The Interview: Mary Ann Esposito's My Lifelong Food Adventures In Italy

For thirty years Mary Ann Esposito has traveled Italy from its top to the tip of its boot and down to Sicily, roaming its markets, cooking schools, cheese farms, butcher shops, and the kitchens of Italian home cooks, all while observing changes and trends. She’s done this while hosting Ciao Italia, PBS’s longest-running cooking program and writing thirteen cookbooks about Italy’s great regional cuisines, the most recent being Ciao Italia: My Lifelong Food Adventures in Italy.

In this our third conversation with Mary Ann, she uses her knowing perspective to go back to foundations, including how to stock an Italian pantry and equip a kitchen, how to buy authentic San Marzano DOP tomatoes (and why that matters), instructions for making a tomato sauce in five minutes, and how Italy’s proud culinary regionalism and reverence for ingredients remain.