This isn’t about cancer, it just happened because of cancer. It’s about an inheritance that, when faced with my mom's cancer, we both realized that wanted to work harder to preserve. More specifically it’s about the arsenal of recipes that I learned from my mother, Silvia, most of which she learned from her grandmother, who learned from her mother and so on. We decided that this oral culinary tradition was worth turning into something a little more permanent so we started this project together. Each week we cook our way through one dish. With Silvia as the guide, I test, retest, call FaceTime meetings to check the color of the tomatoes, painstakingly convert “some” into grams and “until it smells right” into an actual, usable, benchmark and then, finally, document it all here. Some of these recipes are older than we can account for, some are much newer, but they are all Silvia’s. And she’s finally sharing.
ABOUT US
My mother Silvia was born in Bologna, and didn’t leave Italy until, at 26, she took her first plane ride and moved to America while knowing next to no English. She settled and lived in Rhode Island for many years where she worked hard to solidify her reputation as “Mamma Silvia”: a gastroenterologist with a thick accent and a fierce maternal vibe. Fuel to this reputation’s fire was the fact that Silvia CAN COOK, and she WILL try to feed you. She recently moved to Richmond, VA, where she is slowly making friends, one excellent dinner party at a time. She’s also fighting the cancer monster, with grace, conviction, and quite a bit of sarcasm. She’s a proud feminist, a romantic, and she believes that Italian cooking must always be authentic and traditional, so keep your fusion to yourself please.
I’m Francesca and just recently moved to London from NYC. I work in food media marketing and events and I’m an obsessive cookbook and recipe hoarder. I like to make dishes that take several days, that I've never tasted, and that I have to travel all the way across town to find ingredients for. I can out-eat anyone in a pasta eating contest. I live with a cat, Olive, she's pretty much the boss of me, and my husband, Andrew, who is my foodie-partner in crime.
Special thanks to the rest of the family, who will be jumping in to help too. My stepfather, Andre, is a talented photographer and emotional rock for Mom. My brother, Tomas, is a scientist who geeks out over Harold McGee, founded his college cooking club, and hates following recipes. My sister Anna is the cool, artsy, and stylish one who helps me make things look pretty and lets me feed her every now and again. And shout-out to my Dad too who is an adventurous and extremely talented cook, a good friend of my Mom's, and who helped us all be better cooks.