Foodie Profile with Adelina Fiorito Pulford
Adelina Fiorito Pulford is a Calabrian-born, Victorian based chef, cookery teacher and author of 8 cookbooks. In this Foodie Profile q&a she talks to us about her career, how her heritage has influenced her cooking and why she started sharing her cooking online. Adelina has also very kindly shared her recipe for handmade fusilli.
1. For those unfamiliar with your work, can you take us back to the beginning of your career — when did you first feel that cooking could become your life’s work, and how did that journey unfold?
I have been cooking since the age of 7 in my native Calabria, and I have really enjoyed cooking with my mum my whole life. Later, when my family migrated to Australia cooking for a living became my dream. I enrolled at William Angliss Tafe College in Melbourne, where I graduated as a chef. It was the best decision I ever made; it opened doors to work in some amazing restaurants.
2. You were born in Calabria and in 2019 you were made an official ambassador of the Accademia delle Tradizioni Enogastronomiche di Calabria (The academy of Calabrian food and wine traditions). When you think about Calabria and its food, what memories, flavours, or family moments come to mind first — and why are they still so important to you today?
The first thing that comes to mind is my family getting ready for the yearly event of a pig’s slaughter in winter, which would be our main supply of meat for the year to come. All the meat was processed and preserved as air dried salumi or as cooked meat and preserved in pig’s lard. It was quite an event that would take a whole week. This is a ritual still held in my hometown of Cervicati today. Salumi making has also become a tradition here in Australia with members of the Italian community, it’s keeping traditions, and it reminds me of an era gone but not forgotten.
3. What first inspired you to start sharing your cooking online, and how did that small beginning grow into the community, school, and 8 cookbooks you have today?
I started sharing my cooking online after I worked at the Enoteca Vino Bar, mid 2000. My job there was as a pastry chef and particularly creating Italian recipes, sweet and savoury. I started recording all of my recipes, there was a lot of demand for my style of cooking, and I was soon running cooking classes at the Enoteca Vino Bar. In 2009 when I retired from Enoteca Vino Bar, I started my own Italian Cooking School, Adelinas Kitchen Dromana. Since 2014 to 2023 I have self-published 8 cookbooks, sweets and savoury.
4. What comfort food or dish from your childhood instantly takes you back in time — and what does it still represent for you now?
Pasta with tuna was a staple, something my mum would cook when there was not much fresh produce available, it reminds me that you can have a healthy meal that does not cost a fortune like some take away, particularly when there was no takeaway, and that wholesome food is always the best.
5. In what ways has your Italian/Calabrian heritage shaped your values in the kitchen — even in the simplest everyday meals?
My Italian/Calabrian heritage has made me aware that seasonal foods are always the best, no fancy ingredients required, a simple and nutritious meal can be prepared without costing a fortune, pasta with vegetables, risotto with vegetables are some of the food I cook every day and I am always inspired by cucina povera, poor people’s food is always the best.
6. Are there any Italian or Calabrian food rituals you still practise today that make you feel most connected to home?
I make my own tomato sauce in the summer, not passata but an actual sauce, fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic and bay leaves, I bottle them and sterilise for the rest of the year, when there are no sun ripe tomatoes, it’s summer in a bottle for me.
7. In the introduction to your cookbook Learn Cook Enjoy you mention sourcing great ingredients from accessible sources. Could you share tips for buying great ingredients and where you recommend sourcing Italian products?
In the last few years, it has been quite difficult to source specific ingredients, 2 of my favourite retail stores have closed their doors, Enoteca Sileno and The Essential Ingredient, creating a large void for great Italian ingredients. Mediterranean Wholesalers in Brunswick, Victoria are still around with some good products, and for sweets ingredients there is a company called The Royal Nut Company, also in Brunswick. Also, some of the Italian delicatessens seem to provide more and more of a great variety of Italian ingredients.
8. We could not have this interview without mentioning your greatest influence, your mother, Vincenza. Could you tell us a little bit about her, how she became such an extraordinary cook and her favourite dishes?
My mother was a simple cook, and when I say that I immediately think of someone saying, the hardest things to make are the simplest things. To this day I follow one of her recipes, “pastry cream” for filling cannoli and pastries. She never weighed anything, to one litre of milk she would add 8 egg yolks, 8 tablespoons ‘full’ of plain sugar and 8 tablespoons ‘flat’ of plain flour, plus lemon rind. I have used this recipe without fail, but I have used metric measurements for the flour and sugar in my books. To this day some people cannot get this recipe right. My mum taught me how to make fried cannoli, she loved them, she loved sweet fried ravioli with ricotta, she was the master of shallow frying, vegetable croquettes and the likes. My mother was ahead of her time, she would make us risotto even before it became popular some 40 years ago. She would call it riso di crudo, meaning the rice was cooked from raw with stock, one of her favourite additions to this dish would be cabbage and ‘Nduja Cosentina, a poor people sausage made with leftover bits of meat from the pig that was slaughtered for salumi making. My mother has been my greatest inspiration.
9. If you could share one recipe that truly represents your story and your approach to food what would it be and why?
The one recipe that would represent my story would be Mum’s recipe of handmade fusilli pasta with meat sauce. The pasta recipe is simple, made with a blend of plain flour, semola rimacinata, one egg, and enough warm water to bind the dough, not too hard not too soft, just right, it’s quite an art. Rolling each strand of past with a wooden skewer or a knitting needle is daunting but can be done. In my 2nd book, Recipes from my Italian Table, I have given specific measurements for the warm water, and it works well. This recipe is a combination of my mother’s skill and my skills as a chef to find a way to reproduce such a recipe that it’s no longer fashionable or might be considered too hard. This has always been my approach to food.
To order Adelina’s cookbooks, head to: www.adelinaskitchen.com.au
