Don’t ask Gabriella Mazzarisi for her focaccia recipe.
“I turn into my nonna and say, ‘Just watch,’” she says. “There is no build. There is no measuring involved whatsoever. We live in a city with four seasons, and you need to feel the dough. It should be squishy. It should be light to the touch. Don’t overmix it. It’s a feeling.”
Don’t bother asking about her arancini, either. Or her spiedini. Or her olive oil cake or bitter green salad.
Instead, mangia e statti zitto this April 7 when the Focaccia Mama feels them all into existence at the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.
Mazzarisi absorbed this timeless wisdom at the side of her Nonna Nicasia, who emigrated to Chicago with her mom from the tiny Sicilian town of Caccamo, perched on the cliffs above Palermo.
“In true Sicilian fashion, she had a nice, new remodeled kitchen but used the one in the basement,” says Mazzarisi, who began hosting private dinners and pop-ups before the pandemic but didn’t fully inhabit her superhero alter ego until she’d been furloughed from the writing and bartending gigs that paid the rent. In time, door to door deliveries of focaccia and lemon pound cake (modeled on Nonna’s tarallucci al limone) grew to an ever-expanding repertoire of sweet and savory scratch southern Italian dishes at markets, pop-ups, multicourse curated dinners, and private chef gigs.
And yet, never a Foodball—until now.
Just watch as her pecorino, taleggio, and mozzarella-stuffed arancini with Calabrian chili–spiked red sauce and fresh pesto fly out of Mary Stark’s kitchen.
Marvel at skewers of thinly shaved sirloin spiralized around a toasted herb breadcrumb–Romano overlay, bedecked with vivid emerald chimichurri.
Balance a focaccia trio—embedded with giardiniera, tomato basil, or rosemary garlic—with a bracing salad of endive, radicchio, and fennel.
Ask Phil for a Fernet-Branca to help digest it all, along with a finishing slice of orange and rosemary–perfumed olive oil cake, and contemplate the miracle of orally preserved kitchen tradition.
The arancini go in the oil starting at 5 PM this April 7, at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
Meantime, get in touch with your feelings about the full spring Foodball schedule below:
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