Who says that we can only be in one place at a time? Feeling the need to find a comfort zone in a foreign country, student Ilaria Corti, from Italy, talks about origins and traditions with other international students. All of this over a nice meal from their home country. For this first edition, she cooks her own Italian recipe.

When an Italian person moves abroad, it’s always kind of tragic, and that wasn’t different for me at the beginning. Before I left, my mother said she wanted to send me monthly boxes with Italian food, not sure if in the Netherlands they could grow more than cabbages and potatoes.

The first supermarket I visited here actually offered the biggest department of potatoes I had ever seen before. I expected pasta of course, but I was really surprised of finding an Italian aromatic plant, basilicum, the main ingredient to prepare pesto. It brought me back to Italy in a moment.

I love basil, it reminds me of my August summer days spent at the seaside in Liguria, the Italian region where pesto was born, and of my garden, since my father takes care of a new basilicum plant every year. Of course I had the instinct of buying one and I asked the clerk which was the name of basil in Dutch out of curiosity. He answered me ‘munt’. I thought this was strange, and eventually found out that it is the name for mint. Basil was not so familiar for him apparently, but really funny indeed.

Now I have the summer taste in my kitchen everyday, and I can suggest you a simple southern Italian recipe to cook with basilicum leaves: melanzane alla parmigiana, translated: eggplants with parmesan. The recipe I am going to share comes from my mother and probably, as every Italian dish, has countless different variants, but this is definitely my favourite. I’m sure that it will bring the mediterranean sun in your house, even if it’s raining outside.

Ingredients you need for 6 people:

• 700 grams of eggplants

• 250 grams of tomato sauce (Italian if possible)

• 250 grams of mozzarella

• 20 leaves of basil

• 80 grams of parmesan cheese (real parmesan)

• 100 grams of white flour

• Extra virgin olive oil

• Salt

Peel and slice the eggplants in a rounded shape not thicker than 5mm and put some salt on them. Softly crumb the slices with white flour and fry them in a pot with some hot olive oil. Leave them to drain on a plate with kitchen paper. After that, take a pan and put 3 spoons of tomato sauce on the bottom, make a layer with the eggplants, cover with some parmesan, sliced mozzarella, some salt and leaves of basil. Repeat the procedure till you finish all the ingredients. At the end put the pan in the oven heated at 190°C for about 20 minutes, until you see that the mozzarella is melted, the surface is getting golden and your kitchen smells of Italy.

Et voilà, lunch is ready! Buon appetito and let me know if you enjoyed them.

Read Ilaria Corti's blogs here