EMIKO DAVIES

Music by Federico Ferrandina - Spaghetti Tarantella.

EMIKO DAVIES

COOKBOOK WRITER

San Miniato, Italy

I met Emiko many years ago when on a whim, I decided to go visit her in Florence where she then lived. I sent her an email and told her that I would love to come meet her and try to make a little film for her. I hardly knew how to film at the time and watching the footage now breaks my heart. Most of it is too blurry, too slow, and not relevant or good enough to my current documentary director self. But “you gotta start somewhere” as they say! And if what’s left of this first time together is not a masterpiece of visual storytelling (film above), it’s a beautiful friendship. In Florence…Read More

A small collection of photos I took in Florence…

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In Florence Emiko took Wendell and I sight seeing around the hills and in town. We tried sea water beer (strange but really good), tripe sandwiches, insanely good fresh pasta made by Marco her sommelier husband, and a fabulous grape focaccia, a local delicacy. Eating at Emiko’s table was like entering one of my cookbooks. You might know, if you’re a reader of my Instagram and this journal, that I’m an avid cookbook collector. As I’m writing this, my collection has reached a bit over 900 cookbooks. I rejoice in snuggling in my sofa-on-wheels (so I can move it to a specific part of the cookbook shelf Wendell built me) and delicately flipping the pages. Of course I love cooking from them but also watching the images accompanying the recipes and get immersed in the stories that more and more cookbooks include in their pages. It’s a culinary voyage that I undertake usually with a cool craft beer or an Australiano Bizzaro Aperitivo (yes it’s a thing, the Aussie version of the Aperol Spriz) in hand or placed on the toddler chair that I kept only for that purpose.

Sitting at Emiko’s table was like entering a dream… Of course I own all of her 6 cookbooks: Florentine, Acquacotta, Tortellini at Midnight, Torta della Nonna, Cinnamon and Salt, and Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking, her brand new baby she’s currently touring in Australia. Trying the recipes made by the master was a treat. It always tastes better, just because it’s a privilege to be there but also because Italian produce chosen by her while we were visiting Florentine markets are superior to what we can buy in Australia, vastly... Emiko’s recipes are very well tested and impossible to fail, and choosing the right produce will get you very close to what she prepares at her own table.

Last summer it was my turn to take Emiko on a tour and make her taste my family heirloom recipes and my dad’s veggie patch produce. But that’s for another article. Now I'd like to invite you to read Emiko’s interview below. She’s part of my 30 people who make the world more beautiful. You’ve guessed it, it’s by giving the gift of cooking and turning ingredients into pleasure. Have a nice read.

Connect with Emiko

@emikodavies | emikodavies.com

INTERVIEW

My parents originally named my Lynn (it was printed on the birth announcement in the paper!) but my Japanese grandfather pointed out that Lynn Davies didn’t sound at all Japanese and suggested my first name be Emiko, which means “child blessed with beauty”. I’m so glad that my parents agreed and swapped my first name out (it became my middle name) for something Japanese!
I was born in Canberra, but have spent relatively little time there, growing up between Canberra and Beijing and finding my way to Italy in 2005. During the pandemic, we moved from Florence to San Miniato, which sits right in between Florence and Pisa.
We speak English as a whole family at home, I thought it would be the only way my girls would get enough English conversation every day — the whole rest of their life is in Italian, school, family, friends and the community. I didn’t grow up speaking Japanese fluently, unfortunately, and I so wanted to make sure my children were bilingual. I used to speak Mandarin fluently as we lived in Beijing for 8 years when I was in middle and high school, I could read and write fluently but sadly I don’t think there’s enough space in my brain to keep it, I haven’t spoken it since I was 18 and I’m not sure I could still pick it up, now my main languages are Italian and English.
I am a cookbook author (my sixth cookbook was just published) and my husband Marco and I opened our own cooking school and wine bar Enoteca Marilu earlier this year. It’s a big juggle but a joy to be our own bosses and doing what we have always wanted to do.
Ah, there have been so many! I majored in printmaking for my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the US and later got a degree as an art restorer in Florence specialising in works on paper and books. I also worked in museums and art galleries for about a decade in the US, Italy, Sydney and Melbourne, so I have been inspired by so many artworks. I’ve been stuck on this question for a long time trying to think of one that had the most impact. It might be a toss up between Pontormo’s Deposition in the little Capponi chapel in the tiny Santa Felicita church in Florence and the Florentine sculptors whose works adorn Orsanmichele (Donatello’s young St George and Michelangelo’s St Mark in particular) that I used to walk past every day.
I didn’t know that these were jobs that I could do; I think at one point I wanted to illustrate a book and another I thought an architect would be great. But even later at university I had no idea, although looking back and connecting the dots it was something creative, I wanted to create. I think if I knew that being a food writer was something you could make a career of, I would have tried to do that a lot earlier though!
I got my big break in 2014, when, about 3 years after starting my food blog, I received an email from a publisher in London completely out of the blue, asking me if I would be interested in writing a cookbook. It was the email I had been dreaming of — I still pinch myself thinking about how lucky I was to have that land in my lap like that.
This is such a great question! I love that there is a word for the smell of rain, petrichor, and that it was coined by some CSIRO scientists in the 60s. What I think I like about this word more than anything is what it stands for though, that smell of rain is such a delightful sensation.
I used to collect so many things as a child. I had a stamp collection. I would collect stickers. I had a seashell collection and I had a pretty large frog ornament collection! Now I collect glass fruit and vegetable ornaments from flea markets. I am not quite sure why as they are terribly impractical but I just love the feel and look of them, the work that has gone into them!
I’m currently reading Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson and loving it.
The Bear! We were so disappointed when it was over.
Well, we are currently doing it! We opened a cooking school and wine bar this year and it is years in the making, something we have long dreamed of doing. Every now and then Marco and I look at each other and we have to pinch ourselves.