An Interview with Lidia Bastianich
Lidia Bastianich is the host of the APT Exchange series LIDIA'S FAMILY TABLE II and author of Lidia's Family Table Cookbook. She lives in New York with her mother, children and grandchildren.
Q: Tell us about the new show. Is anything changing?
A: Well, the new season we just finished taping. They're editing as we speak — 26 additional episodes of LIDIA'S FAMILY TABLE II go hand-in-hand with the Lidia's Family Table Cookbook. It's been a terrific success — people just love them. The ratings have been extremely good across the board. We're getting great response from the viewers. I think the whole thing of bringing the family together and doing it through food, with food ... people are just latching on to it. I get a lot of comments, "You relax me, you take me back to my roots, you make us feel...you know, family ties...how important they are." On the show, all I do is cook. But, for me, it's much more than cooking and the people out there are getting all these messages. It's wonderful.
Q: A lot of the most intimate moments for your series, the sweetest moments, are with your grandchildren helping out in the kitchen. How important is it for you to pass down your family traditions to them?
A: Well, you see, I came to the United States as an immigrant at age 12. I left behind my grandmother. And I was very connected to the family, to grandma. We lived close by. So that whole support system disappeared from me, in a sense. And here we were in the United States, just the four of us — the immediate family, and food for me was a connecting link to my grandmother, to my childhood, to my past. And what I found out is that for everybody, food is a connector to their roots, to their past in different ways. It gives you security; it gives you a profile of who you are, where you come from.
Q: Is Italian-American food true to how you experienced it during your first 12 years in Italy and the things that you know about Italy?
A: Certainly, on my show, I am very true to what an Italian would eat. A cuisine is very dependent on the indigenous products, you know, the products of the place. But, in today's world, you can get most of the products that come from Italy. So you can come
darn close.
My previous series,Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, addressed the idea of a kitchen transported — the Italian-American kitchen, which is a cuisine of adaptation. In my previous book, Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, I addressed Italian-American cuisine, which Italians don't eat in Italy. It is a cuisine of a people who came as immigrants, and they cooked their cuisine with products that they found. And I'm talking going back to the early 1900s. That's when the first influx of Italian immigrants came. They did the recipes that they remembered with the
products that they found. There was a different result. And that is the Italian-American cuisine that is in America today. Then there is the traditional and true Italian cuisine, which I address because, that's what I cook with my family.
Q: Tell me a little more about LIDIA'S FAMILY TABLE II and what made you want to do this new series for public TV.
A: I've been on public television for seven years, and I think I'm in about 82% of the markets, which is wonderful. It means that people out there are really tuning in, and they really watch it. They really love this kind of show. The wonderful thing is how much people feel part of what you do as a cook, what I do on TV. I get a lot of e-mails saying, "Lidia, we want to see more of your house"— I tape the show in my house. "We want to see more of your family. We love it when you interact with your family." My mother is 84 and she lives with me. She comes on the show with my son and my daughter. My son Joseph is in the business also. We do wine, so he is a wine geek. And my daughter is an artist, so we talk about that. This is what we do at home. It is part of our life.
And my grandchildren too, my little jewels now. I have five of them. And you know, I transport the culture that we have to them. They come regularly and we have a little garden. Grandma plants everything, so I teach them when the tomato is ready, when it smells ripe, plucking out the core. They'll get me parsley, they'll get me basil. I teach them all the flavors and aromas. And this is what I do.
*This interview is available for use in the marketing and/or promotion of Lidia's Family Table(program guides and/or Web sites). No part of this interview may be used relating to any product or service, other than the program.
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