PBS Programs: Summary and analysis of a relationship to global enterprise
Lidia's Family Table
Despite the popularity of the Food Network, many popular cooking programs still remain on PBS. Lidia's Family Table is one of the most successful. Over the course of this program, the Italian-American chef Lidia Bastianich cooks various Italian delicacies of her homeland, often with members of her family, including her own mother, son, daughter, and grandchildren. However, what is so remarkable about Lidia is the way she has generated interest in authentic Italian regional dishes, versus the standard spaghetti and meatballs and pizza that have become accepted staples in so many households. Lidia has been known to cook meatballs but with a much wider variety of other meats than is traditional for Americans to eat. She has made lasagna with peaches, homemade gnocchi, and even cooked with rabbit. Lidia makes genuine Italian cuisine accessible...
By showing her grandchildren roll gnocchi dough she also shows how even children born in America can enjoy foods outside of the standard American school cafeteria repertoire of chicken nuggets and tater tots.
Lidia has exposed American audiences to the regional diversity of Italy. Lidia herself, as she has mentioned over the course of the series, hails from a province of Italy very near Croatia, versus Sicily or Florence. The foods she grew up with were very different from those of more familiar Italian dishes to Americans and are highly influenced by the cuisine of Eastern Europe. However, she cooks dishes from all provinces of the country. She does inject some Italian-American influences into her cooking, a reflection of the tastes of the younger generation of her household. Lidia makes it clear that a global cuisine like that…
