At Home with Emiko Davies
Photography by Emiko Davies
Words by Alexandra Dudley
Emiko Davies is a food writer and photographer who has called Italy her home for over a decade. She is the author of three cookbooks centring on regional Italian cuisine and lives just outside of Florence with her husband and two daughters. I sat down with Emiko to discuss the importance of food to her family and how her family impact the food she cooks and the food she writes about.
Hello Emiko. It is so lovely to speak to you. So where is home for you ?
I live in Settignano, which is a hilltop neighbourhood in Florence - it’s quieter than the busy touristy centre, a little gem really as it feels like a countryside village, with views everywhere you look, the cypress tree filled woods and olive groves, yet it’s 5 minutes from the football stadium and train station and only 15 minutes from the old walls of Florence and my favourite market.
Perfectly positioned! Is that where you do your shopping?
Yes! I love shopping at the Sant’Ambrogio market, it’s become a bit of a ritual heading there for coffee and a pastry, browsing the market for whatever looks particularly good. I love the bread and the organic produce at C.Bio too and sometimes pop up to their terrace, which is lined with heirloom trees, and pick out some seedlings — we have a shared garden space at home but I keep a few things in pots like herbs, chills. This year we’re trying out some legumes. In a pinch, though, I like to pop into our local bottega in Settignano’s piazza. It’s a small organic shop that sells baked goods, fresh bread, produce, wine, cheese and salumi and the like. I often go there for some delicious cheese and sausages, milk or when I need to just pick up something that’s missing for dinner!
I know that you have two children. Can you tell me about them?
My eldest daughter, Mariù, is seven and a half and Luna is two. Mariù is very creative, a perfectionist, an artist in the making, I think. Luna is - for now - just easy going, loves just being around everyone and will go with the flow. I think they’re both pretty head strong though, maybe it’s just the phases they’re both in right now or perhaps it’s their personalities but they both know what they like, know what they want and are very good at saying no! Mariù really grew up seemingly overnight when she became a big sister, she is a natural little mamma and my little buddy, both of them are actually, always by my side!
Do they enjoy cooking also? What are their favourite meals?
Luna is a pleasure to cook for, because she will try anything at least once and is pretty happy with most things but she absolutely loves soup, especially anything frothy, like minestrone or miso soup - she is so enthusiastic about eating soup! Mariù’s favourite dish of all time is fried calamari, but she is so picky about exactly how she likes it so I only make it for her when I can get small, slim local Tuscan calamari that make tender and thin rings. It sounds over the top and I find myself even rolling my eyes over it but I’ve now perfected the dish to get the crunchiest, thinnest calamari rings you’ve ever seen because the past few years have been a struggle getting her to eat anything other than plain spaghetti or plain bread!
Mariù was for the longest time a very picky eater - she would eat just spaghetti, no other pasta shape, with olive oil and parmesan, or white bread rolls with mayonnaise, fruit was ok, and raw vegetable sticks were accepted, she used to eat eggs and then declined them entirely. By the time she was four I was desperate about the whole thing and then things got even worse when she started primary school in Florence where she has to eat the meal given at the school cafeteria. She’d come home from an 8 hour long day with an empty tummy. It was hard. I continued trying to offer new foods, trying to encourage trying things, trying not to make it an issue, but it was so hard as someone who has never been picky about any food in my life, to watch. She’s always been a bit like that, even as a 6 month old she refused to eat the mushy purees that I made her, preferring always to feed herself!
Luna was such a different baby, enjoying anything I offered - or at least trying it (she still doesn’t like cheese), which has been so refreshing. My mother in law gave me a bit of hope. Marco, my husband, it turns out, only ate pizza margherita and biscuits until he was in high school (she says) and now he is one of the most passionate eaters I know! Now that Mariù is seven she has suddenly started coming out of her picky phase and we can - thankfully - enjoy eating things together as a family. It’s been my dream for years to cook just one thing that we can all enjoy and now that’s finally happening!
Is there a meal that you make time and time again and makes you really think of your family?
Spaghetti con le vongole. It’s such a classic. It is also so quick to make but feels really special — actually eating it makes me think of being by the beach on holiday with my family. But I love it too because it’s one of these dishes that EVERYONE loves so it’s a delight to make the whole family happy in one go!
Do you think you family influence your writing and recipes?
Absolutely. When I started writing Florentine Mariù was only 18 months old and some of the recipes I chose to include were ones that she loved (her favourite gelato flavours, for example!). Marco, my husband has always been a huge inspiration too. His whole family inspired Tortellini at Midnight, where I tracked down the family tree and wrote about the recipes (also from Piedmont and Puglia) that most influenced the Tuscan table of my in laws. Many are recipes that my mother in law still cooks for us and for the girls, so they are really embedded in our family repertoire (and therefore what I write about!).
Where did you learn to cook?
I have loved cooking for as long as I can remember, but I have a particular memory of learning how to make scrambled eggs with my grandmother in Sydney on her electric stove top. She had some really good tips that I still use today — take the eggs off the heat before they look done as they keep cooking and use lots of butter! My mother is also a fantastic cook. I miss her food the most living so far away from Australia. She is Japanese and her mother was also a wonderful cook, so the food I crave most is her Japanese food that I grew up eating; I try to replicate when I am feeling homesick but is never quite the same.
Do you think food and eating important to family in Italy?
I would say it is what life revolves around in Italy! It is such a fundamental, important part of Italian identity and culture that I think many books have been written just on how and why this topic is important in Italy! One thing that I find really striking is how the family meal is so prominent, even in modern Italy. Eating dinner together, for example, is such a normal thing to do that usually the entire family wait for the adults to get home from work so the meal takes place quite a lot later than they do in Anglo-Saxon countries - 8.30pm is a really normal time in Tuscany for small kids to be having their dinner, because they do it together with the entire family.
I love the idea of big families around the table. So what are you cooking for your family at the moment?
We have been enjoying a lot of pasta con le vongole recently as well as cheesy focaccia. The cheesy focaccia is based on a classic focaccia pugliese, which normally is topped with cherry tomatoes and herbs — and instead I’ve covered it in stracchino cheese and sesame seeds! If stracchino is unavailable (it is quite hard to get outside of Italy as it’s such a soft, fresh cheese), you could use goat’s curd or mozzarella instead.
Focaccia con stracchino
This is inspired partly by my favourite bakery in Florence, S.Forno, that makes a delicious Florentine schiacciata (a very crisp style focaccia) with stracchino cheese and sesame seeds, and partly by Roman Pizzaiolo, Gabriele Bonci’s recipe for Focaccia Pugliese, a thick, spongy and hearty style focaccia which is usually topped with cherry tomatoes and oregano. Bonci’s version requires very little yeast and quite a lot of water but what that means actually is that it’s very low maintenance and time does a lot of the work for you. Ideally I like to make this at night and leave it in the fridge to rise overnight so that you can bake it first thing in the morning to enjoy all day. It’s delicious eaten while still slightly warm and if you like (as I do) with fresh cherry tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt on top!
Ingredients
1 kg fine durum wheat flour (semola rimacinata)
5 gr of active dried yeast
800 ml water
18 gr salt, plus extra for sprinkling
extra virgin olive oil for oiling and drizzling
150 grams stracchino cheese
handful of breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds
Instructions
In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, water and salt. Knead the dough for a few minutes until it comes together. Place the dough in a bowl oiled with olive oil and leave in the fridge for 24 hours to rise.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface, folding the dough in half, turning 90 degrees, folding in half again, turning 90 degrees and folding in half a third time. This adds strength and elasticity to the dough. Roll it out to a thickness of about 2cm and place the dough in a large rectangular baking tray dusted with breadcrumbs, spreading to the edges. Arrange the cheese on the top of the dough. Drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt and sesame seeds on top. Let rise for another hour.
Place on the bottom rack of a hot oven (220ºC) for 15 minutes (this helps the bottom get nice and crisp) then move to the middle rack and continue baking a further 10 minutes. It should be golden and crisp. Cut into squares and enjoy your focaccia warm or that day.
