ORGANIZATION
The House of Food(Casa del Cibo) by Dafne Chanaz is the roman knot for the publisher Terranuova, because the editor is the heir to a thirty year movement which has always connected those who treat ecology and food, the first supporters of organic food, and eco-villagers. The books and magazine are generally available at the events organized at Casa del Cibo.
Dafne collaborates every year with the University of Seattle (UW) on Culture and Politics in Food, a program in which she has the honor and joy of teaching together with Prof. Ann Anagnost, someone with unique humane and intellectual qualities.
We collaborate with Panta Rei and with Buona Terra on Lake Trasimeno, two places which offer all round environmental education, in a context which is both harmonious and innovative. Some of their courses can be also be attended by us from Rome, and vice versa.
We often work with Città dell’Altra Economica (city of the other economy), which hosted the Roman Festa della Pasta Madre in 2013 for example and which hosts the earthenware stove which we built.
Teaching and colorations are also in the works with John Cabot University.
We support the Rete di Semi Rurali (rural seeds web) and the Italian WWOOF web.
COLLABORATORS
At Dafne Chanaz’s Casa del Cibo, you can attend seminars by professionals and experts like:
• the greatest expert on Italian cuisine in the world Vittorio Castellani aka Chef Kumale’(www.ilgastronomade.com) and Freelance journalist and insatiable “gastro-nomad”, who alternates between study and research of world cuisines (he has written 18 books on the matter) and the work of communication, organization of events and pedagogy.
• Dr. Cristina Vittorini, a nutritionist and expert in nutritional biotherapy.
FUTURE COLLABORATIONS
The realities with which there is constant dialogue and a fertile terrain:
• Zolle because more than anyone else in Rome, they have actualized the offer of a food chain on a local level.
• The American Academy and in particular the Sustainable Food Project, a unique example of a 5 star and zero km canteen, which moulds interns to popular and seasonal cuisine.
• The Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio (the Testaccio popular school of Music)which like us teaches improvisation.
PAST COLLABORATIONS
It has been a long journey and many people have contributed along the way. To each of these individuals, Dafne extends her special thanks: the farmers of the terra/Terra movement who have inspired in large part her doctoral research; the university of Florence and in particular Prof. Alberto Magnaghi who supported her and allowed her to inaugurate a new area of research: that of the relationship between the city and the country through food. Lucilla Pezzetta believed in the project and contributed to it in 2008, when the historic Confraternita’ della Pasta Madre was founded; Ben Hirst, chef at Necci, who permitted her to hold her first wonderful breadmaking classes; Annalisa Melis, who collaborated on the first classes in the “Metissage” series and the 2010 “Tempeste di farina”; Angelo Belli and Zoc, who hosted the world cuisine courses; Emma Hetnar and Sarah Ross, who contributed to the first editions of the Culture and Politics of Food in 2011 and 2013; Niccolò Tacconi, who helped plan and build the terrace vegetable garden; Mariangela Ascatigno, who believed in the project and intensely contributed to it in a pioneering and creative 2013; Giusy Sansone, who brilliantly gave her soul to the realization of the first Roman Festa della Pasta Madre.
Take Heidi, with her pigtails, hills, cows and red cheeks. Try to take a snapshot of her state of mind when she sits in the fields. Then, taking care not to alter this feeling, pass it into the blender of contemporary civilization and expose it to the frantic competitive and globalized atmosphere of metropolises. To finish give her a few tools: a properly equiped kitchen, a good network of farmer friends and wise grandmothers, the foundations of ecological thought and the rigor that adulthood imposes.
Now ask her to get to work. You will be amazed by the lucid ferocity with which she knows how to defend and describe her world, from naivety and the contagious joy with which she continues to indulge in antiquated activities like making bread, empiric ethology or the harvesting of wild greens. Brought up in the Parco di Veio on a hill which taught her to live, she attended the classical French high school Chateaubriand and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Masters in Local Development from Marseilles. Dafne is also heir to a Tuscan grandmother of simple origins, Miranda, who spent her life in the kitchen with astounding results. The strange contrast between Tuscan and Moroccan cuisine, researched during her years in Marseilles, enriched her gastronomical imagination. After six years as a consultant for local development and international relations for the City of Rome, Dafne followed her intuition thanks to Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) and decided to become a priestess of home cooking, apprentice witch, ecologist, and food activist.
For 4 years, she studied intensively learning from farmers, cooking non-stop, visiting eco-villages, farms and markets all over Europe and earned a research Ph.D. in Urban planning with a thesis on the theme of the food chain (the umbilical cord between the city and the country, between nature and culture). During her research and writing, she travelled alongside some of the greatest minds in contemporary ecology like Michael Pollan and Giannozzo Pucci. Inaugurating a new area of research (that of the relationship between food and the city), at the same time as the first extraordinary book on the topic came out in England written by Carolyn Steel (here she talks about it in a TED Talk video). One evening in February of 2009, she found herself teaching Carolyn the preparation technique for ravioli while eagerly chatting about the above topics in the writer’s London home and making an improvised filling of tofu, spinach and cardamon. Today Dafne has turned her own house into a cooking school, where she teaches Culture and Politics of Food for american university students in Rome, she is the author of numerous articles and three books, with another one in the works. She is one of the best home bakers in Rome, founder and soul of the Sourdough Brotherhood. She is an expert in natural cosmetics and herbal remedies, as well as creator of perfumes. She relentlessly continues researching, while sharing her knowledge.
Our cooking school is located in the Monteverde area of Rome, on the n.8 tram line, twenty minutes from Piazza Venezia and Largo Argentina.
Come visit after calling +39-349.3922564 or write at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Why teach cooking classes?
Because the majority of us in the course of the last century has become a passive urban consumer. We are victims of marketing without having any knowledge about real food, where it comes from, how you recognize it, when it grows and how it can be cooked. Through research, training and laboratories, we want to give back to urban residents an approach to food like a symbolic knot, in which our intimate and visceral relationship with Mother Nature is played. Eating can once again become a sensual moment for relating with the elements which can cure both our personal health and that of the world in which we live in.
Why focus on the poor popular cuisine of farmers?
All places teach us the things that farmers have always known how to hear. Agricultural activity/Farming has always been a carrier of a concrete sense of proportion, and of time as the ecological system of human society directly suggests. Some people talk about the “grammar” of local food, from which a potentially infinite variety of recipes is born. Grammatical rules, which one supposes, are also socio-anthropological expressions of a community. In the kitchen, nature and culture fuse together and alchemies are made.
Why do I teach home cooking?
By cooking in a rural family or community setting, symbolisms and seasonal rituals are called to mind through the ingredients, times and movements. If it is love that connects the cook to the people sitting at the table, the cooking will be different. At home, everyone ends up eating together: the dish isn’t a competitive performance but a pleasure to be shared in the act of conviviality.
This article published a few years ago in the magazine Il lato selvatico(the wild side) explores the most complex and deepest reasons which gave life to my project.
"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.
