My Culinary Roots
Every dish I create is a step in a journey that begins with the roots of my childhood, moves through the land, and continues in the pursuit of a cuisine that is authentic, thoughtful, and constantly evolving.
My name is Nadia, and I have been cooking for as long as I can remember. I started as a child, standing on a chair so I could reach the stove.
I grew up in a farming family. My grandmother Zelinda taught me how to recognise wild herbs, while my grandfather Giovanni passed on to me his love for the land. When I was still too young to work in the fields, my task was to prepare lunch. Whatever the vegetable garden and the chicken coop had to offer would make its way into the kitchen, following the rhythm of nature. That is where my way of cooking began to take shape: simple, honest, and guided by respect for ingredients and their natural season.
My homeland is the Valtiberina, a borderland between Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, and Emilia-Romagna. It is a place where flavours, traditions, and cultures have always come together. Here I learned that cuisine can preserve a sense of identity, while also growing through encounters, influences, and change.
Food is the thread that connects my memories. Simple dishes, born out of necessity and made with whatever was available, yet able to nourish, comfort, and bring the family together around the table. My cooking has its roots in that culture of simplicity, in the idea of “making something good with very little.”
As a young woman, however, I chose a different path. I studied, moved to different cities, and changed jobs, convinced that my future lay elsewhere. And yet, wherever I went, I always felt that something was missing. So I returned to my roots through cooking. Or perhaps it was cooking that found its way back to me.
Today, every dish tells the story of that journey: the memories it comes from, the land that inspires it, and the curiosity that keeps me searching and learning.
For me, tradition is not something to preserve unchanged, but a root from which to begin — something to interpret with sensitivity and freedom, allowing room for evolution without losing sight of what truly matters.
That is why I continue to cook as I learned to as a child: with respect for the land, care for people, and gratitude for everything that was passed on to me.
Because every dish carries something of the person who prepares it and of the land it comes from. Perhaps this is what cooking means to me: preserving a memory and giving it a new form each time.