Stephen Interviews:
Mary Ann Esposito
Her Website

er many cookbooks and her position as the warm and inviting host of the PBS cooking series Ciao Italia (now in its tenth season!) have made Mary Ann Esposito’s name a household word. As a young girl growing up in Buffalo, New York, Esposito at first shunned Italian cuisine in favor of hamburgers and other American treats. After learning much from her grandmothers Nonna Galasso, an olive picker from Avellino, and Nonna Saporito, a butcher from Sicily, Esposito developed an unmatched passion for her native cuisine.

SV: Where did you receive your training?
MAE: I am self taught, mainly, but I did stints in cooking schools in Italy for ten years, including studying in Naples, Perugia, Venice and Sicily.

SV: What has most influenced your style of cooking?
MAE: A need to cook as unadulterated as possible. I’m not a fan of processed foods.

SV: When did you start cooking?
MAE: When I was five years old I was already in the kitchen cooking with my grandmothers. I made the pasta and cut it with a butter knife.

SV: Tell me about your greatest cooking disaster.
MAE: Right after I got married I decided to make pancakes from scratch for my husband, but I was deathly afraid of the gas stove. Unknowingly, I turned on the pilot and went about mixing the ingredients for the pancakes; then took a wad of newspapers to light the pilot, since I was afraid of lighting matches. Once the paper was put to the now built up gas in the oven—poof!—the huge explosion left me with first degree burns, no eyebrows and burnt hair. Needless to say, my gas-cooking techniques have improved.

SV: What is your favorite junk food? MAE: A hot fudge sundae with frozen Snickers Bars.

SV: What is your philosophy towards cooking?
MAE: Use the freshest ingredients and keep the treatment simple. Also, take the confusion out of fusion food.

SV: What is your favorite comfort food? MAE: Macaroni & cheese with a crusty top.

SV: What composer or style of music goes best with each meal?
MAE: Breakfast, soothing classical music. Lunch, light jazz. Dinner, classical or new age.

SV: For whom would you most like to cook?
MAE: I would love to cook dinner for Dante Aligheri.

SV: What food goes best with making love?
MAE: Artichokes.

SV: What is the most romantic wine?
MAE: Brunello di Montalcino.

SV: When dining out, what is your favorite cuisine?
MAE: Italian.

SV: What are some of your favorite San Francisco restaurants?
MAE: Farallon and the new restaurant Viognier at Draegers Market in San Mateo with chef Gary Danko. The name Viognier is hard to say but the food is delicious. I also like Pleuff’s seafood dishes.

SV: And your favorite restaurant?
MAE: Le Bernadin in New York. From the moment you enter until the moment you leave, the focus is on you and the meal you came to enjoy. Dining in a fine restaurant should be like good Theatre, a staged event that surprises you with course after course and keeps your interest until the final act. I especially like the way the maitre d’ escorts you to the door at the end of the evening and bids you goodnight.

SV: How has the low-fat, low-calorie trend affected your style of cooking?
MAE: I try to be conscious of the amount of fat that goes into a meal. I use olive oil in my cooking, but sparingly. I avoid deep frying if I feel I can achieve the flavor I want by oven-baking or cooking in a minimal amount of oil in a sauteé pan instead of a deep fryer. My meat marinades are void of oils. I make salad dressings using low-fat plain yogurt, spicy mustard and fresh herbs; and I grill a lot.

SV: You have a master’s degree in Italian History. How has this influenced your career in the culinary world?
MAE: Without food there is no history. The very survival of the human race has depended upon whether there was food to eat. Major wars have been waged over food; the ancient Romans knew it could not conquer and rule if the army was not fed, which is why they conquered Sicily, the breadbasket of Italy. Sicilian wheat fed the Roman troops. Food is too important a subject not to study and my master’s thesis focused on a 14th century Italian manuscript (cookbook) which revealed more than what people were eating at the time; it was a look at the social, economic and religious life of northern Italy. A career in food makes you aware first of the natural forces in place that give us food and the soundness and safety of the methods used for production of those foods. Second, it heightens awareness of our obligation to the world at large to share our abundance and know-how.

SV: Tell me about your show Ciao Italia.
MAE: Next year will mark our tenth year on PBS. This is quite a milestone when you consider the longevity of many cooking shows. My goal has always been to make the audience aware of the diversity of Italian food, so I try to cook from the twenty regions and weave in a little history about the dishes I am making as well. We try to do comfortable home cooking, with ingredients that people can find. I truly love what I do; I make several trips to Italy each year to renew my soul and do research into the foods I am showcasing. On one of my series, I took the viewer to Sicily so I could introduce real Sicilian cooking (which everyone always assumes is described in one word—”cannoli”). We showed how Sicilian bread is really made; how sheep’s milk is made into Pecorino cheese; and how artichokes are roasted over coals in the ground. We traveled to an outdoor market to showcase the variety of Sicilian foods. It felt good to be able to share this first-hand information with people.

Text © 2002 SYR Inc.

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