The Magical Cookery of I Foodini

I Foodini are Sean Lawson, Jenn Andreoli and Chris Warren- cooks who collaborated on a series of videos and webcasts documenting their friends, stories and recipes in Tuscany, Italy and the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. In the over 30 years that I have lived in the medieval hilltown of Sorano in Tuscany, I have had the great fortune to be invited into the homes of and been fed by many of the welcoming townspeople. Two, in particular, became my adoptive aunties, and between them, they taught me most of what I know about the magic of the Italian table. Unlike me, both Sean and Jenn had formal training at culinary schools. Sean settled in Sorano with his Italian wife, Emma, about 15 years after I had arrived. He had previously been working in London for seven years as a chef at various restaurants. Sean was born in Sunderland, England, where his grandmother had a fish and chips shop, which inspired him eventually to follow her into the food preparation business. When he was young, his family moved to Auckland, so most of his schooling, culinary training, and first ten years of cooking jobs were in New Zealand.

Jennifer - Jenn - is originally from Toronto, where her mother and stepfather worked in the film industry. Jenn's busy parents often left her to fend for herself, so she became quite an adept and confident cook from an early age. Jenn's father, Tony Hall, was trained as an architect but was a set designer by trade. He had a dream to build a boutique hotel in the tropics, and so the family left the rat race behind and moved to the Caribbean island of Dominica when Jenn was eight. The beautiful Zandoli Inn opened in 1992, but Jenn continued to go back and forth between Canada and Dominica. She eventually got her culinary degree, earned her cooking chops, and then in 1996 opened and was the chief chef at the very successful Universal Grill restaurant in Toronto. Tony Hall died suddenly in 1998, and eventually Jenn returned permanently to Dominica to help her mother run the Zandoli Inn - and she made the restaurant the best on the island.