The Freaky Table / Zaira Zarotti

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The Freaky Table / Zaira Zarotti

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From a Venetian Garden to my Freaky Table. Food, Life, Photography and Raku Ceramics by Zaira Zarotti. My name is Zaira, I'm the author of The Freaky Table blog.

My work mostly consists of photography and food styling. Here, in my country house near Venice in Italy I develop new recipes or use the Italian and Venetian traditionals ones. I use organic and local products or the vegetables grown in my vegetable garden. I’m always looking out for objects and materials that are vintage and out of the ordinary, and I personally take care of the styling. It doesn’t matter where they come from or what condition they are in, what’s important for me is their quirkiness. Just like the food that reaches my table, also the objects have their own unique story. For this reason I have started a new production of ceramics raku. Each unique piece is entirely designed and handmade by myself. In this Japanese technique, deeply rooted into the Zen spirit, I’ve found a connection with my search for beauty in the imperfection. The Freaky Table is about all this: it’s about my time here and about the nostalgic beauty of the simple and imperfect things in daily life. This is my project and this is my life-story. Contact: [email protected]

20/10/2026

For the love of the pomegranate season. ❤️
This year’s almost miraculous harvest made me want to gather a few memories from past autumns here in the feed, too. Because some things are worth celebrating, and this generous, beautiful season is certainly one of them.
I’ve made a little stash of pomegranate syrup for the winter, using the recipe from my book Venice Between Kitchen and Atelier (link in stories, should you wish to get a copy🫶🏼). Delicious over yoghurt and pancakes, as a secret ingredient for little pink biscuits, or simply diluted with water for a refreshing drink.
And, making the most of the dry Tuscan climate, I’ve also made cotognata, a traditional quince preserve. The recipe in the book calls for red w**e, but this time I replaced it with pomegranate juice. Same method, the loveliest ruby-red colour, and a slightly different take on an old favourite.
And here I am, just playing around in the divine Tuscan light…

08/10/2026

With Flora, I’ve rediscovered the imaginary worlds of children’s books, and the way they sometimes follow us beyond the pages.
At Lake Tovel, one day last summer, we went into the cold water fully dressed. I was Squirrel and Flora was Fox. Then we wandered through the woods looking for mushrooms and acorns to bring back to our den.
People around us watched with amused smiles. “Oh, how lovely,” I would hear.
And I realised that I now look at mothers and fathers who throw themselves wholeheartedly into their children’s games in much the same way. With a kind of tenderness I didn’t know before, perhaps because I had never seen that scene from the inside. “Oh, how lovely,” I think now, too.
Some things don’t change the world, they simply change the way you see it.

29/09/2026

We went to Bomarzo, to the Bosco Sacro, also known as Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo
In the mid-sixteenth century, Vicino Orsini, Lord of Bomarzo, created on his estate a labyrinth of symbols in which one could wander and lose oneself, among gigantic statues and monstrous creatures. After his death, the park was abandoned, and was only restored in the 1960s.
I had been there as a child, I think sometime in the early 2000s.
To get there, driving from our little village in Tuscany, we crossed landscapes of the Tuscia that seemed almost unreal. Vast stretches of countryside marred by bleak expanses of black solar panels. Then the landscape changes, and the woods grow quiet.
Flora is beside herself with excitement at the thought of seeing the monsters. We’ve also told her — as she puts it — “una storia paurente (a scary story)”: these monsters come alive at night and gobble up anything that happens to cross their path. She is especially excited to see the one with the little table inside its mouth and, as soon as she sees it, asks: “And where are the chairs?”
I tell her the monster has already digested them. She laughs, her eyes shining.
At the entrance to the park there is a stone (which I didn’t photograph) that says something along the lines of: “…and tell me then whether such wonders were made by deceit or by art.” And I think: as if art were not, in fact, one great and wonderful deception!
The park isn’t very large and, despite the tourism and the collective Instagram-spot fever, it retains something of its mysterious, slightly mystical spirit.
I feel it most, though, in the ancient, silent nature that has quietly enveloped the park for centuries. I think the soul of the place survives there. And I like to imagine that I am not taking even that away from the park, simply pointing my camera where hundreds of others have stood before me…

21/08/2026

Here I am once again celebrating the wonders of the Venice lagoon, and in particular those wonderful — and delicious — recipes where clams take center stage.
The old Venetian fishermen taught us that the best clams are harvested either in the depths of winter or in the height of summer. That’s why, for years now, August has always brought us back to our lagoon expeditions by boat - hands in the mud, the scent of barena in our hair.
In order of appearance: Spaghetti with clams, flowers and baby zucchini - Clam soup - Clam risotto 🫶🏼
These are tried-and-loved recipes that have been part of our kitchen and our lagoon adventures for years, so of course they found their way into my book, Venice between Kitchen and Atelier. You can find the link to the book, in my Stories!

Elzeviro Editions Pamela Berry

12/08/2026

Finally, I can share a few photographs from the beautiful days we spent at Palazzo del Barone de Ral.

A historic residence dating back to the 15th century, still preserving the interiors and atmosphere of the late 1800s. I really fell in love with this place.
And it felt even more special to be there with Francesco & Zaira, Flora and her little friend Agata, our friends from Parfums Artimique, and to share a Sunday lunch with Ele & Andrea from Italian Stories, too.

I felt inspired in a way I hadn’t in a long time.

I think I’ve always been drawn to places like this. Places with a past, where you can feel that other people have lived, loved, gathered around a table, listened to music, watched the light slowly move across the rooms.

They make my imagination wander. And they make me think, almost quite seriously: yes, I could live here! 🫢

In the morning, the turntable would play Verdi while the girls’ laughter echoed through the different floors of the palazzo. Then there was the whole day ahead of us: a walk through the meadows, Lake Tovel, a castle somewhere along the way, with no real hurry to get anywhere.

And then, back home, there were all those little corners of the palazzo still waiting to be discovered, especially in the afternoon, when the light came through the windows and made everything look a little different.

Maybe this is what I love most about travelling: not necessarily going somewhere far away, but finding a place that makes you imagine what it would be like to belong there. Even if only for a few days.

Che sogno 😍

08/07/2026

For part of the year, our life in Tuscany unfolds just beneath a medieval castle. It is a place where time does not seem to have stopped, as people so often say, but simply continues to flow according to another measure. The stones preserve the traces of those who came before, and recipes do the same.
This is, at its heart, what I love most about cooking. I wrote about this, and about the recipe Floretta and I were making here—in my latest newsletter. It meant so much to read your thoughtful responses 🥰
If you’d like to catch up on it, you can subscribe to my Substack for free through the link in my bio. I don’t write very often, and I don’t monetize my content—I simply share whenever I feel I have something meaningful to say. 😘

01/07/2026

I keep scrolling through the many photographs from these past months in Tuscany—images that seem to belong to a version of life that always stays one step behind me.
I’m trying to give shape to thoughts, recipes, and ideas for the next newsletter, but everything arrives in fragments. And when I finally manage to tell it, life has already moved on.
Do you ever feel like you produce far more than what actually makes it into the world? I have folders upon folders of unpublished photos and writing. The moment I make something, I’m already elsewhere, and because so much of it is tied to the seasons, it ends up falling behind, suspended.
With Flora, this feeling is even sharper. A month passes and the version of her in the photos already feels like an earlier self—she’s growing at a speed that is, at times, almost painful to witness. And so I keep these images. Not quite shared, not quite forgotten… Just waiting for their moment to catch up.

25/06/2026

Telling stories through images has always come naturally to me. That is why, more than the landscapes themselves—Venetian and Tuscan are the ones that feel most like home to me—I am interested in the stories that pass through them.
That is what I have always shared here as well, beginning with my own story, which later found its place in a book…
Over the years, this way of looking at the world has often led me into the world of w**e. The more time I spend in it, the more it seems to be shaped by family stories before entrepreneurial ones. That is what continues to fascinate me: stepping quietly into homes, vineyards, and cellars, and observing how personal stories become a shared language, made up of knowledge and gestures passed down through generations.
In recent months, Tuscany has been home. To live in a place for a long time means having the time to listen to it. Then you begin to realise that its nature, so present and generous, is not a backdrop but a presence of its own, and that the character of its people carries within it the same rhythm as the land they belong to—vineyards, olive groves, woods, the sea, the wind, the passing seasons...
Photographing Molino Di Sant'Antimo was, above all, about this: observing a family and a land that belong to one another… 😍

**ery **e **estories **eculture **ephotography **ery

05/05/2026

Venice enters that restless, feverish state that precedes the Biennale di Venezia, and I find myself moving within a rhythm I have always known.
The first time was in 1993: I was four years old. I was running through the Italian Pavilion, dazzled by the white light of its freshly painted walls, and among César’s “Compressions,” with my mom running after me. I have never missed a single Biennale, as if each edition marked a passage more than an appointment.
This year, though, I decided to move in the opposite direction and return home to Tuscany, to a more stripped-down and quiet way of living.

Flora is three, and her three years are a constant exercise of will—hers. Stubborn, at times uncontainable. It is right that it is this way, and it is exhausting in a way that cannot really be explained. The time it takes to move through even the simplest things fills almost the entire day; what remains must be guarded with a certain discipline, if anything else is to continue to exist. And I have so many things I want to create, but for me creativity works through subtraction: it needs to be left without apparent nourishment, so that it can find a more precise path on its own.

The day before leaving I was still deeply immersed in a video production for the wonderful world of ‘s perfumes in a Venetian villa lent to us by friends, with the car already packed for the coming months, looking for irises and a trace of burgundy.
I was moving through the park in the beautiful six o’clock light, wearing my silk dress. Flora was at home with her Nonna. A few chaotic and perfect hours, partly captured by .
In these images I recognize myself: in my age, in my time, in this imperfection that no longer asks to be corrected, only held in balance. Things are left behind, but others open up. It is complex at times, but it is a necessary movement. ✨

04/04/2026

I happened upon a field of wild pea flowers behind the house.
They were just there—low to the ground, a little unruly, in no hurry to be noticed.
The Venetian countryside is unforgiving with blooming fields: before you even have time to take them in, there’s already a tractor ready to flatten everything, to return it to a neat, level stretch of land prepared for sowing.
In my ideal plans, I thought we would already be in Tuscany by now—and instead, we’re still here. This Venetian spring has held us back, with its wildflowers and its tender green first harvests.

It had been a long time since I’d taken the time to play with flowers, with light, with ingredients, to photograph; a process that, in my mind, has more to do with preserving than with proving. There is something deeply maternal about this, and I had never really considered it before.
It has become such a part of who I am—this maternal way of being in things—that even when I’m alone and find myself quietly taking pleasure in doing things “the way I used to,” I can’t quite remember what that felt like anymore. And the most incredible thing is that it’s both beautiful and frightening at the same time.

And yet, the recipes at home are always the same: at Easter there are quail eggs (Flora loves them), risi e bisi (rice with peas), a timeless Venetian classic, a savory ricotta cheesecake with primroses, Baked Eggs (Uova in Cocotte) with wild aparagus and chives.
I’m still wearing clothes by and the Venetian countryside is always the same too—caught between fading villas and flowering trees that are there one year and gone the next.

If you’re subscribed to my Substack newsletter, you’ll receive an email with the recipes + extra photos—and if you’re not yet, I’ve left the link in my stories, so you can step even further into the world of

Indirizzo

Venezia, VE
Venice
30100

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http://www.thefreakytable.com/

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