Born to cook
No one loves exploring and celebrating Italian and Greek cuisines better than Naomi Crisante. She confesses: “Before I have finished eating a meal, I’m already thinking of the next one.”
Born to cook, Naomi comes from a melting pot of Mediterranean heritage. Her mum was born in northern Greece but grew up in Romania, her dad was born in Egypt, her paternal grandfather was from Cyprus, and her paternal grandmother was a mix of Greek, French, and Armenian.
Naomi’s husband is of Italian heritage, from Abruzzo. Naomi’s mother-in-law generously shared with Naomi how to cook their traditional Italian family favorites, including hand-made pasta. Naomi’s children have also been raised on a blend of Italian and Greek cuisines. Lucky them!
Naomi explains that within the Mediterranean region, “there are core, crossover ingredients between Greek and Italian food, such as olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, onion, and spinach.” This is something she has learned from cooking with her Mediterranean family.
Naomi spent her childhood learning how to cook by her mother’s side. Naomi would pick spinach for the spanakopita and walnuts for the baklava. By the time she was a teenager, her skills were such that she was trusted to cook the family dinner. Cooking for them brought Naomi a deep sense of pride.
Naomi explains that, as she’s married to an abruzzese, her family participates in many cooking traditions. They produce passata once a year together, and her father-in-law makes Italian sausages. Naomi describes the importance of making staple foods like passata or Italian sausages that will last a long time: “These things are rooted in cucina povera, trying to make the best of what you had when it was bountiful and preserve it for the rest of the year. Its origins are rooted in necessity.”
Naomi’s mother-in-law makes pasta by hand, and her son also re-make’s his nonna’s lasagna recipe. Naomi relays: “We use the best produce and quality ingredients” – an important concept in Italian cooking.
When I asked Naomi her favorite dish to cook, she replied with, “I hate it when people ask me this question, because I love to cook so many different things! It really depends on the moment and who I’m cooking for, even the season, which dictates the ingredients at hand.”
Naomi goes on to explain: “In the winter, I may decide to cook a slowly simmered Italian sausage ragù. Because the weather is cold, I’m inspired to cook something warming. If I have the afternoon to myself, I like to recreate something tactile, like making gnocchi from scratch.”
Naomi’s cooking has been inspired during numerous family trips to Europe. She was fortunate enough to travel to Italy several times across different seasons. Culinary highlights include having her first taste of squid ink pasta in Venice, bollito misto in Parma, and caprese salad on the island of Capri, and making the perfect cacio e pepe in Rome.
As a recipe developer, Naomi likes to adapt and re-create recipes in new and exciting ways. She has adapted her mother-in-law’s traditional gnocchi recipe to include a wild porcini and thyme sauce. Putting her own spin on a recipe, is where the real joy in cooking comes from.
Naomi is currently writing a cookbook full of Mediterranean inspired dishes – a 30-year culmination of her favorite Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, Moroccan, and Middle Eastern dishes with her signature twist, scheduled to be released later this year.
Some of her Italian recipes will include cannellini crostini; rigatoni with Italian sausage ragù; home-made gnocchi with a wild mushroom sauce; pistachio-crumbed olives with basil aioli, saffron fritto misto with a capsicum sauce; eggplant involtini with tomato capsicum sauce; and prawn, pea, and pistachio linguine.
Naomi offers both virtual and in-person cooking classes, great for individuals, groups of friends, or corporate parties wanting to bond. Information on her cooking classes, as well as her extensive recipe collection, can be found at https://foodcentric.com.au/.
Photos by Joshua Lynott
