I was nervous about this interview.
Amanda Knox, if you’re not familiar, was studying abroad in Perugia when she was arrested for the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. Between 2007 and 2015, she spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. Amanda was dragged through the mud by the international press; they called her Foxy Knoxy, fixated on her beauty while still painting her as a weirdo and a killer. Now that she’s free, and exonerated, she’s an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics and a mom of two young kids.
I interviewed Amanda LIVE, on stage in Seattle, and her story is so serious, so sensitive, I was afraid of saying the wrong thing or accidentally insulting her.
But Amanda is a captivating speaker. She’s open, thoughtful, smart, poignant and also very funny. It was SUCH a great interview & I hope you’ll listen!
If you feel a certain way about Amanda, I really hope you’ll listen: my goal was to humanize her, to let her tell her own story, to bust the tabloid myths. I think the live audience left with a different perspective than they came in with.
Amanda tells me what the food was like in Italian prison, what she craved the most when she was behind bars, and how foraging in the Pacific Northwest helped her heal when she was finally allowed to come back home.
This was the best meal I’ve made in a minute: green olive pasta with chili, lemon and lots of parsley. A simple pantry pasta popping with big, bold flavors.
Obviously the recipe comes from my favorite cookbook author, Top Chef Canada judge Eden Grinshpan, my taste bud sister from another mister. Her flavors are my flavors; all of her recipes are gold.
Anchovies, garlic, olive oil, fruity Allepo chili flakes, and buttery Castelvetrano olives make for a deeply flavorful sauce, zinged up with lots of fresh lemon juice and chopped parsley.
Hope you have a lovely, tasty week!
xo
Rachel
p.s. If you like the podcast, and you’ve yet to leave a review on Apple podcasts, would you mind saying a few kind words? The more reviews a show gets, the more it gets bumped up in the algorythm, which means new folks can find it, which means more downloads, which attracts more advertisers, which means everyone can get paid and we can keep making the show and pay our rent, yay!