Enjoying an evening sit, watching Anthony Bourdain cook Provençal cuisine for Provençal people--and shitting his pants while he does it--, I am having a surreal realization of what I myself am about to undertake. Two weeks ago I found out I will have the extraordinary opportunity to assist during an amazing week of the program in Calabria next month. The Splendors of South Italy tour is the brainchild of brilliant chef and restauranteur, and fellow ICI graduate, Mark McDonald and ICI's presidente John Nocita and Sabrina Mancin. It is a week long tour of cuisine, culture, and what it really means to live life Sud Italiano style. Piano, piano. Slowly, slowly, but never stopping. I am ecstatic that I have been given this opportunity to cook with the people who made me who I am in the kitchen, but I am also terrified. The feeling is not an unfamiliar one, in fact I experience it on a regular basis standing across the line from chef Neill Howell. It's a feeling any brave and passionate culinarian gets when they are exploding from the chest, side by side with another hyperactive food crazed beast in the kitchen. It's like having dinner with your high school sweetheart, sitting at the table wondering if you made a fool of yourself, the awkward passage of time and life that has filled the space between then and now. And how will it look? Will the Calabrian sea be everything that haunts my dreams? Will the sea smell sweet like warm salty rosemary and wild fennel as I remember? Does njuda really taste as good as I remember? Will there be truffles and eggs? Well to be honest, I'm sure it's all the same. But I can't stop my mind from racing on what will happen when I take off from Dulles to land in the south of nowhere Italy to climb another hour and a half into the quaint cliffside of Stalettí. Of one thing I am certain, this will be another epic adventure for the getters on the go.
Spingerti....sempre...
This is the life.
Amo cucinare,
Ryn
