I am not very good at reacting joyfully to surprises, as the One & Only knows only to well. So, it was a rare thing that he chose to surprise me for our anniversary this week, and an even rarer thing that I reacted rather better than expected, and was quite delighted with the treat he had arranged for us…
To many South Australians, Rosa Matto is a well-known and much-loved chef and food writer. As a champion of Italian cuisine and culture she has made a considerable impression on this state over the past three or four decades. To outliers like me, she is a wondrous new discovery. Entertaining, informative, talented, Rosa has won awards in Italy and Australia for her services to gastronomy. She is the patron of Nonna’s Cucina, a volunteer-based meal delivery service for the elderly and disabled. And she now heads Slow Food in South Australia. (For the uninitiated, Slow Food is an international organisation founded in 1989 by Italian activist Carlo Petrini. It is an organisation attempting to preserve local food traditions and provide an alternative way of life to our fast-food lifestyles by emphasizing local, seasonal, and sustainable farming, and enjoying food at a gentler pace.)
Rosa Matto also runs cooking classes. Yesterday, as part of the 2026 Fringe Festival, Rosa ran a cooking course on the food and wines of Campania. And this was my anniversary surprise.
Campania is a mountainous region on the ankle of Italy’s boot, which incorporates five provinces: Napoli and Salerno, Avellino, Caserta and Benevento. Thanks to plentiful rivers and its rich volcanic soil, this region was known as Campania Felix by the Romans, which is Latin for fertile or happy country. Campania boasts some spectacular coastline, a rich culture, many good wines, and some fantastic food. It is also the land of Rosa’s forefathers.
Rosa, ably supported by wine buff David Crossman, entertainer Lino Cardone and her two excellent sous-chefs, not only introduced us to her culinary heritage, but provided a great afternoon’s entertainment at the WEA on Angas Street, the home of adult education.
Like the children in the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, we followed the sound of Lino and his piano accordion to the door of the demonstration kitchen. We were ushered to a free desk and, as the room filled, we glanced through the menu, the wine list and the regional songs we could sing along the way. Apparently, Campanian cuisine has been heavily influenced by the Arabs, the Spanish and the Greeks, all of whom found their way to southern Italy in past centuries and introduced various ingredients and dishes that have remained popular there.
Meanwhile, Rosa had started work on a Primo Sale cheese, or a fior di latte. This is a semi-soft, fresh Italian cheese of a delicate, milky flavour with just a touch of saltiness. As Rosa reminded us firmly, this is NOT mozzarella – for which the region is famous – as mozzarella MUST be made with buffalo milk, while fior de latte is made with unhomogenized cow’s milk. (By reheating the leftover whey from this recipe, you can apparently create the more commonly recognized ricotta.)
Rosa has a friendly, casual approach to cooking, which I thoroughly enjoyed. As she chatted away through the afternoon, we learned culinary history and cooking techniques, and tasted some marvellous food. It was another anniversary surprise that I wasn’t expected to contribute any of my dubious culinary skills to this particular cooking class. Instead, I was allowed to sit back, sip my wine and watch the experts at play. From time to time, Rosa offered the floor to David, who would discourse on the Campanian wines he had chosen for us, or to Lino, who would entertain us with enthusiastic renditions of well-known Neapolitan tunes such as ‘O Sole Mio’, ‘Funiculì, Funiculà’, and the anthem of the S.S.C. Napoli football fans, ‘O Surdato ‘nammmurato’. Occasionally, we were offered prizes to answer a question or sing a song. And from time to time, a completed dish of zucchini scapeci or insalata di rinforzo would be passed around the room to general acclaim.
Many of Rosa’s recipes proved to be interesting variations of dishes we already knew. The pizza fritta, for example, was a mini pizza topped with a simple tomato sauce, her freshly made primo sale cheese and a basil leaf. Familiar? Of course! The base, however, was a fried dough with the texture of a donut, all golden and puffy and deliciously moist. Or the simple spaghetti alle vongole, complete with Goolwa pipis, was jazzed up with the interesting addition of coarsely chopped, fried breadcrumbs that added a super, crunchy texture to the dish.
Sartù di riso is a typical Neapolitan dish that resembles a glorified arancini ball. Apparently, it was adapted from the French cuisine of the Bourbon kings who ruled southern Italy for almost fifty years in the nineteenth century. Rosa made this dish look relatively straightforward, with many of its constituent parts produced earlier. However, like fresh pasta, it is not one I am likely to reproduce at home, as it is a real labour of love. As Rosa tells us in her notes, it harks back to the days of plentiful hands in the kitchen. So, in these days of the servantless home cook, it seemed to me a gargantuan task.
Baked in a bundt tin (the cake tin with a hole in the middle, notorious in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’), sartù di riso consists of savoury layers of breadcrumbs, rice, mushrooms and tiny meatballs (polpettine), sausages and peas, mozzarella and a tomato ragù. Once cooked, it was tipped out of the mould – to cheers from the audience – and sliced up like a cake. Topped with a spoonful or two of the remaining ragù and a sprinkle of Parmesan or pecorino, it proved scrumptious. It was accompanied by a glass a highly tannic, smoky red wine from the Campanian mountains called ‘Terra Stregate’, meaning ‘land of the witches’ or ‘haunted lands’. (The winery’s name was inspired by the ancient legend of the witches of Benevento, who were said to gather around a walnut tree on the banks of the Calore River, a little Google wormhole search I found fascinating.)
As all roads lead to Roma, all menus eventually lead to dessert. Or in this case, desserts. Rhum Baba I knew well from our years in the Philippines, where it is a popular pudding. A cylindrical sponge (think of a friand but lighter), it was filled with creamy custard, which, in case the rum was not sufficient, had been spiced up with a splash of Strega.
Rosa’s second offering was a gastronomic oddity that proved unexpectedly tasty.
Melanzane al cioccolato is indeed – if your knowledge of Italian has pre-empted the surprise – eggplant dipped in chocolate! This was a recipe Rosa had acquired on her travels along the Amalfi coast. Thin slices of eggplant are first fried in olive or sunflower oil (NEVER canola!). Candied fruit, lemon zest and pinenuts are then sandwiched between two slices of melanzane. The ‘sandwich’ is dipped in egg and fried till golden, dusted in caster sugar and cinnamon and topped with bitter chocolate sauce. Strangely, surprisingly, moreish.
Everything on the menu now cooked and devoured, we were offered a digestivo – a homemade limoncello or limoncello crema – which Rosa told us gaily would ‘push you over the edge kids!’ On which note our class was complete. And thus, after a successful afternoon full of surprises, I found myself heading home with a happy stomach and ‘O Sole Mio’ playing around in my head like a paternoster lift, to a dinner of seafood marinara by the beach.