Japan: mothers and children discover olive oil and pasta

Mothers and children discover the olive oil and pasta. Twenty-four children, aged from 7 to 12, and their mothers discovered for the first time top-quality extra virgin olive oil and the traditional hand-made pasta during a lecture about Italian cooking in Japan. It happened in Yokohama( 3,4 million inhabitants) where a cooking school of TokyoGas society (a huge organization in the field of energy with10 million subscribers ) usually organizes cooking courses to promote the use of Gas as alternative energy to electric power. The Japanese cook Kotomi Kaneko (who studied in Italy) and one of the oldest Italian oil farms (Regello-Florence) attended this initiative. Kaneko taught the unusual class, made of students and mothers, two "made in Italy" dishes: handmade "maccheroni" (a special type of pasta) from Apulia (starting from the sheet of pastry, obviously made with Italian flour, stone-milled in Piemonte),with Emilian meat-sauce and honey ice- cream. According to the format of Yokohama cooking school, first the cook explained (with the help of closed-circuit cameras and maxi-screens) the ingredients for this recipe and then she showed how to prepare it alive; then mothers and children tried to do it in a very modern kitchen, set for 48 cooks. There was also a funny "pasta-quiz" for the children, to let them know pasta better. Finally the dishes were served as unusual meal. Mothers really liked this initiative and the most children enjoyed this food, even if they weren't used to it: in the end every participant was offered a sample of extra- virgin olive oil. Only in Tokyo, 30 million-inhabitants city, there are over 500 restaurants, inns, pizza-houses, wine-bars which use some elements of Italian cooking, importing food from our country. The 2006 guide of the Italian restaurants in Japan, edited by the Institute for Foreign Trade from Tokyo, lists about 1.100 original restaurants all over the country and about 4.000 making reference to Italian cooking.