Portraits of Labrador | Photo by John Gaudi | Graziella Altobelli

“Cooking is my passion. It always was my passion since I was 6 years old because my grandmother was a great cook. She taught me cooking, not only baking, everything. She taught me how to love food, how to make traditional food. Now with books and the internet, it’s easy to learn, very easy. I love to eat, I love food. I love the Mediterranean diet because it’s rich, it’s healthy.

“I love everything creative, not only food. I think inside I am an artist. For a period in my life, I created theatre costumes for almost 10 years. When I create something, I imagine in my head what I want. You need fantasy, you need to apply it, you need creativity. Cooking is an art.

“There are a lot of mistakes about Italian food. The other day, a lady who worked with me said, “I was in a restaurant here, and I ate the best carbonara.” So, I asked her, ‘What was inside?’ and she said, ‘Chicken and Alfredo sauce.’ Look, that was like a knife in my heart,  really. Chicken and Alfredo sauce, that is not carbonara. Perhaps it’s very good, but you can’t call it carbonara.

“It’s important people know what is the real food, made from scratch with fresh ingredients. For my cakes too, I never use cake mix, because for me, it’s not natural. It’s like an offence for me.

“I would like people to know what is the real [Italian] food. It’s amazing. Good food makes people happy.”

The Tamarack Camera Club has partnered with the Labrador Institute on a photography project called The Humans of Labrador. Some of these photos will be published here as Portraits of Labrador.  The series was launched with this photo by John Graham.