Garibaldi's table never followed a single grammar. A child of Nice and Liguria, he grew up with the Italian pranzo — antipasto/contorno of vegetables, primo of soup or pasta, secondo of meat, pane on the table from start to finish — but frugal, almost monastic. His South American years grafted another structure onto it: the gaucho parrillada around the fire and the ronda del mate, where a single gourd of maté is passed from hand to hand. His table in exile on Caprera blends these two worlds: a Mediterranean vegetable garden and a taste for grilled meat over a wood fire.

The red thread of the Niçois and Ligurian cuisine of his childhood: a green, fruity olive oil, fragrant basil pounded in a mortar. Even in exile or on campaign, it is this sober Mediterranean taste — garden vegetables, bread, oil — that returns like a portable homeland.