Back in January 2016, I started blogging about some of my favourite home recipes. I wanted to share my passion for cooking, while introducing my genuine Italian food culture. I also dragged in my friend Maria, an excited foodie who happens to make delicious desserts. We started our blog Foodamaze, wanting to publish more or less weekly, alternating a recipe each. Then, summer 2016 marked a series of unexpected and rather life-changing events, and Foodamaze went slowly dormant for almost four years, till now.
Meanwhile, I saw my kitchen life going through a rather exciting evolution: my then casual catering activity Matango London slowly became a full-time commitment, with exciting exploits in a few London restaurants, Taste of London, and extravagant private events. Later, in 2018, I became the sous chef of Gabriel Waterhouse, the mastermind chef behind one of the most inspiring and successful fine dining experiences in London, The Water House Project. After this truly game-changing experience, I became the senior-sous chef of Madera at Treehouse Hotel, till the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus and the subsequent global lockdown.
Last year, I created the platform called FoodVcancer to help fundraising for people suffering from sarcoma and other cancers. The idea is to broadcast on social media some home cooking time I spend with the patients, while supporting healthy eating and honest nutrition choices. My own experience with sarcoma and insatiable appetite give me the essentials, the rest usually comes naturally in a completely off-the-cuff flow. FoodVcancer also got me to become a judge of the Great Taste Awards at the Guild of Fine Food, exploring the mechanics of quality ranking without the despotism of brands—I owe this extraordinary opportunity to a simply fabulous lady foodie, Maya Orr.
So here I am now, reviving Foodamaze pretty much out of the blue, with the same intention of sharing the food I truly enjoy. It could be an impromptu fridge-emptier dish, or an engineered fine-dining-wannabe, or maybe just my oil and vinegar selection from my kitchen cupboard. I ignore how much I will keep going with writing it, with what frequency, and if it will ever mean anything. I just have a compulsive need to write and expose my food devotion.
Today, even more than ever, cooking is to me something exceptional. I believe in its pure alchemy, as cooking means mastering the art of transmutation and sublimating the harmful into delicious. I equate this with love. Plus, cooking is fun, is catharsis, it charms you into taming danger, while it revolves in constant variations. Food animates a choir of human senses, its music accented by trills wafting down our emotional core. Food is home. Cooking is hearth.
foodamaze 