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My Nonna didn’t use written recipe cards or search Pinterest for her fabulous recipes. Our recipes were handed down verbally from our Italian ancestors over generations by in-the-kitchen training. It sounded something like this, “Okay Ricky, put enough olive oil in the pan so the onions and garlic are swimming but not drowning. Then cook them just enough so they look like this and smell like that. Add enough basil so it tastes like this and smells like that.” But now I’m faced with a big challenge...Trying to communicate how to recreate our recipes in someone else’s kitchen. I’ve attempted to write out our tomato sauce recipe for friends but they were never able to achieve the same taste, smell or texture as Nonna’s. To reproduce our sauces in a big kitchen we had to provide precise measurements, temperatures and cooking times. I had to buy a gram scale and measuring cups! I don’t personally know any Italians that have a gram scale in there kitchens. To resolve this dilemma I decided to use a process of elimination approach. First, I gathered all my ingredients in abundance then weighed and measured all of them. Then I simply cooked the way I remember being shown by Nonna. When the pot of sauce looks, smells and tastes the way Nonna’s did I simply measure my leftover ingredients and Presto!! An exact replica!

Mangia!