Back to the roots

Pasta al pomodoro

Yes, Pasta al pomodoro is the food I mostly miss when I am abroad.

And the recipe is quite simple. I still remember my grandma preparing it.

A little bit of onion, one carrot and celery.

Then olive oil, tomatoes and basil.

You chop a slice of onion, the carrot and the celery together and you put it in the olive oil that is already warm. Few minutes with fire veeeeery low until the onion is light brown and then you put the canned tomatoes and you wait.

You see it starting bubbling, always at low fire stirring every now and then for some time until the oil starts been on the surface and the sauce is thick enough to be able to stay attached to the pasta.

Then the magic touch... Basil...

And that was starting at 8.00am and when I was child I had my milk and cereals with the pomodoro sauce bubbling in the background.

But that's Italy and I have a golden rule. NEVER expect finding something similar to Italy when you are abroad. And this is valid mostly for food. Not that the local foods are bad but the Italian food outside Italy is simply not the right one.

And once, a colleague of mine tried what I had told him to avoid. He tried to order a pasta al pomodoro during a business trip. I will not tell you what he received te comments that followed. But that was obvious. This was not their recipe. Not their cup of tea.

This allowed me to taste some delicious plates. Tajin in Morocco, Dahl in India even a well prepared Huggies in Scotland!

These were simply perfect. The right food in the right place.

Although the recipe is quite simple infact, to prepare the right Pomodoro sauce you need the right ingredients someone that has taught you how to put it together and experience.

This exemple came in my mind this week, during a meeting.

I had a meeting with my salesforce discussing about some opportunities they had.

One of the remarks I got from a lot of them was that we were missing some types of units because in one job they could not quote with what we had.

Always looking for what is missing and not arriving to the top of what is available. Being the best in a specific area is today crucial, more crucial that having everything and being one of the many swimming in a red ocean.

Most of the companies, expecially italian companies, must work as a corner store.
With their resources, that are limited, they must focus on one thing doing it very well.

And in today's world this is part of the strategy.

Clear cut choices. Unless you are a big name like NIKE, APPLE, SAMSUNG (but sometimes even if you are such a big name) you cannot be everything for everybody.

Simply identify where you can be the best, what you must have in term of tools and the IMPLEMENT everything.

IDEAS, TOOLS, PEOPLE

TOMATOES, A PAN AND MY GRANDMOTHER

Buon appetito