Silvia’s Masterclass

If you were to ask me what makes Mediterranean home cooking so special, I would say, without hesitation, that it's the cooks themselves.

Across the Mediterranean, home cooking rests on the same four pillars: tradition, pride, creativity and simplicity. Whether you're in a kitchen in Sicily, Crete or Andalusia, people hold on to them as tightly as Italians hold on to eggs and parmesan in a carbonara!

We grow up in cultures that celebrate cooking, and eating, every single day. The same respect is given to a biscotto dunked in the morning espresso, a piece of bread dripping with olive oil, a tray of golden filo pastries or a pot of seafood stew shared at the table.

Tradition is honoured with love and with restraint. The recipes handed down by our grandmothers are not to be tampered with, and we are fiercely opinionated about leaving out anything unnecessary, so the simple beauty of a dish can shine. Less truly is more.

Mediterranean cooks are natural and inventive, but their creativity is thrifty and resourceful rather than fancy. It takes far more imagination to make something delicious out of three or four ingredients and a wooden spoon than with fifteen ingredients and as many gadgets!

In this new series of Silvia's Masterclass, Italy is still at the heart of every episode, but Silvia opens her kitchen a little wider. She shares recipes, stories and the little tricks she's learnt along the way, from Pantelleria to Greece, Spain and Provence, so that you too can bring the joy of simple Mediterranean cooking into your home.

Silvia's Masterclass is for accomplished home cooks and beginners, for those who love a kitchen gadget and those who don't, and for those who like to improvise as much as those who follow a recipe to the letter.