I am frequently asked how I developed my love and passion for food and cookery. I always respond, immediately and adoringly, that it came from my father; the man, who for as long as I can remember, has always expressed creativity in the kitchen. While my mother has always been the primary cook and put wonderful meals on the table, it was my father who dazzled us with his inspired menus. He has always had a way of combining ingredients and turning them into something deliciously exciting.
For a period during my childhood, my father was my primary caregiver (the result of a work injury), and it was from spending that time together that my culinary aspiration was born.
I still recall being very young (perhaps 4 or 5 years old) and getting my first taste of pepperoncino; a tiny cherry-red bauble that looked so appealing swimming amid a briny sea of green Calabrese olives. It was also from that tender age that I remember climbing up onto a kitchen chair, next to my father at the kitchen counter, and watching him prepare family meals with pizazz and passion. As I grew older I made the transition from observer to assistant and eventually chef.
My father, like many Italian men of his generation, planted and still continues to plant an impressive herb and vegetable garden every spring. And every summer when his garden peaked with abundance, he would harvest those flavors to make what I affectionately refer to as his chunky sauce. Chunky because it consisted of roughly chopped tomatoes and herbs from his garden, flavored with cubes of homemade pancetta or capicollo and poured over pasta e vayaneiya (green beans, coincidentally also from his orto). I watched him make that sauce every summer and then at age 11, he passed on the torch (or rather the familiar wooden spoon). Under his supervision I made my first chunky sauce. With great pride and delight that I watched him taste the sauce and give his compliments to the chef. The definitive moment that cemented my passion for the kitchen.
Many years later I have gone on to prepare more complex sauces with exotic ingredients but every summer when my father’s garden is ripe with flavor I harvest the ingredients to make a taste that I have come to equate with the season, dad’s chunky sauce. Buon Appetito!
