Written by Giusseppe Crupi – Director at Pinocchio Italian Cookery School
Living abroad is a challenge and a privilege. Yes It is true, you have to overcome daily obstacles and adapt to a brand new environment trying to blend in but you also have the opportunity to look at things from a different point of view. And that is priceless.
When I came to Dublin I just planned to spend few months in town.
That was 18 years ago and I have no intention to leave Ireland any time soon.
I joined the Flavour of Italy Group when recession was at its worst but we truly believed in our vision: bringing the best of the Italian culture through food and wine. In particular as the Director of the Italian School of Cooking I had the opportunity to teach people how to make traditional italian dishes from scratch and awaken the Italian in them as I always liked to put it.
Times were tough: me and Isabella were waking up early to go to the fruit and vegetable market to get everything ready for the class.
Fortunately the economy started to pick up and all the sacrifices paid off.
The School now has three venues and there is a team of people setting up the cookery stations.
Our cookery team building experiences became increasingly popular and we ended up being regulars on Ireland AM.
Being on TV is not just a great bust for your ego, it is also a surprisingly exciting way to reach so many people in the country and tell them about the culture you belong to and you would like to represent.
So every time I go home to Italy my mum and her sisters gather around to pass me new recipes so ‘I can teach them to the Irish’ as they say.
I always found that food and language are the key factors to fully embrace new cultures and this feeling becomes tangible during the cookery sessions.
Over the last decade we had thousands of students not only Irish but from all over the world and I still take great pride while observing them learning how to cook.
It is almost like a ritual: they timidly follow the instructions at the beginning and slowly gain more and more confidence as they start to realize that cooking is not intimidating at all and can be real fun.
I am at a stage in life when you cannot just work to pay the bills, you need a project and a legacy.
That is why I find my job so rewarding: it is not just passing on some recipes and cooking tricks, it is more realizing that somehow you suggest to people a different approach to food and cooking.
It is the idea that after coming to the School there might be a family in town making pizza from scratch spending quality time all together in a kitchen full of flour while it is raining outside.
And that’s why I am always looking forward to meeting new people and cooking all together.
Discover more about our COOKERY SCHOOL