Lidia Bastianich at the New York Botanical Garden

On Sunday I was privileged to hear Lidia Bastianich speak at the New York Botanical Garden. I more than love Lidia. I lerve Lidia. I can think of few things more comforting than curling up on the couch on a cold day, flipping on PBS and watching an hour of Lidia’s Italy. It transports me back to childhood where I’m in the kitchen with my grandmother, experiencing her alchemy with simple things like a tomato from the garden, or a handful of homemade breadcrumbs.

Lidia’s easy and confident way with food is something warming and familiar to me, and is perhaps what inspires devotion from her viewers and readers. This uncomplicated sense of the world that I received in childhood through my grandmother’s cooking continues to ground me in numerous ways.

As part of the closing weekend of NYBG’s The Edible Garden, Lidia cooked three recipes with ingredients plucked from the exhibition, in front of a crowd of hundreds. There was a huge rush of clapping and hollering as she took the stage. I was inspired to see the crowd included people of all ages and races, but an especially large contingent of twenty-somethings. (Yay for the future of PBS!) I also spied Food Network’s Ellie Krieger. 

Lidia prepared a zucchine crostata, fried eggplant, and a beautiful tomato, basil, and parsley pesto.  Along the way, she shared a wealth of information from how to use a twig of thyme or marjoram as a pastry brush, to the chemistry behind the antioxidant effects of extra-virgin olive oil entering your bloodstream.

The audience was chock-full of questions. Perhaps most interesting was when she was asked how she achieved such good food with such simple techniques and ingredients. Lidia acknowledged her years in restaurant kitchens, her partnership in nearly 18 successful restaurants, and her training and achievements as a chef—a process, she said, which often complicates the cooking of those less secure in their abilities. But, she explained, “I am someone who is very comfortable in my shoes,” and always stuck to her best instincts about food and the fine art of simplicity. “Make something beautiful out of two lines, that is the hardest thing to achieve.”

Did I mention I love her?

Check out NYBG’s archive from The Edible Garden for Lidia’s recipe for the aforementioned zucchini crostata.