TVRI — broadcast
20261011 070000 UTC
514 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:00] Universal Heritage.
[00:00:51] where I grew up from
[00:00:54] Ghizdaru locality in Giurgiu county is known for
[00:00:58] the skill of its farmers. In the art of vegetable growing. Roxana
[00:01:01] Geantă decided to take this legacy to a whole
[00:01:05] new level. By accessing European funds, the young
[00:01:09] vegetable grower managed to establish an area of
[00:01:12] 19,000 square meters of protected spaces. It's not
[00:01:15] about simple greenhouses, but about high-performance,
[00:01:19] state-of-the-art greenhouses, equipped with
[00:01:22] from him in the next fully automated climate control, smart fertilization
[00:01:25] and computerized microclimate
[00:01:27] control. This modern infrastructure allows
[00:01:31] Roxana to reduce dependence on the whims of the weather, to extend
[00:01:34] the growing season and to ensure constant
[00:01:38] productivity throughout the year. We have an area
[00:01:41] of 19,000 square meters of
[00:01:44] protected cultivation, practically two greenhouse bodies
[00:01:48] of nine sections each, which total 5,000 square meters, and nine
[00:01:51] individual greenhouses of 500
[00:01:54] square meters each, plus eight more greenhouses that
[00:01:57] total 3,000 square meters,
[00:02:00] which I established with the help of European funds, measure
[00:02:04] 4.1, greenhouse constructions financed by AFIR.
[00:02:07] This type of greenhouse is among
[00:02:11] the most performant, it is controlled through an application on
[00:02:14] the phone? Yes, yes, indeed that's right, we have applications on
[00:02:18] the phone, on the computer, but they can also be controlled manually in
[00:02:21] case we don't have internet or a power
[00:02:25] outage, they can be controlled manually, with heating, with
[00:02:28] ventilation, with a drip irrigation system,
[00:02:31] the greenhouse practically ventilates through
[00:02:34] the roof
[00:02:37] and through the sides, they open and close automatically depending on
[00:02:40] the climatic conditions, on wind speed, on
[00:02:44] humidity, on
[00:02:47] - came temperature, it depends how it's set. At this moment we see a cucumber crop. When
[00:02:51] did you plant them? They were planted about three weeks ago,
[00:02:54] but because they had warmth and conditions, they grew
[00:02:58] very quickly and have already started to bear fruit, we
[00:03:02] are already starting to harvest, these are autumn cucumbers, not autumn
[00:03:05] cucumbers, yes, we have drip lines at
[00:03:08] 90 cm between rows, and the plants are
[00:03:12] 50 cm apart from each other in order to
[00:03:16] perform the necessary tasks, for example
[00:03:19] suckering, we have to sucker them, break off every
[00:03:22] shoot that grows from the leaves, tie them up with strings and then we
[00:03:26] need space for us and for them, unlike other crops
[00:03:30] that I've seen in other greenhouses, with you, everything is in
[00:03:34] order. Yes, thank you, indeed, we wanted them to
[00:03:37] look good, besides the fact that we have to give them
[00:03:41] the conditions to grow beautifully, you're proud of a
[00:03:44] crop when you see that it also looks good. That's right, are they
[00:03:47] pretentious? Yes, they are pretentious first of all to
[00:03:50] temperature, too hot or too cold. They are pretentious to
[00:03:54] diseases. Aphids, fleas, as we call them in
[00:03:57] Romanian, which settle under the leaves and cause
[00:04:00] havoc, there is also the spider mite
[00:04:04] on cucumbers, the red spider mite or the common spider mite, which
[00:04:07] also, it effectively
[00:04:10] destroys the crop and you have to be present permanently, to
[00:04:14] monitor the crop, to see that it doesn't appear,
[00:04:17] of course, but we have to keep an eye on them all the time like children, it
[00:04:21] really looks very airy the crop, I like it very
[00:04:24] much, it needs a lot of water, doesn't it? Yes, we water them every
[00:04:27] other day, we don't have to water them
[00:04:30] because we also have this foil which still maintains
[00:04:33] humidity, it doesn't allow the water to evaporate so quickly from
[00:04:36] the soil and then
[00:04:40] The project from Ghizdaru offers a every two days is enough watering and anyway the plant
[00:04:43] effectively shows when it's thirsty, so to speak, then
[00:04:47] the leaves wither, but we don't want to get to that
[00:04:50] situation. And until when will you go with them? We hope until
[00:04:55] de minimis aid, represented December, if possible, we will also heat them at the end of the month when the temperatures
[00:05:00] drop at night and
[00:05:03] extend the crop as much as possible, as much as they produce, that's how much we want to
[00:05:07] enjoy the fruits, you will heat them because you
[00:05:10] have the possibility, we know this. In spring, when we talked, you
[00:05:13] said you have some central heating systems that can provide heat throughout
[00:05:17] the year, yes, yes, yes, we have central heating systems that
[00:05:20] work with pellets, but they can
[00:05:23] also be heated with coal, wood or
[00:05:27] other materials, so you made an investment with the help of European
[00:05:31] funds, thought out from A to Z, with everything you
[00:05:34] need, I said to have all the necessary equipment to have
[00:05:38] a good crop.
[00:05:47] As I was telling you earlier, the heating in the greenhouses is done with the help
[00:05:51] of central heating systems that run on pellets. In these
[00:05:54] boxes, we will put the pellets and with the help
[00:05:58] of the auger, they will be pulled towards the burner, where
[00:06:01] here is the combustion chamber, and the hot air
[00:06:05] goes through these pipes to the end of the
[00:06:08] greenhouses, where it is distributed evenly over the entire surface.
[00:06:12] And the plants enjoy the warmth and then they grow
[00:06:16] beautifully, so I'm waiting for you in winter to visit us
[00:06:19] again, to see how the burners work
[00:06:23] and how the plants also enjoy a
[00:06:25] favorable climate.
[00:06:28] Besides tomatoes, what else
[00:06:36] did you have this year? We had eggplants, we had bell peppers
[00:06:39] at the beginning of the season in spring,
[00:06:43] we had lettuce, radishes, spinach, green
[00:06:46] onions and we also had watermelons with which we did
[00:06:50] very well, we also had watermelons in the greenhouse which were
[00:06:53] exceptional, meaning both good production, they were
[00:06:56] pollinated with the help of bumblebees, offered an
[00:07:00] excellent taste and a unique sweetness and
[00:07:02] aroma. We also had red watermelons and sweet
[00:07:06] corn, it was a diverse crop, because we wanted to
[00:07:09] see what we can do better. What we know how to do
[00:07:13] better, what turns out better? The search for profitable
[00:07:16] solutions pushed Roxana towards courageous
[00:07:19] technological experiments. This marked an absolute
[00:07:23] first for her farm, the first year in which she tested
[00:07:26] watermelon cultivation in protected spaces. While most
[00:07:30] cultivators in the south of the country rely exclusively on classic
[00:07:33] field crops, Roxana integrated watermelons under
[00:07:37] the dome of automated greenhouses. The results confirmed
[00:07:41] the viability of the technology. Through perfect control of
[00:07:44] humidity and temperature, protected from the extreme heat of
[00:07:48] the summer months, the watermelons reached excellent quality
[00:07:51] parameters, taste and earliness. This
[00:07:55] innovation promises to become a valuable niche for the
[00:07:58] farm, allowing harvesting much earlier than
[00:08:01] open field crops. I cultivated
[00:08:04] watermelons for the first time, I asked for help from someone for
[00:08:08] technical advice and for what variety would
[00:08:10] be best suited for the crop. And it was very satisfying. Do you
[00:08:14] still have some now? Yes, they are no longer as they were, because they have been planted
[00:08:18] for five months, we have harvested constantly, but there are still some left.
[00:08:22] And what conditions did you provide for them? They like warmth, they like. They
[00:08:25] like warmth, they like to have plenty
[00:08:28] of water. Other conditions, you know, they are not that
[00:08:32] pretentious, I can tell you zero fertilizers, we
[00:08:36] never put any kind of fertilizer, it was
[00:08:39] 100% organic, our watermelons. And when
[00:08:43] did the first ripe watermelon appear? I think
[00:08:46] around June 4th. Early?
[00:08:49] Yes, yes, yes, they weren't on the market yet, they only
[00:08:52] started appearing later, yes, I think also from protected spaces. Will you
[00:08:56] cultivate more next year? Yes, yes, it was, for me it was
[00:09:00] encouraging with the watermelon crop and I want to cultivate
[00:09:03] them in the greenhouse so I can heat them, I think you could also do it over winter to
[00:09:07] get them out in, over winter here's a problem, because we
[00:09:11] don't have... light in winter, sunlight is not
[00:09:15] enough for watermelon or cucumber
[00:09:18] crops, and if they don't have light, then they tend to
[00:09:22] go into vegetation and don't set fruit, they don't fruit as
[00:09:25] they should, the internodes will be very long and the plant
[00:09:29] will go after light. You have learned over time a lot of
[00:09:33] secrets about vegetable care? Well, you know how it is, you
[00:09:37] learn these things from practice. I say agriculture is not learned from
[00:09:40] books, but from practice. Maybe also from mistakes, for
[00:09:44] me it's also a passion, I tell you honestly that I do everything with passion,
[00:09:48] I care for them with passion,
[00:09:52] they are practically like children to me. And you were telling me
[00:09:55] about cucumbers a little earlier, when we were talking, you
[00:09:59] were telling me about the first floor, about the flowers they
[00:10:02] aborted. Yes, well that's why I also mentioned mistakes earlier,
[00:10:06] because, well, I also made a mistake this year, I
[00:10:09] planted the seedling a little too
[00:10:12] long, a bit old, and then until it rooted,
[00:10:16] until they started to grow, practically the
[00:10:19] little flowers they had could not form
[00:10:23] and then. look here, this, for
[00:10:26] those who don't know, this means they turned yellow, they aborted and
[00:10:30] I lost, I don't know, maybe to give an example,
[00:10:34] I think 3 tons of cucumbers, what
[00:10:37] was lost, but we have, we have
[00:10:41] hope that they will continue to bear fruit as they
[00:10:44] should, and, but it's also possible from those high temperatures, from
[00:10:48] yes, and from the heat, of course it was very hot and the temperature
[00:10:51] fluctuations during the day reached over 40 degrees,
[00:10:55] at night it had already started to cool down to somewhere below
[00:10:59] 20 degrees and you realize 20 something degrees difference
[00:11:02] between day and night, an enormous amount for
[00:11:04] the plant.
[00:11:12] It was a big challenge this year with the marketing
[00:11:16] of products, but slowly but surely we are trying
[00:11:19] to find a contract, we recently found one with a supermarket
[00:11:23] that promised us. It said it would take all the products and
[00:11:27] we hope it will help us with the
[00:11:30] sale of vegetables. Conscious that
[00:11:33] the future of a 19,000
[00:11:36] square meter farm cannot depend exclusively on
[00:11:39] market sales or the whims of intermediaries, Roxana
[00:11:42] Geantă is preparing the next strategic step for her
[00:11:46] business. In the coming period, the young vegetable grower will
[00:11:50] sign a firm contract with a large supermarket chain, through
[00:11:54] which she will ensure the sale of the entire vegetable production.
[00:11:57] This move will completely change the rules of the game for the farm in
[00:12:01] Ghizdaru. The contract with a large retailer offers financial
[00:12:05] predictability, guarantees
[00:12:07] stable prices and completely eliminates the risk of remaining with
[00:12:11] unsold goods in the greenhouse during periods of overproduction. For
[00:12:15] the supermarket, the partnership means a reliable source of Romanian
[00:12:19] vegetables with an authentic taste, grown to European
[00:12:22] standards, delivered consistently
[00:12:25] due to state-of-the-art technology in the greenhouse. I find it an
[00:12:29] extraordinary thing that you started negotiations with a
[00:12:32] supermarket, probably for a start with
[00:12:35] cucumbers, but in the future with all the vegetables you grow. I don't know
[00:12:39] about the future yet, I think in the future
[00:12:42] I will only cultivate cucumbers
[00:12:45] because it's a profitable crop for us,
[00:12:49] they produce a lot, they are very productive and then for this
[00:12:53] area, I think it's worth
[00:12:55] cultivating, and the problem is that
[00:12:59] if you intersperse several varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, they also have
[00:13:02] different pests, then treatments cannot be applied because
[00:13:06] diseases spread from one to another and it's harder to have
[00:13:09] a mixed crop. But how did you manage to take this step
[00:13:13] towards the supermarket, because there are other vegetable growers who don't have
[00:13:17] access? Probably because we also have a fairly large cultivation
[00:13:21] area and excessively
[00:13:23] much production, so to speak, and then
[00:13:27] we also looked through acquaintances and we still
[00:13:30] managed to find a contract and what are the conditions
[00:13:34] that the supermarket imposes on you? There are several. First of all, their size
[00:13:38] must be between 9 and 14 cm,
[00:13:42] not to mention they must be fresh, natural, without
[00:13:45] pesticides if possible or rather to pass the 7-10
[00:13:49] day period
[00:13:52] after spraying, they must be packed
[00:13:55] in certain crates or cardboard boxes, we have to take them to
[00:13:59] the collection point, there are
[00:14:01] some conditions, but it's good, at least it's
[00:14:05] good that we can sell them. And are you satisfied with
[00:14:09] the price? At this moment the price is not
[00:14:12] satisfactory, but we hope it will increase and
[00:14:15] it will be good. Although from a technical
[00:14:19] point of view, the greenhouses functioned impeccably, offering
[00:14:22] extremely rich vegetable and watermelon harvests. The joy
[00:14:26] of the farmers was quickly overshadowed by the economic reality
[00:14:29] of the market. This year proved to be one of paradoxes
[00:14:32] for cultivators. Good
[00:14:35] productions generated an oversupply that collapsed
[00:14:38] prices at the farm gate. For some crops,
[00:14:41] such as cucumbers or certain tomato varieties, prices
[00:14:45] dropped during peak harvesting periods, leaving
[00:14:48] producers unable to cover their basic
[00:14:51] costs. The situation is critical because the
[00:14:55] collapse in selling prices coincided with an aggressive wave of rising
[00:14:59] agricultural inputs. Romania ranked among the top
[00:15:02] European countries in terms of increasing costs for farmers,
[00:15:05] registering a significant increase in prices
[00:15:08] for energy, fuel, fertilizers and plant
[00:15:12] protection treatments. For a young farmer, the correlation
[00:15:16] of European funds with direct support programs, such as
[00:15:20] the only safety net to avoid final financial
[00:15:24] collapse in the face of this economic imbalance on
[00:15:28] the market. I would also like to discuss a bit about the tomato crop that
[00:15:32] we saw in the seedling stage, you were about to
[00:15:35] plant, how was it? "The tomato
[00:15:37] crop was very good, they were very
[00:15:40] productive, we cultivated the precocious variety, those with
[00:15:44] a tip, as everyone knows them, what I didn't expect was for them to be so
[00:15:47] productive, because the precocious variety produces
[00:15:50] somewhere around 1-2 kg per plant, but
[00:15:54] for us it was up to 5 kg, but the problem
[00:15:58] was, as I told you earlier,
[00:16:01] the marketing, the selling price was very bad, we sold them for 2
[00:16:04] lei a kilogram and for 1 leu and a few bani
[00:16:08] for preserves, so no, it
[00:16:11] was not profitable, which is not good at all, it's not
[00:16:15] good, but we can't do anything, because we
[00:16:19] don't have, in our area there are no warehouses
[00:16:22] or, somehow a form of association, because in
[00:16:25] Giurgiu county there are many vegetable growers and if there was a
[00:16:29] form of association where we could somehow
[00:16:31] gather and all take the goods,
[00:16:35] probably these blockages wouldn't happen, but
[00:16:39] for now there isn't a well-established system. Well, since you
[00:16:43] set the tone with these high-performance greenhouses, maybe you can also set the tone with
[00:16:47] a cooperative. Uh, yes, we already have a cooperative
[00:16:50] established and there are several members in the cooperative,
[00:16:54] but we still have work to do before we can
[00:16:58] build a warehouse or I don't know,
[00:17:01] it's still difficult for now. I think that would be the next
[00:17:04] step and maybe again with European funds. Yes. Yes, you know, I
[00:17:08] thought about that too, I also thought about a cannery,
[00:17:11] for pickles, including for purees, but
[00:17:14] in the future. For all these you
[00:17:18] need manpower, how are you with manpower? Friends help me,
[00:17:22] cousins, neighbors, they come to harvest, they come
[00:17:26] to tie. We don't have employees at the moment, because we
[00:17:29] can't afford it with these selling prices. In
[00:17:32] the future, I was thinking of collaborating somehow with
[00:17:36] people with... Asians because they are much
[00:17:39] more hardworking than our Romanians. And you can
[00:17:43] make a long-term contract, for two years or for how long. Yes, I understand that
[00:17:46] these contracts are for an unlimited
[00:17:50] period, there isn't a specific time,
[00:17:53] but I would like to have loyal workers who
[00:17:57] will stay with me, so that we get along well and
[00:18:00] work together. I have acquaintances
[00:18:03] in other fields of activity, not in agriculture, who work with
[00:18:07] Asians and are very satisfied, they are very correct, very
[00:18:11] honest, they are clean and indeed they
[00:18:15] suggested that I also make
[00:18:18] such an engagement to collaborate with
[00:18:22] them. Drawing a line at this moment, how is this
[00:18:26] year, how is the balance sheet? Not very good this
[00:18:29] year, because first of all the raw material is
[00:18:33] expensive and it will continue to get more expensive, from
[00:18:36] seeds to the peat in which we sow
[00:18:39] the cells and everything we need to
[00:18:42] produce the seedlings until harvesting, so
[00:18:46] to speak, all the treatments, everything they
[00:18:49] need, the water
[00:18:51] for irrigation,
[00:18:54] including the drip lines, everything has become more expensive,
[00:18:57] and the selling price was very bad and
[00:19:01] so we are somewhere slightly in profit, but slightly
[00:19:05] in profit, someone else told me:
[00:19:16] Yes, that's right, you have to fill it and take care of it, because practically agriculture takes
[00:19:20] up all your time, you have to be with them all the time, especially with
[00:19:24] cucumber cultivation, now that they have all the necessary
[00:19:27] conditions for growth, you always have to sucker them, you have to twist them around
[00:19:31] the strings, because if the growing tips go down, then as I
[00:19:35] told you, they are no longer after the light that... is absolutely necessary
[00:19:38] for photosynthesis and it's not what it should
[00:19:42] be, then they grow deformed, they grow, they are no
[00:19:46] longer within parameters. I hope
[00:19:49] the market will settle down somehow, I hope you will achieve positive
[00:19:53] results with this contract and end the year in profit,
[00:19:56] thank you very much, God help us, so be it, and we wholeheartedly hope
[00:20:00] that it will somehow regulate itself, there were some blockages
[00:20:03] this year, but we hope they won't happen again in the future. Through people
[00:20:07] like Roxana Geantă, Romanian vegetable growing
[00:20:10] acquires a new face, digitized and resilient in
[00:20:13] the face of economic crises.
[00:20:17] living lesson in survival and evolution, in a year in
[00:20:21] which low prices and expensive inputs brought
[00:20:24] many farmers to their knees. The transition from the traditional market
[00:20:28] to large contracts with modern retail is the only
[00:20:32] way for Romanian farms to remain
[00:20:35] profitable and secure.
[00:20:54] In a previous edition, I presented to you
[00:20:57] the Blacksmith's House in Tupilați commune, Neamț
[00:21:00] county, which was founded by Vasile
[00:21:04] Vezeteu, whose life story could
[00:21:07] be the subject of many films. At just
[00:21:11] 15 years old, he would walk for miles
[00:21:14] to learn the trade alongside a farrier
[00:21:17] blacksmith. He was fascinated
[00:21:20] by fire and the way iron could
[00:21:23] be transformed from a cold piece of metal
[00:21:26] into a useful object. But
[00:21:30] even from childhood, Vasile Vezeteu had another
[00:21:33] dream, that of becoming a famous
[00:21:36] chef. He left at 17 years
[00:21:40] old for the Romanian seaside in Mangalia
[00:21:42] where he saw for the first time a
[00:21:46] fully equipped kitchen and then he
[00:21:49] spent many years abroad, learning how to
[00:21:53] cook. When he returned, he
[00:21:57] transformed his blacksmith shop into a museum, but he
[00:22:00] also continued the chef trade he had
[00:22:04] in Italy and Norway, but about
[00:22:07] all this you will find out directly
[00:22:12] few minutes. From a young
[00:22:15] age I liked cooking and
[00:22:18] my... even said that I am
[00:22:22] the girl, we are three boys and I am
[00:22:25] the girl of the house, because I liked to iron, I liked to
[00:22:29] cook and after
[00:22:32] I learned blacksmithing I also opened my blacksmith shop, I
[00:22:36] also, I went to a school
[00:22:39] for chefs, bartender waiters was
[00:22:42] the school and I had to go
[00:22:45] to Mangalia to do an internship,
[00:22:48] my parents, my father, he didn't want me to leave blacksmithing to
[00:22:52] go, I didn't even know what the earnings were for
[00:22:56] a chef, I knew from blacksmiths, but I didn't know from
[00:22:59] a chef, only that it was a cleaner
[00:23:02] trade, more stylish, that you were in
[00:23:06] a different environment, you were among other people, you were not just among
[00:23:10] horses and carriages and blacksmithing and rust, yes, and
[00:23:13] then one morning at 4 AM, me and a
[00:23:17] cousin of mine left for Mangalia where we had to go. to that hotel
[00:23:20] to do our internship and I stayed there all summer, I
[00:23:24] also worked as a bartender and as a waiter and in the kitchen,
[00:23:28] it was the first time I saw an industrial kitchen,
[00:23:31] but what stuck in my mind very much
[00:23:35] which
[00:23:37] true
[00:23:40] many years later was that the clients were very many
[00:23:43] Italians, foreigners, yes, but what stuck in my mind was
[00:23:46] the Italians and I really liked it when we had Italian
[00:23:50] clients at the table. I was very curious about
[00:23:53] everything and they told me that
[00:23:56] if you came to Italy to work
[00:24:00] you would be someone being young then and that and
[00:24:04] tired as I was working
[00:24:07] 12-16 hours at 17 years old I was at
[00:24:11] Mangalia and
[00:24:15] I finished, I also went to Brașov and did more internship
[00:24:18] as a ... I liked
[00:24:22] being a chef, a waiter, but in restaurants I really
[00:24:25] liked it,
[00:24:31] first I had a shop, a shop with a bar, as
[00:24:35] it used to be and
[00:24:36] I,
[00:24:40] yes, I thought to myself that I had reached a level where
[00:24:44] I had some money and I said let me also open a
[00:24:47] shop with a bar with... and
[00:24:50] I thought I would earn more, but
[00:24:54] no, it brought me more losses then, because
[00:24:58] people were very short on money and they came with money
[00:25:01] for horseshoeing, but they didn't come for shopping
[00:25:05] and so they remained debtors either at the blacksmith shop or
[00:25:09] at the pub, at the bar,
[00:25:12] the moment came when I had to decide whether to stay in
[00:25:16] the country or leave because there were already...
[00:25:21] I don't know how many tractors in the village, the horses had become fewer,
[00:25:24] if there were no horses there were no carts, if
[00:25:27] there were no horses there were no plows, if
[00:25:31] there were no, they were all connected to, yes, they were connected to each other, to
[00:25:35] each other, at 24 years old
[00:25:39] he left for Italy to continue his
[00:25:41] culinary training, which would consecrate him as a
[00:25:45] master chef, instructor of the national
[00:25:48] school.
[00:25:56] In 2003, Vasile Vezeteu entered an Italian
[00:26:00] kitchen for the first time.
[00:26:03] to cook for their clients. I went abroad
[00:26:06] and it helped me a lot,
[00:26:09] the thing is I'm going back to the
[00:26:12] kitchen phase. Yes.
[00:26:15] So, it helped a lot. My experience
[00:26:19] as a chef when I arrived in
[00:26:21] Italy, I had some, until I
[00:26:25] learned the language, I also went and worked in the forest, on other
[00:26:28] things, I had other jobs,
[00:26:31] but. In 2003, 2002, 2003,
[00:26:35] I ended up at a restaurant, I found work on the
[00:26:39] seaside, in Numana,
[00:26:42] near Ancona, on the seaside and as a chef's
[00:26:45] assistant, those who hired me appreciated me, I stayed seven years in
[00:26:49] the same restaurant
[00:26:53] a chef's assistant to a chef, then
[00:26:56] a level three chef, at level three
[00:26:59] there is quite a good chef. I had the opportunity
[00:27:03] to work in an archaeological
[00:27:05] park, in Vulci,
[00:27:09] near
[00:27:11] Rome,
[00:27:14] where the tradition
[00:27:17] was Etruscan, so it was not Roman.
[00:27:21] And I cooked
[00:27:25] many traditional
[00:27:27] Etruscan dishes.
[00:27:34] They took a dessert, for example, they took it from
[00:27:37] a photograph from a palace, from a royal
[00:27:41] palace, it was the casata of Oplontis
[00:27:44] and, a painting, and they
[00:27:47] developed it in their laboratory, these professors
[00:27:51] so, and they told me that we know
[00:27:54] the taste, we want to see if you manage to make
[00:27:57] this dessert, yes
[00:28:00] and then. Ingredients that they wrote for me, of course,
[00:28:04] there was no order or there was a way of preparation, there was nothing,
[00:28:08] you had to intuit it yourself and of course
[00:28:11] not use ingredients with sugar or anything
[00:28:15] modern, so and what did you see there in the photograph, how
[00:28:18] did it look? The photograph looked very beautiful and I had to
[00:28:22] do the same, and the colors here were because
[00:28:25] the taste I think was precise, I made
[00:28:28] it, but they appreciated the color very much.
[00:28:32] It was very colorful, bright red and you had to know
[00:28:35] what ingredients were used at
[00:28:38] that time, exactly, exactly, so how did the photo
[00:28:42] practically look, what was it, it was a cake, a cake yes, a
[00:28:46] kind of cake about this
[00:28:47] big,
[00:28:50] and about this thick with a
[00:28:53] red band, that gave it that
[00:28:56] very beautiful color, it was surrounded by red and
[00:28:59] on top there were many ... dried
[00:29:03] fruits,
[00:29:07] you deduced that, didn't you? And they told
[00:29:10] me that they are, but I have to guess which dried
[00:29:14] fruits they are to give sweetness, and
[00:29:17] color and taste, yes and what
[00:29:20] did you use, I made a cream of
[00:29:23] ricotta, as they say, a ricotta cream
[00:29:27] sweetened with honey, what dried fruits did you use,
[00:29:31] plums,
[00:29:35] "grapes," as they say, raisins, yes, raisins of many
[00:29:38] colors so that it is a mix, it was a mix
[00:29:42] of and
[00:29:45] then I also put it in the composition, because I made about three
[00:29:49] original cakes, I made them all identical
[00:29:52] and when I had many
[00:29:55] clients and I took them to the judges' table as
[00:29:59] it would be for those who organized the scene and..." he told
[00:30:02] me what, what do the gentlemen there taste, what do they
[00:30:05] eat? And I stopped and I say, well, it's
[00:30:09] an Etruscan sweet and I told them too, let's start over to tell
[00:30:12] them where and how it is, we want it too
[00:30:16] because they were also tourists passionate
[00:30:19] about history, passionate
[00:30:21] about
[00:30:23] these old foods and that's why they came to the park there to this small
[00:30:27] restaurant to eat something they hadn't eaten in Rome. The next day, an
[00:30:31] actor came. He came with his family and said that he didn't know
[00:30:35] how he heard about this: do you still have a piece
[00:30:38] of Oplontis's casata for us to taste? And indeed, from one piece
[00:30:42] all three tasted. The first
[00:30:46] diploma for pizza ioli he obtained in
[00:30:49] 2009, after more than 15
[00:30:53] years spent in Italian and
[00:30:56] Norwegian kitchens, Vasile Vezeteu...