Aside from getting to spend the semester studying Italy and the food I, being able to find a true Italian in the south gave me a personal connection to the country. I had the opportunity to sit down one on one with Alessandra Montalbano a professor at the University of Alabama and talk “Italian” with her. Nestled in the back corners on BB Comer on the campus of the University of Alabama, on a hot, humid southern September day where we delved into the topics of getting to know each other.

Alessandra was born on an island off the coast of Venice and grew up in Verona, which is about an hour and a half train ride from Venice located in Northern Italy in the Region of Veneto. Montalbano her last name, is from her Grandfathers side which is Sicilian. She attended University in Verona, where she studied Philosophy. From there moved to New York where she attended NYU for her Masters and Ph.D., then spending one year in Baltimore and a year in Florence, and now is teaching at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

After getting to now just a little bit about where she was from and her background we got to talking about the best thing, Italian food. In talking with her I could tell that Alessandra was equally into Italian food just as much as me.

In traveling through different regions of Italy do you find that the food differs? If so how?

It is really different, any regions have their typical dishes, even every city. Venice and Verona are very different. It really depends on where you are. For example, pasta is pretty much all over but it is different everywhere. In the north, you have pasta alla Bolognese which is from Bologna or Carbonara which Is from Rome or Pasta Alla Norma which is from Sicily. It really depends on what you can find in the region.

So there may be certain things that are specific to a certain place but you can find variations?

you can find different variations but people found ways to start making it at home. My family is different because there are several different influences within my home. The way my mom cooks is how she learned from my grandmother who was my father’s mom who was married to a Sicilian or she would cook things from Venice because that’s where she was from, so her food is always mixed.

What is a specific dish if you had to choose that reminds you of home and childhood?

There are specific dishes that make me think of my grandmother or some that I think of my mother. For my Grandmother for sure gnocchi, because she was very good at it. Or a typical dish that is from the island where I was born was this fish called, Sarde in Saor. For my mom pretty much everything that she cooks, parmigiana for sure. Some cakes like Tiramisu.  She is really good at cooking this traditional meal which is octopus and potatoes. I really do love her Ragu, if I had to pick the Ragu is really my mom.

In researching, I found that a lot of recipes called for squid ink? Is that something that you like?

I grew up with those kinds of things because I was on an island and you can find it there it is one of their main things, it is called Nero di seppia.

Now living in Tuscaloosa traditional Italian food is hard to come by if you had to recommend one place for someone to eat out what would you say?

I don’t eat Italian food out ha-ha, they can come to my house I’m just kidding. But I don’t really eat out. I know that there is Depalmas but that is Italian American food.

If you could suggest a recipe to somebody that is easy yet gets across traditional Italian food what would it be?

I think that if you learn the basic of how to make any kind of sauce for the pasta, or the way of cooking any vegetable. You know Italian food is very simple it is tasty because we use good ingredients rather than using butter we use a lot of olive oil and get the extra virgin olive oil always, just put some olive and a small piece of garlic. It is not true that Italians use a lot of garlic that’s a stereotype. But just a small piece and when the garlic is just a little bit gold put the tomato sauce and you can add whatever you want, olives basil some pepper and just cook the pasta. Yesterday I had guests and I made the pasta like that I fried the eggplants in just a little bit of olive and you put the eggplants on top of sauce and penne. It is simple and tasty, it is called Pasta alla Norma a Sicilian dish. When you cook listen to the food, the food has the sounds, in 10 minutes you can have a fantastic dish.

When you go to buy these ingredients where do you go in Alabama?

The fresh market has pretty good tomato’s, like the canned ones, I get the very simple tomatoes the organic ones. They also have a good Italian pasta that is not overpriced. I get fresh stuff at the River market, like zucchini. Those are the two places that I go to cook. I also go to World Market they have Italian chocolate if I want to do something special for my students.

 

In talking with Alessandra, even being thousands of miles away from Italy I felt as if through her descriptions of food and the conversations that I was transported to her island and all the different regions. Her knowledge and Italian roots gave me several ideas for cooking and even helped me to understand some of my own roots in Sicily.