cooking
Sharing Culture
Through Cuisine
Area cooking instructors teach clients about the flavors of their homelands, and more
D
uring Cristina Bossini’s
cooking class at
Healthy Italia-La
Buona Cucina, the
instructor won’t give
you written recipes
or measurements until after you’ve
made your meal. “The most impos-
sible question you could ask me
when making a dish is ‘How much?’”
says Bossini.
She probably won’t even tell you
the ingredients in English, opting
instead for the Italian translation.
What Bossini will do, she says, is
teach you how to make a satisfying
Italian meal the way she learned to
do it growing up in Milan.
In Bossini’s classes, held at a
kitchen facility in Madison, recipes
are more like suggestions, which is
why she doesn’t hand any out until
the end. Instead, Bossini encourages
people to feel for the right texture
and taste as they go. If something
isn’t working — add another ingredi-
ent. “Even if you follow the recipe
and it says one egg, how big is that
one egg supposed to be?” she asks.
“You’re going to start to recognize
what tastes good.”
Healthy Italia-La Buona Cucina
holds group classes for about 12 to
18 people, or folks can reserve the
entire kitchen for a private cooking
class. During the session, you’ll learn
to make three courses: an appetizer, a
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HOLIDAY 2019 MILLBURN & SHORT HILLS MAGAZINE
main dish and a dessert. Bossini says
that her classes are also kid-friendly.
The ingredients used are usually
imported from Italy. Bossini has vis-
ited many of the facilities she sources
from to make sure the quality is up
to her high standard, which makes
all the difference in the final product,
she says.
But the self-taught chef didn’t
always have a love affair with food.
“My mom was going crazy when
my siblings and I were growing up
because she had to cook so many
different dishes for all of us,” she
says. “We just wouldn’t eat. We liked
very plain stuff, pasta with toma-
toes.” Yet it was her picky eating that
encouraged her to start cooking. She
would take recipes out of cookbooks
and change them to suit her tastes.
When she moved to the United
States, she wanted to open a culinary
business of some sort, but realized a
traditional restaurant wasn’t the way
to go. “Here, you can find any good
Italian food you could want,” she
says. “I decided to go in a bit of a
different direction.”
La Buona Cucina was her different
direction – bringing Italian cooking
know-how to people who have prob-
ably dined on hand-made pasta many
times at area restaurants, but never
made it themselves. Pasta, Bossini
says, is one of the dishes her students
are most intimidated by. “But once
they start, they realize it’s so easy.”
During the holidays, she’ll hold
classes on how to create and style a
cheese plate, and how to bake Italian
Christmas cookies. She also often
teaches how to make a stuffed, boiled
ham – a traditional Christmas meal
from northern Italy, and a contrast
to the seven fishes dish of southern
Italy. “You’re cooking in our kitch-
en,” she says. “When you do that,
you’re our friend.”
Healthy Italia — La Buona Cucina
is located at 55 Main St., Madison;
(973) 966-5200, healthy-italia.com.
WRITTEN BY REBECCA KING