Real Food Rome
"In the city people often see what’s written on signs, but they forget to notice the oranges on the trees or the blackbirds on the balconies. Through conviviality, love and the pleasure of food, I try to revive this habit of having a dialogue with plants, animals, the elements and the seasons…the kitchen is the place and the way in which I do so."
Dafne Chanaz
Real Food Rome (Casa del Cibo) is a project by Dafne Chanaz for the diffusion of domestic and peasant gastronomical culture. Dafne teaches, writes and opens her home where she has fine-tuned a prototype of the “urban farm” with a vegetable garden, compost, preserves cabinet, fireplace, soap made of ash, a closet for fermentation and such. Dafne works in 6 languages (Italian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and modern Greek), and offers:
• A wealth of academic or scholastic teaching modules perennially updated and formulated according to the needs on the theme of gastronomic culture and the relationship between food and the city—here are some pictures of the workshops in a quarterly study abroad program which is worth15 credits at the University of Washington.
• Research and taylored consultancies on food and ecology: for the past ten years, Dafne has accumulated knowledge, done research and published books and articles (at the moment she is working on edible wild herbs in central Italy). She therefore has an important bibliographic archive and can offer further in depth information on a wide variety of topics.
• A bed and breakfast with cooking classes that offer the opportunity of getting to know the Italian gastronomical culture starting from the identification of vegetables at the market and the rolling of the dough for tagliatelle or ravioli up to the preparation of pizzas with natural sourdough leavening…We use only local and organic produce in season, spices and wild herbs. Italy is the nation of the “typical” dish, i.e. of an ecological cuisine that connects the recipes to the territory. Italians often have a need to rediscover their roots; foreigners meanwhile by learning to cook in the Italian way can get into the spirit and then adapt it to their countries, so as to cook and eat more happily at home.
The project of working on video tutorials on: ecological DIY and peasant home cooking, the use of wild herbs, and other similar witchcraft topics.
