AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

From Refugee to Celebrity Chef with Lidia Bastianich

When the celebrity chef and restauranter Lidia Bastianich was just a few months old, the city her Italian family lived in was assigned to Yugoslavia as part of the reorganization of Europe after World War II. Her family became exiles without a proper homeland. Eventually, her family fled to Italy, where they lived in a refugee camp for two years. With the help of the Catholic Church, her family was resettled in the United States in 1958. It is her own family history and her own close personal connection with the Society of Jesus that prompted Lidia to join the board of the Jesuit Refugee Service USA recently. The mission of Jesuit Refugee Service is to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. Founded by Jesuit superior general Fr. Pedro Arrupe in 1980, in direct response to the humanitarian crisis of Vietnamese refugees, JRS today works in 58 countries worldwide to meet the educational, health and social needs of refugees. Lidia is most well known for Italian cooking, which she has shared with the world in almost 20 cookbooks, several restaurants and a handful of extremely popular cooking shows on PBS. Host Mike Jordan Laskey asked her about her career and how her family’s moving story led her to where she is today. They also talked about the unique and mysterious power of a shared meal, plus differences between Italian and Italian-American cooking and how the US at its best is a place where cultures from around the world can come, encounter each other and grow in harmony. Lidia also gave Mike a few tips for his own cooking! She is a delightful storyteller and an insightful conversation partner and we know you’ll love getting to know her in this extended interview format. Lidia Bastianich: https://lidiasitaly.com/ Jesuit Refugee Service USA: https://www.jrsusa.org/ AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. www.jesuits.org/ www.beajesuit.org/ twitter.com/jesuitnews facebook.com/Jesuits instagram.com/wearethejesuits youtube.com/societyofjesus www.jesuitmedialab.org/

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 30 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

[Music] From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG. I'm Mike Jordan-Lasky. When the celebrity chef and restaurateur Lydia Bastianich was just a few months old, the city her Italian family lived in was assigned to Yugoslavia. That was part of the reorganization of Europe after World War II. Her family became exiles without a proper homeland. Eventually, her family fled to Italy where they lived in a refugee camp for two years. And with the help of the Catholic Church, they resettled in the United States in 1958. It is Lydia's own family history and her own close personal connection with the Society of Jesus that prompted her to join the board of the Jesuit Refugee Service USA recently. The mission of the Jesuit Refugee Service is to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. It was founded by Jesuit Superior General Father Pedro Arrupe in 1980. And today, JRS works in 58 countries worldwide to meet the educational health and social needs of refugees. Lydia is most well known for her Italian cooking, which she has shared with the world in almost 20 cookbooks, several restaurants and a handful of extremely popular cooking shows on PBS. I asked her recently about her career and how her family's moving story led her to where she is today. We also talked about the unique and mysterious power of a shared meal, plus differences between Italian and Italian American cooking, and how the US is at its best when cultures from around the world can come together and encounter each other and grow in harmony. Lydia also gave me a few tips from my own cooking, which I've already started adapting in my home kitchen. She is a delightful storyteller and an insightful conversation partner, and I know you'll love getting to know her in this extended interview format. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for taking the time. How are you? Oh, my pleasure being on your show. Thank you for inviting me. I've invited you on because you have recently joined the board of Jesuit Refugee Service USA. And when I saw that news, I thought, oh, that's fabulous. I have to ask why she did and why she cares about the mission and maybe we can talk to you about your whole life and career because it's quite a story. So maybe we can start. Why Jesuit Refugee Service? Why did that catch your attention as somewhere where you might be able to offer some of your gifts? Well, Mike, I am a refugee myself. I was brought to America by the Catholic territories. So I have a connection on being an immigrant, on being helped as an immigrant, and what really the difference that it makes when somebody really lends you a hand or guides you or helps you. On the other side, you know, I am Catholic and religious. I have two children and five grandchildren. And once in the state, they were born in the States. You know, I felt that, you know, Catholic education, a religious based education, and especially the Jesuits, they're known for their education and instilling in children the values of life and the spiritual connection and just, you know, the need to help and connect with others. So all of my children went to Jesuit high schools and Jesuit colleges. My grandchildren went to Jesuit high schools and Jesuit colleges. And I felt that I always say, since, you know, I'm a chef and we have restaurants and that's a busy job, that the Jesuits, the educational system of the Jesuits really helped me raise my children, of which I'm very proud. That's great. Now, I've read a little bit about your own story, but for people who might not know your background, could you share a little bit about how it is you came to the United States and a little bit of your own story? Sure. I was born in East there. East there is an apparition, but it was Italy and World War II ended, and Italy was on the losing side. So the decision was from '44 when it ended, ultimately '47, when it was decided by the Paris Treaty, that part of the Italian ex-territory would be given to the winning nations, which was Yugoslavia, communist Yugoslavia and Tito. And so, East there was given to communist Yugoslavia. I was just born around that time and the Iron Curtain went down and we became, you know, under communism, the strict rules of no religion, not speaking even though we were Italian, not speaking Italian and all. Ultimately, my parents decided in 1956, you know, the kids I was 10, my brother was 12, that it was no way to raise the children. But, you know, we just couldn't, they wouldn't give you a visa to go, we had to escape. My mother, my brother and I were allowed to go because we had family on the other side. But one member of the family, which was my father, was left behind. He was not given a visa, he couldn't come. Ultimately, he literally escaped over the border with shut up and thank God they didn't get him. He came into Italy and met up with us and there is where we claim, we asked for refuge because we were refugee fleeing, we didn't have the papers now for Italy, even though we were ex-Italian, our names had changed by then and so life was quite different. And the Italian government, we put us in a system where the refugees, the refugee system was, and we ended up in a refugee camp in Trieste, where we stayed for two years awaiting an opportunity to move on. And in 1958, I think Dwight Eisenhower was the president, he opened immigration for people fleeing communism. And we were one of the first family chosen, maybe because we were a certain age and a right family, not too big. Nonetheless, we had nobody in the United States. Yeah, we wanted to come, my parents wanted to come to the United States, of course. And there, the Catholic Charities took care of us and brought us to the United States, paid for our trip when we came to the United States. Not unlike what's happening today, they put us in a hotel and we awaited, we didn't opportunity to start our lives. And here again, the social workers from the Catholic Charities interviewed from my father, my mother, they found a little home for us and we began our life after about six months, a new life. And so here we were, we had nobody in the United States. So first hand, I know exactly what's happening out there with immigrants, and especially the immigrants coming in the United States. Their need, because their need, I remember our need was simple, was to start a new life, have an opportunity, get an education, and leave in freedom and in peace without peace. So I wonder then for you in your own story and being from one place that was then transferred to another country and then being on the move and then arriving to the US, where as you said, you didn't know anyone or the language, how food grew to become an important way for you to kind of connect to your own family roots and also adjust to life here in a new place? Well Michael, you know, Yugoslavia and the communism became, food became scarce. And so I grew up in a situation where my mother was actually an elementary school teacher, my father, a mechanic, but the grandma's, my grandma had a little farm outside of the city, Pula, I was born in Pula, it's now called, it was Pula. And my mother put us there with grandma, also because with grandma we were out of the reach of the, shall we say, the police and the politicians and all of that. And grandma would sometimes take us because churches were all closed and all that, but there was churches that at night they hadn't, so we, I grew up with grandma and grandma provided the food for the whole family, not just our immediate family. We had chicken, ducks, rabbits, goats, I would milk the goats, you know, make the goat that make cheese. We had pigs every November, there was the slaughter, the prosciutto, the bacon, all of that, the garden, you know, harvest the beans, the peas, the potatoes all for the winter, the onions, I was involved in all of these kind of food, providing food actions. And not that I was, you know, a worker, I was a helper, but nonetheless, you know, I would make satele and die and I would need the dough, whatever grandma would give me. And when my parents decided to leave, us children were not told, I was 10 years old, us children were not told that we're not going to go back because, you know, kids spilled the beans. So once my father came and caught up with us and I realized, I understood that we're not going back. And I, you know, I really felt kind of, just like plucked out of a place that I loved, a place that I felt secure with grandma and me and I loved the animals. And I never said goodbye to, to grandma, to the animals and to her. And I think that food became my connector, remain my connector. And I continued to do with food, cook to what I would call grandma dinner and so on, because food brought grandma back to me, bells, or whatever. And, you know, I understood that food was, was a messenger, a messenger of emotions or sentiments, of love, of nurturing all of that and doing that. So the way when you talk about that is food as this connector, this place of security, of bringing things together, of course, as, you know, a Catholic, I'm thinking about at the mass and how like a shared meal at mass is the most important thing that we do in our Catholic community. And I'm wondering someone, you spent so much time thinking about this and doing this. Why is a family or a community gathered around a table so magical? Well, you know, if you talk about our Catholic religion, Last Supper, that was, you know, just getting everybody together because everybody connects. You know, Michael, food eating is a basic need of all human beings, even of animals. Really, we get to the basics of really being basic. So it's not what religion, what ethnicity, what country you come from. Food communicates on that level because food nurtures us, food keeps us alive. So we all understand that without food, we wouldn't be alive. So when you sit down with somebody at the table and you enjoy and you eat, you are nurturing whoever cooked mother of grandma, whatever, cooked with love to nurture the family. The family that sitting down understands that, you know, that is a time that everybody needs to get together. But also, Michael, you know, our emotional state, we become open. You know, if you want to have a discussion with somebody and you tell them the subject, especially kids, let's talk a little bit about drugs or something. They become defensive right away. On the table, our defenses are down because we are nurturing ourselves. You cannot, you will not digest well if you are at it or nervous or so at the table. And hence, being at the table, the communication is very open, straight into us. So the children, whatever's being talked about at the table, they hear it, they absorb it. They are taking in the food and whatever's going on. So it is a very special place where we all communicate and connect and give each other sort of the support of life, of basics, believing everything besides. So that's why, you know, even the kids eating on the run or here, you know, what I predicate on my shows all the time, do cook that one meal, whether it's just spaghetti, tomato sauce, or whatever, sit down because those moments are so precious and the communications happens. Not exactly what Jesus did at the last supper. So for food and family, maybe for you is even more part of your everyday life than for a lot of us. You're two children work with you in your work, your business there themselves, professionals in culinary spaces. I'm curious about, you know, mixing family and business can be a challenge and how you're able to all work together without, you know, at their throats. Yeah, I think, you know, studies, you know, it's understanding, it's, it's, I think maybe the fact of my upbringing and my experiences, you know, I mean, when I was those two years in camp as a 10 year old, 11 year old, I went online for my food, I had my own little plate and online and I waited whatever they gave me for that food. And then we all ate at the communal, different communal tables. So maybe that's for me, you know, really, really, I understood that the table is an open space for everybody to communicate and to nurture and to live because that's what gave you life and the today, maybe, you know, that's not so understandable to many people. Family, like everything else, it takes understanding, it takes passion, it takes love, it takes a give and take and, you know, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't change. I think that that has to be an understanding, you know, and love plays a big part in it and food is the sort of connected, the glue that would, all that happened when, when in doubt, make a good meal down and then something will happen. One thing I love about your shows is that as I'm watching, it feels like you're talking right to me that you've kind of welcomed me into your kitchen, it feels not like a TV show, it feels like you're just kind of talking. And I know that can be challenging, talking to a camera, do you imagine you're talking to someone in particular? How is it that you're able to kind of be so natural in a kitchen space where it doesn't feel like a big production? I don't look at the camera, but that, that wouldn't weigh back. I think what it is is, you know, again, my experience being a monk's paper, sharing with people, understanding people maybe that are in need that didn't have it like myself. And then, you know, having the restaurants, I, you know, I was like a preacher there in the restaurant, you know, I would tell them about the food I would walk around. These people were my friends, we befriended them. And so, you know, I had an easeness in connecting with people maybe because I had food that opened the door to all of them. And so, when the camera was put in front of me, it was just an extension of those people that I knew I met there out there, and there were many more that I wanted to meet. So I just went right through the camera, and I talked to those people that I know about there, but I know, you know, appreciate it because I now appreciate the food, what I, what I do, they connect, they become part of the family. So I lived, and again, the Italian way, my family, my mother, my father lived with me. I helped me raise my children. So we were three generations in the house, then my children were enough. They lived not too far from me. The grandkids were there, four generations, and that was natural for us. It was natural because we didn't have that many people, relatives here. And, you know, as an immigrant, staying together with the family, you know, that is staying together with the clan, you feel safe, you know, that's, I guess, we felt that house safer. And so when the camera came in, the camera caught exactly what was happening. I wasn't, you know, the kids would come in, and they would be part of it. And I wanted to share them. I wanted to share, I wanted to understand, to know me. I understood that I have a story to connect that because America, those were my new, adopted family. You know, I had escaped from, I left my family behind, and I was so kindly accepted. So I appreciated that, and I wanted them to know my whole family because we were all here. So I kind of wanted that connection, and it came back many times, you know, people still write to me, you're my family, I have, I don't have a family. It feels like mine, I do what you do, and I just love it. Hmm. Well, so there are a lot of TV shows about restaurants, fictional ones or reality shows. What is something about working in the restaurant industry that people might not realize, or surprises people, or is something that is, again, not too commonly known? It's a tough industry. A lot of hours, hard work, it's an industry that sort of also takes you away from the family because, you know, when everybody else is having a good time, be it Sunday, be it a holiday, whatever, you are there holding court for all these people, and so you have to learn how to accept that. And in my case, it was involved in my family in it, you know, they would come, the holidays we would come and eat in the restaurant before mom and dad went to work and so on. And so it's an industry that it's tough. If you love it, then, you know, like everything else, if you do what you love, then it's not as hard. But it's an industry also where you can make many connections, many friends, learn new things, new doors open for you. So it's an extraordinary, you know, it's, you know, like opening your door to people to come and eat at your table. And then, you know, if you do well and all that, you know, thank God we did well, but you need to work. It's an opportunity for a lot of people, maybe, especially if they don't speak the language when they come as immigrants to get into food, cleaning potatoes, everybody in the stands. So I'm the cook in our house more often than not. And so I'm wondering if you have any good, what are some good, some good basic tips that you share when people say, what is a good, good Lydia Bastionich cooking tip to make sure that I'm integrating in when I'm in the kitchen? You have kids? Yeah, three kids, young kids. Never one, get them involved, get them in the kitchen, cook with them because, you know, people always tell me, they said, oh, my kids don't eat vegetables, most likely, vegetables don't ever cook. They never smelled the smell of broccoli being cooked. You know, you need to sort of get used to it. These are all the flavors like colors, like music, sort of enters your library of memory. And then they become, they become friendly, not always so, get the kids, let them help and cut because food is that element that really breaks barriers. Secondly, you know, tips as far as cooking, stay seasonal, stay local, simple cooking, what's important very much is that the prime ingredients are good. You know, invest in buying the prime ingredients. Don't be exorbitant, don't be, you know, you don't need truffles, you don't need caviar. But, you know, you can make a great result of with regular mushrooms, regular shopping yarn mushrooms. You don't have to have truffles. So, you know, be attentive to the techniques and good basic products and stay seasonal and local, you know, respect the local, whatever the season offers you, local use that. So as we get a little bit cooler into the fall toward the winter in the Northeast, I mean, Atlantic, where we both are, what are some of your favorites or things you're most looking forward to cooking, sharing with your family as it gets colder? Well, I mean, you know, certainly mushrooms that hold around squash, I love all kinds of squashes, you know, soups, pasta and the result of those. And, you know, squash is not all that expensive, very tasty. It has longevity, you know, you can have biodistays for a week or two or even more. So, I'm looking for all those root vegetables, I'm looking forward to the vociferous, you know, the winter vegetables, the cabbages, the summery cabbage, the black kale. I love all of those things and I look forward to it. Of course, the truffles are also coming, but that's luxury a little bit. So I look forward to the techniques of cooking, which are soups, braisings, roastings, all of those techniques that are much more appropriate fall and winter. Sometimes, you know, when I get a nice compliment on a podcast we've done or something I've written, that feels good, especially when it feels like someone kind of gets what I was after. And I wonder if you've ever been given some feedback or something that kind of keeps you going that makes you think like, oh, this is, I've gotten something right here when people are kind of recognizing what I'm after. I'm just like you, you know, we're out there and people, you know, if they follow you, they connect, they want to connect, they want to touch. So I do, I get all kinds of pictures, videos of, you know, look at my grandkids, you know, look at, she knows Lydia's thing and she goes to the page and that's what she likes to make. And then she says, I get pictures of, let's say, two, three families, the women of the family is each one, this is, we have a Lydia Knight, each one chooses a recipe of yours and here they are Lydia and they show me one and it's just, just wonderful. And you know what I also, also like, I really like when I kind of touch them out there and gave them that because a lot of people don't have the confidence, you know, oh, I can't cook. Everybody can cook. But you know, like everything else, you've got to get in there and you've got to put the effort, read their recipe, test it, test it again. And then when they become Lydia, I used the recipe, but you know, I changed this and I did that. I love it. I said, they got it, you know, they can go on on their own, they can fly off. I mean, you know, they don't need Lydia. I did find when I was learning to cook as a grown up, it was, follow the recipe exactly very precisely and I would use some America's Test Kitchen books, which tell you down to like the quarter or eighth of a teaspoon of something in three minutes, 24 seconds. And I followed that and then as I got more confident, then I could look at a pantry and fridge and say, oh, I know. So I have some aromatics over here and I have like this, you know, I have some acid, some vinegar over here I can use and then I could start like building with those blocks and experimenting more and feeling more free with it. I think it's a great sense of achievement, even for me as a chef, you know, okay, it's time or home from someplace or we come home and we're going to eat. So in our case, usually it's pasta, you know, because I see, but you open the refrigerator and you look, oh, I can do this. It's a great sense of accomplishment. I can pull these things out and make a meal. That's true. I have one last tip I'm going to ask you. I've been making, trying to make vodka sauce at home recently because as a Jersey boy, like even though I'm not Italian, like Penny Vaca is like, that's what I ate, my sauce is too, even though I feel like I'm following the instruction, it ends up too kind of runny. I know, should I just leave it, letting it kind of simmer longer, just putting in less creamer, what do you have any tips for me? I think I may have longer will reduce all of that. In Italy, we don't have sauce with vodka with any of the liquor, but so in your case, make sure that the tomatoes that you add are nice, plonk tomatoes that they are, you're medium, whatever, and I would cook that basic sauce well before I even put the vodka in, and then put the vodka in, and then you let that evaporate and tighten up, and then the cream is just the last minute. So one last question for you. So that even brings up a point about Italian and Italian American cook, Italian Americans are very different in some ways. For you who kind of bridging those worlds, do you see those as different things or certain things that you don't want to do because they're not authentically Italian? How do you navigate that, the fact that things have come to the US and have been changed? I have three books of that and I did research, I went all over the United States and all the Italian American kind of anyways, to find out what it was. And what it is, the Italian American cuisine is a reflection of the early immigrants adopting. So the first big influx of Italian immigrants at the end of the 1800s, and they were basically from Calabria, Sicily, Campania, which is Naples, and that area, and the Italian American cuisine reflects the flavors of that area, which is the red pepperoncino, the oregano, and so on. And so they came here, you can imagine these people, immigrants coming here, and remembering the recipes and whatever, but not having the ingredients. So they have what they remember, what they found, and there was no good olive oil, tomatoes were here because they're Americans, but they were different, the tomatoes, the American tomatoes like salad tomato, whatever, they tie us a great farmers and they develop this intensity in tomatoes and they have a lot of help. So the tomatoes were different, so when they made the Sunday sauce, the one thing that they did find is garlic, garlic they found in America, they were well garlic, because they had the same flavor. So the Italian American cuisine has lots of garlic in it. You go to Italy, we don't use that much garlic, but that reminded them of home and they used a lot of it. And when they made the sauce here, it's still today, the tomatoes, what a little bit acidic and whatever, so long cooking time, adding a little bit of sugar, because the seeds, seeds are tangent, they kind of make the sauce bitter, addition of sugar, and Italy, you don't have any of this, this little sugar, and also the Sunday sauce, now the Sunday sauce in Italy, and I went back to Naples actually, one of my friends and I says, his mother, to show me how, she, very simple, a little bit of garlic, tomatoes, nice, a piece of raw pork, kind of fresh pork, and a piece of salted skin, pork skin, that's what they do. Now, Italian American Sunday sauce has in it, the tomatoes are flossing, but Mipos, sausages, brachol, all of these, and you know, I says, what did this, but you know where? Because these people, the immigrants, when they first came, they had very little meat at Fenny in Italy, because, you know, meat is expensive, they came here, they found meat available, and they had a feast, they made the sauce with all of these bracholism, meat pots and sausages that you get now, and it's, you know, it's wonderful, it tells a story, so, you know, one would say the Italians, in Italy, when they first came, this is, oh, what's this imposter cuisine, and it's a cuisine of adaptation with the roots, in Italy, so I see these two cuisines being parallel, the Italian parallel to the original Italian cuisine. I'm a kind of, if you will, after 10 years in the restaurant, cook in Italian American cuisine, more or less, because that's what America liked, I said, I'm going to do the regional Italian cuisine, now it's time for me to bring my native cuisine to my adaptive serve, and I think that was part of my, into, into who's this woman, and what she cooks, and Julia Child came to visit, and so on, and the Italian regional cuisine is quite different, it's, you know, reflects very much the originality, and you know, even though Italy is very small, very regional, and divided, and each region has its own, and so, you know, Italian cuisine in Italy is one thing, they're similar, they're parallel, but they're not the same. Sure, I feel like I could listen to you tell those stories all day, it is amazing to think about how food of a place, and as it develops, reflects that story, the story of America, and, and migrations here, and, and how a food of different, all kinds of different ethnicities that we are blessed with here in the US is a great way to kind of learn stories, to learn the stories of the people who came, and where they're from, and where they've arrived. But it's interesting to see, as I travel around America, and see the different ethnic groups forming, the wrong communities, importing the wrong little products like the, the, the Italian state from Italy, also growing their own products, whether they Thailand from Nepal, they all have their own, their own little vegetables and all that they're growing, and it's, it's all being, that's what America is, a patchwork, all these nationalities, and with nationality comes food, it's at the basis. Well, Lydia Bastionich, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing your story and your passion with us. My pleasure, Mike, say hello to everybody. AMBG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. And based in Washington, D.C., the show is edited by Marcus Bleach. Our theme music is by Kevin Lasky. The Jesuit Conference Communications Team is Marcus Bleach, Eric Clayton, Becky Sindelar, and me. Connect with the Jesuits online at Jesuits.org. On Instagram, @wearethejessuits. On X, @jessuitnews. And Facebook.com/jessuits. Sign up for weekly email reflections by visiting Jesuits.org/weekly. The Jesuit Media Lab offers courses and resources at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity. If you are a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, visual artist, or other creator, check out our offerings at JesuitMediaLab.org. If you or someone you know might be called to discern a vocation to the Jesuits, connect with a Jesuit vocation promoter at beajesuit.org. Drop us an email with questions or comments at medialab@jessuits.org. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And as Sand Ignatius of Loyola may or may not have said, go and set the world on fire. [MUSIC]