Italian-Jewish cooking all year round
Chef Silvia Nacamulli combines best flavors of her heritage to produce a cooking style of her own, getting Londoners begging for more
Jewish-Italian chef Silvia Nacamulli is that rare thing in a culinary world of clichés – unique.
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
The London-based cook combines the best flavors of her heritage to produce a cooking style of her own. She studied political science in Jerusalem and has a master’s degree in Business in London. But still Nacamulli was looking for that one missing ingredient to make her life complete.
"What is Jewish food? They would maybe expect me to do gefilte fish or latkes. I've never actually done that until much, much later in my life. I probably ate gefilte fish after I was 20, 22 – something like that," she says.
"It was never something I identified as being Italian-Jewish because it’s not part of my upbringing. So for them it’s probably quite exotic somehow and it’s fun Italian food. And if you’re kosher, it’s like, 'Wow, finally Italian food we can eat.'"
The corporate world provided food on the table, but it was her passion for cooking that gave her life real flavor.
On the menu on the day we visited were two dishes: Matzo fritters with orange zest, pine nuts, and raisins dipped in honey; and a dish for Passover that can be eaten throughout the year – spinach with pine nuts and raisins.
Next up for Nacamulli is a book in which she hopes to combine the best ingredients of both her Jewish and Italian roots.
