Enthusiasm for pasta: Morgan Hill chef shares his like of Italian cuisine | Morgan Hill Moments

Food for the Palmer household is a custom that has been passed down via the generations.

Exclusively, it was the spaghetti and meatballs cooked by longtime Morgan Hill resident Tommy Palmer’s grandmother that constantly introduced the complete family together, sharing stories, creating reminiscences and celebrating existence.

When his grandmother handed absent in 2017, it set Palmer, a lifelong foodie and prepare dinner, onto a job route centered on Italian delicacies that he carries on to go after.

Palmer is the founder of Palmerino’s, a Morgan Hill-based cottage meals procedure that sells his hand-cooked pasta and provides in-house cooking lessons.

“The backbone of my organization is my grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs,” he claimed. “That’s the dish that’s been bringing my relatives with each other all these yrs. It’s the dish that mainly pushed me into this profession.”

Palmer envisions working a storefront, offering his pasta and other products and solutions that make up Italian delicacies, exactly where men and women can acquire them to their residences and make their possess household reminiscences.

But it is tested to be a hard course of action. Palmer said he’s approached several neighborhood making house owners and pitched his strategy to them. They all cherished the principle, he claimed, but had been hesitant with his lack of business enterprise encounter and the fact that he was not a accredited chef.

“After hearing that adequate times, I resolved to get a culinary certificate, with a concentrate on Italian food,” Palmer mentioned. “What better spot to discover than in Italy?”

Just after intensive on the web analysis, Palmer enrolled in the Italian Culinary Institute in Staletti, Italy, below the tutelage of Chef John Nocita.

The intense study course, which took area day-to-day for 12 weeks, coated just about almost everything there is to master about Italian delicacies: pastries, gelato making, wine pairings, meat curing and extra. Palmer graduated from the class in April 2019.

“The sum of things we covered exceeded my anticipations tenfold,” he reported. “We really coated all the foundations that make up Italian delicacies. It was a heck of a time, that’s for absolutely sure.”

Now, Palmer is taking what he figured out back house to Morgan Hill, in memory of his grandmother.

“She’s the a single that solidified the culinary traditions in our family,” he mentioned. “I needed to shell out honor to her by accomplishing this.”

Palmer reported he’s been privileged to have a lot of talented girls in his household who have taught him how to cook. He additional that he enjoys creating issues with his hands, as perfectly as sharing his enjoy of food with some others. Hearing the feedback from those consuming his food items, especially when they say it reminds them of staying back again home, is a satisfying experience, Palmer mentioned.

Palmerino’s pasta products and solutions readily available to purchase are extensive: fettuccine, farfalle, tagliolini and of program, spaghetti, are just some of the choices.

Palmer also provides in-property pasta building lessons, where he delivers the substances and the equipment. Afterwards, he’ll prepare dinner a dish using the pasta produced by the attendees.

Even however he cooks pasta each day, Palmer doesn’t contemplate himself a grasp of it. There is so a lot to discover, he claimed, including that he is continually performing on approaches to best his craft.

“Food is some thing I could be executing just about every single day and it nevertheless throws me surprises,” he mentioned. “With food items, I’m earning one thing I individually like to try to eat. And I love to eat.”

For info, visit palmerinos.com.