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Pasta Pronto
episode • The Cook Up with Adam Liaw • cooking • 25m
G
episode • The Cook Up with Adam Liaw • cooking • 25m
G
Cooking was 's first love. The food writer's culinary style reflects her Maltese heritage, her husband's Japanese heritage and travels around Italy. Simplicity and seasonality is at its core. She shares this food philosophy with her readers and followers, encouraging them to be frugal in the kitchen and discover the joy of cooking for others.
The beginning
Busuttil Nishimura's love affair with food began in her childhood home in Adelaide. She recalls podding broad beans with her grandmother on the back porch, baking cinnamon apple tea cakes with her mother and making Maltese-style ricotta (irkotta) with the seawater that she and her father had collected at the local beach. The family didn't eat meat often, but when they did, it was rabbit, which her father's friends had freshly caught and skinned. Her mum fried the rabbit in butter, olive oil and sage, or braised it in a rich tomato stew. They then used the sauce for spaghetti, ate the rabbit separately with vegetables and crusty bread, and turned leftovers into rabbit stew pie.
This approach to food was not only a core part of their Maltese heritage but a matter of affordability and necessity. "We didn't have a lot of money growing up, so although it was a food-loving family, there was a sense of frugality and making do. Nothing was really ever taken for granted," she says.
Not wasting food, using what we have and being creative with ingredients are all part of what makes home cooking so special.
Busuttil Nishimura's parents nurtured her love of cooking while teaching her the importance of not wasting food. On weekends, she and her sister enjoyed friendly cook-offs, using whatever ingredients they found in the kitchen. "We would then present the dish to our mum who would judge and award a winner," she says. "I remember making a pasta sauce with butter and the seeds from the capsicum, thinking I was so creative. Of course, it was totally inedible."
Busuttil Nishimura is passing her childhood food lessons on to her two sons, Haruki and Yukito. "Not wasting food, using what we have, and being creative with ingredients are all part of what makes home cooking so special," she says.
Family traditions
As a child, Busuttil Nishimura looked forward to weekend dinners with her extended Maltese family. Each aunty brought a traditional dish, ranging from timpana (baked pasta pie) or ross fil forn (baked rice) to ravjul (ravioli) and kannoli (cannoli), accompanied by tales of when they ate these delicacies in Malta. She also relished weekly lunches and special religious feasts at the Maltese community centre, where she feasted on pastizzi, Maltese potatoes, roast rabbit and bragioli (stuffed braised beef).
Although Busuttil Nishimura felt a strong connection to her Maltese heritage at home, it took her time to fully appreciate and embrace it in public. She recalls feeling particularly embarrassed about the Maltese snacks in her lunchbox at school.
"All I wanted was Vegemite sandwiches and [Uncle Tobys] Roll-Ups, but instead it was hobz biz-zejt (a Maltese open-faced sandwich), tuna and olives, and imqaret (date-filled pastries)."
Julia Busuttil Nishimura as a child (right) with her mum. Source: Supplied
Coming full circle
During university, she moved to Italy to complete a part of her arts degree. This was a "coming home" experience for the Maltese cook, as she rediscovered the joys of fresh, local and seasonal produce.
Busuttil Nishimura began blogging about her experiences and sharing recipes from her family and Italian friends. This led to her first cookbook Ostro, released in 2017, which celebrates the joy of simple cooking, followed by A Year of Simple Family Food in 2020 and Around the Table: Delicious Food for Every Day in 2022.
We all have a story to tell when it comes to food.
She is currently working on her fourth book.
Family dinners are a combination of Busuttil Nishmura's recipe tests and her husband Norihiko Nishimura's one-pot Japanese wonders including oyakodon (chicken ang egg rice bowls), gyudon (beef rice bowls) or braised fish. She holds on to the importance of sharing a meal around the table with her family and understanding the traditions behind every dish.
"I love how food is part of everyone's lives," she says. "We all have a story to tell when it comes to food, and it is such a rich and diverse medium."
