CTbites Sits Down with Culinary Legend, Lidia Bastianich

Lidia Bastianich a few years back in New Canaan with her last book highlighting her journey from Pula to New York City and her come up in the restaurant industry ranks.

Lidia Bastianich is an iconic culinary television show host, a multi-time published author, and an acclaimed restaurateur. In Connecticut, we’re all familiar with her partnership in the now closed Tarry Lodge restaurants in Westport, New Haven, and its Port Chester flagship whose next door was Tarry Market, an Italian specialty shop. And let’s be real, all of us locals have dropped a paycheck’s equivalent at Bastianich’s Eataly locations in NYC, and if you’re further out, you’ve likely done so in Vegas, L.A., Chicago, or at Boston’s Eataly.

Bastianich, though, has Connecticut connections beyond her restaurants as an avid supporter of Person to Person, a Darien based nonprofit that provides food, free clothing, emergency financial assistance, scholarships, and gratis summer day camps to those who need it.

We were certainly happy to meet her!

I was lucky enough to catch up with Bastianich—who was one of the chefs I grew up watching on TV— ahead of her being honored by P2P to chat about her new cookbook that’s focused on simple preps in one or two pots or pans.  But I couldn’t resist asking if there are plans to return to Connecticut or Westchester for another restaurant opening and I managed to get her to pick her favorite New Haven pizza.

Read on!

Person to Person is honoring you on October 27, 2022, at their Transforming Lives Luncheon. What does it mean to you to be celebrated by them?

What it means to be celebrated means that you have endorsed and participated in their cause. Connecticut is close by for me, my son, Joseph raised his children there, so I have a connection to the state. We have so many friends there, too.

There are people that need help to be fed and they need people to help them get on their feet. There’s no greater cause than that. If you help feed families, it doesn’t only help them to be productive in their own communities, but it’s just the human thing to do.

You have a new cookbook! Tell us more about Lidia’s a Pot, a Pan, and a Bowl. I know it’s all about simple recipes, and as someone who cooks at home himself, sometimes I’ll read a recipe and it’s too complicated, or I can get most of the ingredients, then it says I need a white truffle.

I’m always conscious about who I write the book for or when I’m on television, who I talk to, it’s about getting them involved, getting them comfortable, and giving them confidence in the kitchen. Food is such a basic element of well being for all of us. Sometimes this generation has forgotten to go in the kitchen because everything now is already done for them. The pleasure of getting in the kitchen and the satisfaction of getting the ingredients, cooking them, and feeding them to somebody that you love is a great satisfaction. For me, it’s important that my books are straightforward and that the ingredients used are mostly in people’s kitchen or I encourage them to use substitutes.

It takes me two years to do a cookbook. That cookbook lasts me two seasons on television. If they read the book, watch the show, they watch Lidia, it reinforces them going into the kitchen and making it. It’s all about the simplicity of the recipes.

Before COVID came, I had an idea, this is my 12th book, and I’ve written about pasta, about this, about that. I said to myself, ‘you know, how did my grandmother cook?’ She had one pot, a maximum of two pots on the stove for a meal. I said, I’m gonna go back to that. I think I can make any recipe just about with one or two pots, so I did.

Then COVID happened and I figured the times could use a book like that. I got into it even more baking a whole meal on a sheet pan—you saw it with the pork chops and the chickpeas—and you have a meal for six, eight people.

What’s important with the one or two pots is the timing—when you put a product in. You don’t wanna overcook anything. Like with the pork chops, you don’t wanna put the broccoli in when you put the pork chops in. Get the chops halfway done, THEN introduce broccoli. This book comes from a basic way and a great way of cooking that just about everybody can do.

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What are some of your favorite recipes from the book that you cook at home most often?

There’s a big section here on eggs because eggs are nutritious and it’s an accessible protein. I do a vegetable soup with poached eggs. It’s a whole meal and a great soup. I like that pork chops recipe with broccoli and chickpeas. There’s a salad with baked vegetables—roasted squash and carrot salad with chickpeas and almonds. Very apropos the times. You roast some of the vegetables, then you have a salad like escarole, which is a chicory, which is resilient. Vegetables in the winter, people say there aren’t any. There are plenty of them. You have to work with them. Roast your squash, roast your carrots, toss them with chickpeas. It creates a great appetizer or a meal.

Another basic recipe is lentils, or whatever. Carrots, onions, celery, then at the end you can add rice or pasta, you can make it soupy or denser like risotto.

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A post shared by Lidia Bastianich (@lidiabastianich)

Let’s talk about restaurants. I loved a lot of the pizza and pasta dishes at Tarry Lodge, and I still think about the porchetta and prime rib sandwiches at Tarry Market.

We loved those times because Joe was living up there and he saw the opportunity. We were very blessed that people came to Tarry Lodge and to the market. I would go up often to do book signings and all of that. The real estate market is changing there (Port Chester) and I think it’s going to be a lot of apartments. It was a question of real estate and the times. You look at New York City and the big buildings, they’re square, a lot of metal, and I think what the smaller neighborhoods need are the little stores, especially in a more rural community like up there (in Connecticut and Westchester). They have to be careful not to chase all the small stores out in place of shopping centers, fast food, and malls.

So…what I’m getting at here is do you have any plans to come back to Connecticut or Westchester to open a restaurant, market, or anything? And if not now, is it not out of the question?

It’s not out of the question. I started in 1971 with restaurants, so it’s more than 50 years. After COVID and all of that, we had to close some restaurants, reopen some, I somehow got more focused on writing cookbooks, television, and doing a lot of fundraising. But my children, Joe and Tanya, really took over. They opened that sandwich shop All'antico Vinaio on 8th Avenue. They just opened a second one in Greenwich Village. It’s from Florence. This young man there had lines and lines for these big square sandwiches—and you mentioned porchetta, and they do have that—on focaccia. Those types of places are possible somewhere else because that’s the direction that they’ve been taking.

Last one. And it’s because it was asked to me on a podcast (shout-out to Jeff Spencer). New Haven pizza. Which is your favorite?

I think it’s the oven that does it. For me it’s Frank Pepe’s one with the clams. I really enjoyed it. There’s some really great pizza going on up in that area.

Check out Lidia’s website: lidiasitaly.com
And on Instagram