- RESIDENCY DATES : Nov 1st 2010 to Dec 30th 2011
- PRACTICE : culinary
- FROM : USA
Having grown up bi-coastal both in California and the Northeast, Andrea's lifelong love of food ignited when she took a year to study in France. At 20 years old she learned of the art of bread baking in a wood-burning oven in Arles. Over the next several years, she returned to France and then Italy where she lived and studied fresco painting and restoration by day at the knee of a maestro. But in her time off she explored cooking, farming, and the entire world of Italian cuisine apprenticing herself to mothers and grandmothers, master cheese makers and the like.
Her love for quality food led her to making pecorino in the Chianti hills and to the Pyrenees during the age-old transhumance— bringing the sheep to the high mountains for the summer cheese production. During this time, Andrea worked as a decorative painter worldwide, but also kept her contact with food, creating a cooking school in Tuscany and working for Slow Food in Italy. Andrea traded her paintbrush for pen in 2003, graduating for Columbia University in Journalism with awards in social justice reporting and has since worked as reporter covering the environment in Northern California. The beat includes agriculture and food. She has written for the likes of Gourmet Magazine and Saveur and had her own food column. She recently returned from Italy after hosting a culinary tour of the Cilento and Amalfi Coast regions of Campania exploring the rustic kitchens of home chefs and farmers. For Andrea, her career has always been related to cooking and the stories each dish can tell whether it’s in the highlands of Tibet or in remote villages in Turkey. Cooking and eating is not just a cultural act but a political one too.
See some of Andrea's recipes.