My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's more about what we don't put on the plate to make it feel more Italian.

I didn't speak Italian when I got to Italy. I had taken a couple of lessons and did a year in college, but in six months, I became regionally submersed to the point that I can curse in dialect.

It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.

Cooking in France and Italy has a particular high resonance, and it's hard to say how or why it developed other than that they've been smarter and there longer.

Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.

When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage.