#Cookuarantine: Cook from Home with Chef Enzo
For most of us, there are at least a few recipes we have always wanted to try and learn but we were never really home to master the art of cooking. Now, as we are all stuck inside, we can use this time of self-isolation to make better cooks of ourselves. With #Cookuarantine Italian Chef Enzo Neri is ready to guide us.
Chef Enzo has worked in Michelin starred restaurants in his native Italy and headed restaurants in London and New York. Throughout his two-decade-long career, the Italian chef has done consulting for restaurants from Norway to the Caribbean develop for their menus and contents. The chef known for his reinterpretation and modernization of traditional Italian dishes moved to Tbilisi in 2017.
“Cooking has never been my ambition, just the way I express myself,” the chef says as he fills us in on his latest project #Cookuarantine. Read on to find out how Chef Enzo’s initiative can help you make good use of all your free time during the Covid-19 self-isolation.
“Making food is not just my profession but is also a passion and my everyday life. When the Covid-19 started to spread rapidly and widely, we were all forced to isolate ourselves and apart from reading some pages of a book and watch movies, I found myself bored in a little while. Also by necessity, I had to provide myself with meals daily and I thought, ‘why not?’
I take this opportunity to teach people some simple cooking skills sharing my recipes and entertain them with some positive vibes. I guess it was a great idea also to ask my followers to make the food and post it on social media and hashtag the caption #cookuarantine,” explains the Italian chef. Because what we do here, is cook while being forced to stay at home. This Cookuarantine doesn't involve much other than watching me, take notes and following the steps. Then reproduce the recipe, cooking lunch of dinner and post a photo tagging Chef Enzo and hashtag Cookuarantine,” the chef tells us, walking us through the process of #cookuarantine.
Chef Enzo has also shared how people have reacted to #cookuarantine with us.
“I guess people embraced my positivity and believing in my skills are now participating in the masterclasses actively, typing comments to the live session, sending me private messages, asking me for recipes and dishes, confronting their work with mine. Some old Italian friends sending greetings through Facebook page and others are just making jokes.”
Coming from Italy, Chef Enzo feels all the heaviness of the coronavirus, especially now that his brother has tested positive. He has found the remedy in his profession and believes that cooking can help us during this rough time of self-isolation that has filled our lives with constant anxiety.
“I think people are kind of scared of the coronavirus outbreaks and so cooking can distract them from the media's daily news that is pretty sad and worrying. What we are doing is not a psychological cure but could help to focus on something else, to crack a smile on a face, to laugh, to spend a half-hour a day preparing some delicious and to share the love. It is a way to be together, to feel united in common solidarity against one of the worse disasters of our century.
Being an Italian, I feel pretty concerned about the actual situation in my country. Especially because my oldest brother, the director of Il Giorno newspaper of Milano, was infected a few days ago and he's now recovering at Niguarda hospital. #Cookurantine keeps my hope alive to see soon the end of this dark tunnel,” the chef told GEORGIA TODAY.
We also found out that Chef Enzo who is currently a Brand Chef of Dinehall in Tbilisi is opening his restaurant!
“Gia Piradashvili has given me an opportunity to open Enzo's Ezo restaurant in Chateau Mere. It will be like an Italian yard with tables in the garden, serving pizza from an Italian wood oven, charcoaled meat and fish with a Josper grill, a fusion of Italian and Georgian flavors, including my chocolate khinkali, in the beautiful countryside of Kakheti,” he describes the upcoming restaurant, but it sounds like an objective paradise, adding on later that his only plan is “to keep cooking and spread the love with food, enthusiasm, and good vibes.”
By Nini Dakhundaridze