Natalina Bombino Campagnolo has been making food since she was a child and has been teaching authentic Italian cooking for more than six years, but translating her knowledge into a cookbook was a whole new challenge.
“I have to look at it from a different perspective because in the class room they have all their senses,” said Campagnolo. “They can see. They can smell. They can touch. So, with that missing in a cookbook you have to get a little more descriptive.”
Many of her fans and students gathered outside Market Fresh Thursday afternoon to get autographed copies during the launch of her first cookbook Natlalina’s Kitchen: Bringing Homemade Back.
“Oh my gosh, this is like a dream come true,” she said. “I have been sharing my recipes and my food culture through my cooking school over the last six years and now I can share it with a bigger audience and I am absolutely thrilled.”
The book is, in many ways, the story of a cultural journey that started in her mother’s kitchen when she was young, led her to her ancestral home in Italy and brought her back to Guelph the city of her birth.
Along the way she learned many traditional recipes, 50 of which are captured in the cookbook. They include minestrone, gnocchi, risotto, meatballs, zucchini flower fritters, eggplant parmigiana and Pasta e Fagiolo.
“Natalina started cooking with my mom when she was a young girl and actually recorded recipes with the proper measurements because Mom would say a little bit of this and little bit of that,” said Campagnolo’s sister Anna Wells. “She gets a lot of people from the older generation whose moms cooked like that. They remember these old time classic Italian recipes but they didn’t have an opportunity to obtain them from their parents.”
Wells is a marketing and sales consultant and has been helping Campagnolo promote the book as well as a series of online cooking classes they are preparing to launch in 2018.
“There is a younger generation that really wants to go back to home made and understand the basics of cooking and that’s what is in the book,” said Wells. “They want simple, authentic, Italian recipes with quality ingredients and she teaches how to do it.”
Campagnolo said advanced sales of the cookbook were great and they are already preparing for a second printing. Her venture into publishing has been a learning experience.
“I thought it would be a lot easier than it was,” she said. “Once I actually put pen to paper I realized it was a little more challenging. I had the recipes. I had the concept but to present it in a way that someone could recreate the dishes at home without me present was very important because I want them to be successful.”
