Cooking in France and Italy has a particular high resonance, and it's hard to say how or why it developed other than that they've been smarter and there longer.

I didn't speak Italian when I got to Italy. I had taken a couple of lessons and did a year in college, but in six months, I became regionally submersed to the point that I can curse in dialect.

It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.

My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's more about what we don't put on the plate to make it feel more Italian.

French and Italian cooking have been elevated to a really high art form.

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.