Lockdown in Florence: Laredoan Gilda Valdez Carbonaro cooks as she copes with the coronavirus; an interview by wordsmith Wanda Garner Cash

‘Silenzio da ragu,’ is an Italian expression for the happy expectation of what lies ahead at dinnertime. Conversation hushes around the table as the hostess presents her accomplishment prepared in her guests’ honor.

Gilda Valdez Carbonaro treasures this savory anticipation, recalling its origins from a scene in a Sophia Loren movie when the pasta silences the chatter and the table talk turns to the food.

Laredo native Gilda is a cook, educator and culinary tour guide. She presents her own culinary offerings steeped in the flavors of two countries, served with the grace and flair of Mexican and Italian hospitality.

Her husband Fulvio is also a maestro in the kitchen, where she says they vie for counter space and cooking time. A computer scientist by profession, he honed his pizza-making skills at the renown AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) in Naples.

Oh, to be a privileged guest at their table.

Gilda lives in two worlds, with deep affection for the culinary traditions learned in her mother’s kitchen in Laredo, spiced with indigenous recipes from her homes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Florence, Italy.

Trained at the Cordon Bleu of Florence and other cooking schools, Gilda for years was a home cook, whose kitchen was usually filled with the rowdy laughter from her son Alex and his school friends.

Not much silence, but plenty of appreciation for the food they piled on their plates.

“When Alex was a teenager, a lot of his friends would show up at dinnertime and as these kids got older they wanted to know my recipes and I promised I would write a cookbook for them,” Gilda said in a telephone interview from Florence.

“Being in lockdown here in Florence, gave me a lot of time to reflect on things I have left unfinished in my life. I had no other distractions and finally got it done,” she said.

Her first book, “A Tiny Kitchen in Florence,” was written during the Covid-19 pandemic. The e-book, available on Amazon, highlights what she cooked during this lockdown. The recipes are Italian in general with a focus on simple Florentine cuisine.

The book contains lush photos of Gilda’s food and iconic images from around Florence, along with tips on technique and equipment, ingredients and wine pairings.

“These are all recipes I love, because I had them at friends’ homes here in Italy, or because I’ve cooked them all my life, as learned from my mother-in-law, or because I’ve eaten them in trattorias in Italy.”

She said the recipes in the book were inspired by past culinary memories of late winter and early spring. “Memories of food that I wanted to revive in my mind and palate. But I did have the basic ingredients for many of them.”

Her background in cooking comes from a lifetime love of the unique cuisines of her husband Fulvio’s Italian family and her Mexican heritage.

Many similarities exist in Italian and Mexican cooking. The most obvious is the Italian soffritto or Spanish sofrito, what Cajun cooks refer to as a holy trinity. It’s usually three fresh ingredients that are finely chopped, sautéd and cooked down as the flavor base for the rest of the ingredients. In Italy, it’s usually carrot, celery, and onion. In Mexico, it can also have garlic and tomato.

“My mother was fussy about how food was prepared, what it looked like on the plate and how it tasted. I get this from her, this need to cook something that often generates that exclamation: You have to give me this recipe!”

Gilda’s mother Floria Valdez was an intuitive cook, from a generation that didn’t refer to cookbooks but relied on oral history from mothers and grandmothers, tias and abuelitas.

As the oldest of three daughters, Gilda was responsible for breakfasts on Saturday mornings from the time she was about 14. Later, when she attended Laredo Junior College, her responsibility expanded to preparing lunchtime guisados for her father Rogelio. “By then, my mother was working outside of the home.”

Food was important in Gilda’s family, then and now, as she focuses on the freshest seasonal ingredients for her own table and for the meals she introduces to the eager foodies who compete for a spot on her gastronomic tours in Italy and Mexico, through her Culinarian Expeditions company.

“I suppose finding the best ingredients is hard,” she said. “But I think the hardest part is not understanding that a recipe takes practice. You’re not going to ‘get it’ the first time. It takes time to perfect it.”

Gilda insists on good ingredients. Her pantry is usually stocked with fresh or canned cherry tomatoes, fresh garlic, dried beans, different kinds of dried pastas, and two kinds of olive oil, the cheap one to cook with, and the good one for drizzling on salads or soups. She always has peanut or corn oil for occasional frying. Her kitchen spice garden is a sunny windowsill lined with pots of parsley, sage, rosemary, and basil.

“I think people don’t cook as much because they think it’s too much work,” she said. “They think it takes a myriad ingredients and takes hours to prepare and you must dirty so many dishes.”

She says her new book proves the point that simple is better.

Gilda graduated from Nixon High School in 1967 and met Fulvio Carbonaro at the University of Houston. The couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where Fulvio pursued a career in information technology and Gilda got her master’s degree in linguistics at Georgetown University and created curriculum as director of the university’s Spanish language program.

Later, she taught at St. Alban’s School, where she created a cooking school for the hungry boys who shared her culinary passion. During this time, she also co-authored a culinary blog with her god-daughter Dini McCullough, daughter of her beloved Laredo friend, the late Rocio Amozurruta.

In 2007, Gilda created a travel program to Mexico for the middle school Spanish students of St. Albans. The purpose was cultural immersion through language, cooking, dance, and sports. The program lasted more than 10 years and was dedicated to her son, Alessandro “Alex” Carbonaro, who was a Marine Recon team leader. Alex had just turned 28 when his convoy was hit by an IED on May 1, 2006. He died nine days later at a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, surrounded by his parents and his wife of one year.

“This book is important to me, because I promised to write this for my son years ago. The whole purpose was for him to have it, to see it, to read,” she said.
“When he died, I couldn’t think about it. As the years went by, it became clear that I had to keep that promise.”

Alex was honored for his leadership and heroism. Gilda dedicated “A Tiny Kitchen” to him, with a quote from Dante: “A gentle thought that speaks of you often springs to life in me.”