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.

The whole concept of the supremacy of the family unit in the Italian culture... That's all based on the relation of the mom and the children and the bambino.

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.

The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.