the salad that they used to make, where the bacala was the star, right? But I found a recipe, Lidia, almost a decade ago. Do you know what recipe I found where you could whip the Bacala and make it? (LAUGHS)
BASTIANICH: Well, I do it all the time.
BECKER: That’s yours! I found yours! (LAUGHS) I’ve been making yours for 10 years. It’s wonderful. So why don’t you —
BASTIANICH: Is it working well for you?
BECKER: Oh my gosh, it’s wonderful.
BASTIANICH: Because, you know, it’s not an easy. Because the bacala, what you do there, it’s not that you have a sauce. Now, you know, because you’re an expert, 10 years, but that’s a must for us on Christmas Eve, bacala mantecato.
And you can make it out of the salt cod. And there you have to soak it, you know, get the salt out out of it. You know, that’s important. You’re soaking it just to get the salt out and then you cook it and then you whip it. You can put it in a processor with some oil, a little bit of garlic, salt and pepper, and you have it. Salt, you have to be careful because it might be salted.
I also — we make it with stoccafisso. Stoccafisso is that bacala that it’s dry as a board. as a piece of wood. It’s air dried. It’s not salted, but it’s air dried. And what you have to do then is, I don’t know which one you use, but what you have to do with the dry, I have mine soaking now in the garage. You have to kind of soak it in water for two, three days, change the water out, and then you cook it. And then you take it off the bones completely. You use skin and all of this flake, because it becomes flaky, sort of. And that you put in the food processor. Now, mind you, that used to be all beaten with a pestle, a wooden pestle. My grandfather, the men used to do that.
But now that you have the food processor, you put this cooked stoccafisso and a little bit of garlic, a little salt and pepper, and then you drizzle in oil slowly. And as the flakes of this bacala, which once was dry or whatever, sort of open up, disintegrate, it’s like filaments of wool or whatever. They open up, they absorb the oil, and they become fluffy and like a brandade, if you will, a spread. And we just love it. It must be on our Christmas Eve table. And then of course, there’s always some leftover for Christmas Day table. And then it goes into the next week because it lasts pretty good. We just love this stuff.
BECKER: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s delicious. So that’s good. That’s a good tip because the hardest thing I think is, is choosing the best bacala to buy and soaking it correctly.
BASTIANICH: Exactly. You have the two different ones, and they’re different. But if you’re going to make it in moisture, in soup, in sauces like tomato sauce from your husband’s side — I’m sure they do it with olives and capers and whatever and that’s the sauce — then that you need the salted. But also up north, near Vicenza, they do bacala, the salted bacala, which you soak, again, and then you cook. And then they layer it with onions, sliced potatoes, and some cream and butter, and the shreds of bacala and bake it in the oven. And it’s rather simple and it’s delicious.
BECKER: Okay, let’s talk about eel. Who eats eel? I took that off my menu. No one was eating it, Lidia.
BASTIANICH: Yeah, eel is difficult. You have to be raised on it, I’m saying. (LAUGHS) Because eel has — first of all, it has that skin that’s very gelatinous. And if you make it in a sauce, of course you leave the skin on, although maybe in today’s world, it’s best to just skin it. But the problem is also that the eel inside has a center bone, but then has a lot of little bones in it throughout. It’s not like one bone off the center bone. They’re all over the meat of the — so you have to, my grandmother used to massage it. She used to pick it up by the head once it was, you know, usually somebody in the family would fish one and then she would milk it down so that the little bones would end up towards the tail, but it’s only somewhat effective. There’s still little bones. And I think it makes an extraordinary sauce, a brodetto. The eel, the gelatinous part of the skin of the eel makes a delicious brodetto. But it is a little difficult to eat because of the little bones in there.
BECKER: And the slime. Let’s just say, it’s a little slimy! (LAUGHS)
BASTIANICH: (LAUGHS) Skin it. Skin it. That will diminish the slime .
BECKER: (LAUGHS) I’ll take your word for it. You know, the New York Times cooking section this week says if you want to do the Feast of the Seven Fishes, you don’t have to do seven. You don’t have to do seven dishes. You can just put seven types of fish over pasta and you’ve got it. Is that, is that cheating, Lydia?
BASTIANICH: (LAUGHS) That’s cheating. If you’re going to do it. I remember we used to have all kinds of different fish. And again, I repeat, you know, it wasn’t seven or eight or it might’ve been 10, but it was all different kinds of fishes. That was the richness of Christmas Eve, having some fried and some in brodetto and some with polenta and so on down the line. So yeah, you could make a frutti di mare salad and you can put all seven fishes in there. You can put mussels, clams, scallops, shrimps, calamari, octopus, you got your seven fishes in there and you have one dish and you have it made. But that’s cheating a little bit in my kitchen,
BECKER: but you know, what if someone doesn’t necessarily want fish? Like what are, what are some other traditional dishes that you might recommend for the holiday?
BASTIANICH: Oh vegetables, vegetables, absolutely. You know, pasta with garlic and oil and vegetables. Green vegetables, because you’re dealing in the wintertime. So you have the whole cruciferous family going, whether it is the salad cabbage, the regular cabbage, the kales, broccoli di rape, these are all winter vegetables.
And soups. You know, an oil-based soup with vegetables, oil-based, garlic, you know, you can throw in anchovy just for extra, extra. And vegetables and you make a pasta, you know, a dry pasta or a fresh pasta, we would certainly. Or polenta risotto is another element that you can make with squash and all of that, mushrooms. Also you know, now you have everything fresh, but what my grandmother had a lot, you know, she had like dried porcinis and all the dry herbs and whatever. And she would use that to really flavor the pastas and the vegetables.
BECKER: So do you celebrate with the Feast of the Seven Fishes?
BASTIANICH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BECKER: Oh, you do? You do.
BASTIANICH: Sure. Yeah, actually, actually Christmas Eve is almost more meaningful than the — Christmas Day, yeah, it’s the celebration, the culmination, it’s all together and all. But Christmas Eve is more solemn, more spiritual, if you will, for me and I think for my family.
BECKER: Hmm. And is it always fried? Always has to be a type of fried fish, is that right?
BASTIANICH: Yeah, fried fish, you know, yes, yes.
BECKER: It’s hard to make that when you have guests coming because it can’t sit. You can’t make it ahead of time.
BASTIANICH: No, exactly, exactly. But you just, you have to prepare yourself. You know, like have it — The one thing that you could fry and it’s okay, the fish like sardines, like whitings, things that are like a whole fish with skin and you, you leave the bone in there so you could, you could fry it nice and crisp and then you can reintroduce it into the oven to some extent.
BECKER: I have to relate to you a comment that we’re getting on Facebook from Maria who says she’s from Argentina. Argentina! And she can relate to a lot of these dishes, polenta, bacala, homemade pasta. She says the best food on earth. So, so there are strings of Italian that run through other types of cuisine, I guess you could say.
BASTIANICH: But there’s a lot of Italians, you know, immigrants that went to Argentina. Because when we were immigrants, one of the option was also Argentina.
BECKER: Yeah.
BASTIANICH: Yeah, yeah.
BECKER: So I wonder, when you look back and you look at your astronomical success, right? What do you credit with, what do you give credit to for this success? And what advice do you give young people who might be thinking about a similar career path?
BASTIANICH: Let’s begin with the credit and the success of coming to a new country. I think that even that was something that drove me because going through the camp and I saw my parents — and my parents suffered maybe more than we did as children, as youngsters, because we were anticipating this new discovery. They were thinking, you know, “We don’t speak the language, what’s going to happen to the kids?” whatever. So I think that, as well as my brother and I, we landed with an eager way to be Americans, to become Americans, and to make it happen. To show my parents that their decision, which was a hard decision on their part, going in the world with two young kids, was the right one. They gave us this opportunity.
So starting from school and then working, I always, you know. And then the fact of sending back to Grandma. Also because for them it continued, we used to send packages of food, of rice and whatever, all of this sort of — we shared our American welcome, if you will, with the relatives that we left back home, behind in communist Yugoslavia. We used to ship coffee and all of that. That I think really drove me. But then, you know, I loved what I did. I loved cooking. It gave me a feedback. People love that you did, people sit down and ate and ingested this food that you cooked and smiled and said, thank you. And loved it. I mean, what do you, what more do you want out of that?
And that also, the opportunity of economical, you know, growing our position. Being able to buy a house, then a better house and so on down the line. And again, as I said, you know, Deborah, I came here at a good age because I had a good base on the Italian, the richness of the Italian culture. And then I had the education of the American schooling system. And that is the business, the marketing, all of that. So I put those two things together and, you know, that’s my success.
But I think, and what I would tell all of those young people out there, whether they’re, certainly if they’re immigrant, this is the opportunity. Be sincere about it. Roll up your sleeves. Work hard, do what you know how to do, what you’re passionate about, do it with your heart. But also respect and be grateful and give back at some point in your soul.
So, if you’re an immigrant, this is the opportunity. You’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to be true to yourself. You’ve got to be respect this country because this country sometimes it’s maligned and it really hurts me to see that. It is the best in the world. There’s nothing better than here. You know, I certainly proved it. To the young people that are American people, especially to the women, I get a lot of questions about that. You know, I always say, invest in yourself, get the best that you can be, and then go out there and get it done.
BECKER: All right. Lidia Bastianich. Lidia, give us your traditional sign off. Tutti —
BASTIANICH: Tutti a tavola a mangiare.
BECKER: All right. Lovely. Lidia Bastianich, chef and host of the cooking show, Lidia’s Kitchen. She’s also subject of the new PBS documentary, 25 Years with Lidia. Thanks so much for being with us.
BASTIANICH: Thank you, Deborah.
BECKER: I’ve got to get cooking!
