Melissa Pellegrino & Matteo Scialabba

Our initial shared interest in Italian food and culture brought us together while we were living in Italy. I was working in Rome, apprenticing in an antique furniture restoration shop, at the same time as Melissa was attending culinary school in Florence and working in a small trattoria. Our weekends were spent exploring the Italian countryside in search of authentic cuisine and local wines. This discovery of true regional Italian cooking sparked a passion within that began our culinary journey that continues today. After graduating together from The Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, bread became our first obsession. Our quest to learn how to bake rustic loaves of bread with crackling crust, chewy crumb, and sour tang led us to work in some of New York’s finest bakeries. Melissa studied the art of bread baking and pizza making under bread guru Jim Lahey at the Sullivan Street Bakery. My interest resided in wood fired ovens, which led me to the Blue Ribbon Bakery to bake in their two hundred year old brick oven.

Longing a return to Italy we found a family bakery, in a small village outside of Rome, with a wood fired oven willing to teach us their secrets about baking delicious bread. From there we spent a year traveling around the country through a work exchange program on organic farms cooking in their kitchens. This discovery of farm fresh cuisine exposed our palettes to the natural goodness of seasonal, locally grown ingredients that would forever change our approach towards cooking.

Back again State side, I became sous chef in a small Italian trattoria while Melissa taught at a professional culinary school before both of us became private chefs in Greenwich CT. We eventually decided to follow our dream and pursue researching and writing The Italian Farmer’s Table, whose labor of love publication is representative of our combined culinary experiences. Presently, Melissa is an assistant food editor for Fine Cooking Magazine, testing and developing recipes, whereas my passion for wine landed me a job with a boutique wine importer. During the weekends, we often cook private dinner parties or travel around to local farms, seeking out interesting ingredients to cook with and write about for our blog.

Contact info: We are available for small dinner parties and cooking classes, if interested please contact us at: msmp@theitalianfarmerstable.com