The Oxford Companion to Italian Food is out and the charming and knowledgeable author, Gillian Riley, was in town Monday, speaking at the newly christened Astor Center in the East Village.

Riley is a petite Englishwoman who with her white bun and sprightly bearing could have stepped right out of a Miss Marple mystery. She’s the author of the hefty but informative tome which contains an astonishing 1,000 entries and covers every aspect of Italian gastronomy.

Riley fell in love with Italian cuisine during a trip to Italy. At the time, she was working for a British book publisher.

“Every long dusty road had a trattoria so I became unfaithful to the typographical muse,” she recalled in her speech to 40 or so food professionals.

Freshness and simplicity are the keys to great Italian food, said Riley. “Local product is made for local consumption only,” she cautioned, adding that items like fresh mozzarella “are luxuries and should be treated like real luxuries — not tarted up in complex dishes.”

Two days later, at the Beard House, Jacques Pepin, who was in town to promote his new cookbook, also talked about the importance of fresh ingredients in creating great food. Even more charming that he appears on TV, Pepin said any chef, to really know a dish, must repeat its execution hundreds of times.

The packed audience also heard Pepin talk about his experiences creating TV cooking shows with Julia Child. And Pepin spoke about his decade as executive chef to the Howard Johnson chain. There, he learned about American food preferences, as well as how to manage a large, complex food enterprise.

Astor Center
399 Lafayette St.
New York, NY
212 674 7500

The James Beard Foundation
167 W. 12th St. New York, NY
212 675 4984

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