Lindsay Marie Morris

2024 was a busy year for Rita Prisco, and for once, it wasn't just because of family life for the Queens, New York-based mom of 22-year-old triplets. Somehow, between serving up regular (and frequently viral) TikTok videos to her nearly 500,000 @cucinapalermo fans, she managed to publish not one but two cookbooks—Cucina Palermo: My Homemade Cookbook and Cucina Palermo: Savoring Sicily—and Piccola Francesca, which she envisions as the start of a children's book series.

It all began with a simple spaghetti recipe and a desire to present Sicilian cuisine authentically. She never imagined she'd be competing with professional chefs and cookbook authors. And that homemade approach has proved to be a winning formula. 

Rita shared with me her connection to Sicily, how her incredible journey started, what makes a viral recipe, her future plans, what's been most rewarding, and more. 

  

 

What is your connection to Sicily?

Both my parents are from Sicily. My father grew up in the city of Palermo. He passed away, but I have family in Balestrate, which is more of a beach area, so we would go there when I would go to Sicily. My mother's from a small town called Bisacquino, which is a couple of hours from Palermo. I also have family there still. 

Can you share more about your journey?

Like any other kids, my kids were obsessed with TikTok, but it was more of them doing the dances and all that stuff. And I saw that they were obsessed with it, and it annoyed me that every time I looked for my kids or needed them for anything, what were they doing? They were on TikTok. So I would be upset about it a bit, like, "What the hell? What's going on? You just got to get off of TikTok."

 

And they were like, "Ma, you should watch it. It's not just dancing." They were like, "There's so many other things on TikTok. There are cleaning hacks, and there's cooking."

 

So I started watching the cooking because I am obsessed with cooking, and I noticed that there was no Sicilian food. It was all the food you would see at restaurants on the Italian American menu.

 

I was telling my kids, "Girls, this is not how I ate growing up." And they're like, "Well, why don't you post a video?" I was like, "No. Mommy doesn't do that."

 

It took them months and months of encouraging me that I could do it. So, I just did one to see what would happen and make my kids happy. Literally overnight, it went viral, and it was the foundation recipe, like a staple in my house that I cooked.

 

In a week, I had a hundred thousand followers, and I said, "You know what? Obviously, there's a want for this."

 

People enjoyed it. It was a refreshing thing to them, something that is easy, we could all make, and it looks delicious. It was like people were thirsty for food that actually was real.

So I did another one, and that went viral. Then, another one went viral, and from then on, most of my videos went viral.

 

Rita Prisco with her first cookbook

 

You're now also a published author. Tell us about that experience.

It took a year of people telling me, "You should have a cookbook." And that was another thing that was out of my league mentally. Never in a million years did I think that I would be able to do that! 

I spoke to publishers who were reaching out to me, and it was very intimidating. I didn't want the whole process of writing the cookbook with a publisher. I didn't want any part of it. It was too professional. That's not me. I'm not a chef. I'm not a writer. I'm just a wife and a mom who learned how to cook from her mom and her grandmother. I'm just doing those recipes and having a professional cookbook with professional photos and writers and bloggers, and all that was not a representation of who I am. 

So I said to myself, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it my way. I called my first cookbook My Homemade Cookbook because I didn't want to compete with professionals and be criticized. So, I just laid it out there from the beginning.

 

I did it at home with my daughter, and I warned everybody that that's what they were going to get. So if they were looking for anything different, look someplace else, not in my book. And that's another thing that people enjoyed and were drawn to. They were like, "Wow, that's what we want. We don't want a professional cookbook."

 

How many cookbooks do we have in our house that we never use? Because the minute you open them, they're so intimidating, like, "Oh my God, is this the Bible? What are we doing here?" It's like too much. 

I did my second cookbook because there are so many recipes. I do 50 at a time; it's what I can handle.

 

Then, when I saw the response that I had from people, the connection… I always dreamed of writing a children's book about my childhood and growing up with Sicilian parents in America. But obviously, that couldn't have been done because without a following, without people knowing who you are, it's hard to start writing a book, and then who will buy it if you don't have the exposure.

 

Once I had the exposure, I saw I could do it. So that's where Piccola Francesca came in, and I'm so proud. I feel like I'm more proud of it than I am of my cookbooks because Piccola Francesca is a story of my life. And it's going to continue. That was the first of many to come.

 

It's been amazing with that book because so many people also related to it. And you don't only have to be Italian or Sicilian to relate to it. It's something that other cultures could relate to. 

So many schools are calling me; they want me to come read. And I've been doing that.  

 

How has your Sicilian heritage influenced your cooking and the recipes you share?

They're the recipes that my mom made growing up: peasant food. My mom grew up during the Depression, when there was no steak. It had to be a holiday to have meat. So there was a lot of pasta and potatoes; everything was made with homemade flour. They would turn a piece of old bread into a dessert. (I have one recipe in my cookbook where you take stale bread and turn it into a cookie.)

 

When I was growing up, my parents weren't poor the way they were when they grew up. They had money, but it didn't matter because even though it was peasant food, per se, it was food that we loved that was delicious, like beans, lentils, and split peas.

 

And the same thing with my kids. If you introduce these foods to your children from when they're born, they grow accustomed to them. So that's what happened to me. 

 

Which of your recipes has received the most attention, and why?

There are a few recipes that have exploded. My first one has over 5 million views. That's my spagetata. People were shocked that you can make delicious pasta like that with just a few ingredients. It costs almost nothing to make. Every region makes it its own way. They put a little twist to it, and it's theirs. So, that is a staple in all of Italy.

 

Another one of my recipes that just blew up with millions and millions of views was my chicken cutlets. I think that those weren't as traditional. What happened is that I have a different way of cutting a chicken cutlet, which is fork tender because you're cutting against the grain. And nobody ever saw that in their life. 

You would think a butcher would know this. I actually now have a butcher in my town who takes orders of chicken cutlets "Rita's way," cut the way I cut them because when you cut a chicken cutlet my way, it becomes so tender, and it's so much better. And now they know and say, "We would never cut chicken cutlets the way we used to."

 

People also love my pasta dishes. My pasta dishes all go viral because there are only three or four ingredients. And people like simplicity. They're tired. They work very hard. And if you can make their life easier, they could feed their family without the extra work. That's what they're looking for. 

That's what I focus on every day. When I know I'm going to show somebody a recipe, I ask, "Is this going to make their life better and easier?" And that's all I'm going to do. Can I make complicated stuff? Of course. But I don't even show that to people.

 

My mom's fig cookies for Christmas take hours and hours of work, but I made a recipe that tastes just like my mom's fig cookies, and it's done in a half hour. That's what I look for when I'm looking for a recipe. I'm looking for something simple with a few ingredients that's going to taste good. It has to have those three components. And I feel like once you have those three components, you have a winner. 

 

What are your plans for future projects?

I'm going to continue putting out a new children's book, always with the same character. I'm going to focus on Francesca. I want to introduce other stories of growing up with immigrant Sicilian parents and the differences between that and being an American child with American parents and grandparents. So many things make us different, including our traditions. And I have a lot of stories from my childhood. 

 

What has been the most rewarding part of your journey?

I think the most rewarding part for me is the people who reach out to me. I try my best to read as many comments and emails as I possibly can. I have people who are in hospice. I have people fighting fourth-stage cancer that I communicate with often who tell me that while they're doing their chemo, they watch me, and it brings a smile to their faces. The fact that I could distract somebody a little from their suffering, even for those few minutes, is all worth it to me.

 

So many people lost their moms or their grandparents at a younger age. They miss their grandmothers or their moms who used to cook for them like this, but they never thought of writing things down. I'm giving them recipes for food they never thought they would make, and they're so happy because I remind them; I bring them memories of their childhood. That is the most rewarding thing in the world.

 

@cucinapalermo Make spagetata with me!🇮🇹 #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #cooking #italiancooking #pasta #goodeats ♬ original sound - Rita

 

 

 

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Meghan Birnbaum has been sharing food as @meghanitup since March 2020, when her newly remodeled kitchen provided the perfect backdrop for showcasing recipes. Many of these dishes and desserts were inspired by her Palermo-born grandmother's culinary creations. Meghan's favorite? Stuffed artichokes (carciofi ripieni).

"They were a meal, and we each got one, except my dad and I would share one," she remembers. "He would always give me the heart; it's so symbolic. He gave me his heart, and that's the best part."

 

Through her "Authentic Sicilian Stuffed Artichokes" recipe, Meghan hopes to share the love. We recently chatted about her rendition of this traditional dish, sourcing ingredients, selecting and preparing artichokes, the best way to cook these vegetables, and more.

 

Tell us about your grandmother and how she inspired this recipe.

My grandma came through Ellis Island with her dad and her mom and then moved to St. Louis. She had two sisters and a brother. Her brother went to World War II and didn't come home; it was just her and her sisters. They each bought a house, and the backyards all backed up into each other's, so they essentially shared a yard.

 

My grandpa was a sheet metal worker, and my grandma was the cook of the family. She had four kids. She didn't know how to drive. She never had a job. She just took care of the family. 

 

She watched me as a kid while my parents were working. My grandma didn't write down any of her recipes, so I am recreating everything my family and I remember based on taste, smell, and feel. It took me a while to get this recipe down.

 

Peak artichoke season is June through September, but supermarkets carry them year-round.

How do you source your ingredients?

Living in Southern California has many advantages. We have many great farmers markets, and then we have Eataly. That's obviously not available to everybody, but I mean, there are a lot of stores; even in St. Louis, where I grew up, there's a little meat market called Mannino's. It's an Italian market, and you just start talking to people about their connection to Italy. They'll tell you, "These are the best breadcrumbs" or "This is the best bread." 

 

How do you select artichokes?

You're going to want a big, round artichoke. And if the leaves have kind of moved away from the center, it's going to be even easier to make. The tighter and the smaller, the harder it is to prep and stuff. The bigger and more bloomed, the easier it'll be to do that.

 

Trimmed artichokes photo by Meghan Birnbaum

Walk us through how you prepare the artichokes for cooking.

Having the right tools is really important. When I prepare artichokes, I use three different kinds of knives and a peeler. You also have to trim the leaves, so I use scissors.

 

I use a pretty big knife to cut the top off. You want a sharp, heavy-duty knife. It's pretty tough to get through, and it's not stable because the artichoke is round and on its side. You want to have something that can cut through pretty well. Then, I use a paring knife to cut the bottom and a peeler to thin out the skin on the stem. 

I recommend a bucket or a bowl of water with lemon juice in it to prevent the artichokes from browning. The artichokes will brown regardless of what you do, but this minimizes that. 

It's kind of labor intensive, but I feel like I've gotten it down and find it very therapeutic. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. But preparing the artichoke is definitely the hardest part because of how many steps and tools you need just to get it done. 

 

That gets rid of all the prickly parts except for the heart, which is difficult to reach. If somebody tells you to remove the heart and the center of the artichoke before it's cooked, I don't know if they've done that before because it's really impossible. You should steam it for 10 to 15 minutes before you use a spoon to remove those parts. 

 

 
Breadcrumbs make this recipe Sicilian. Photo by Meghan Birnbaum.

Do you have any tips for preparing the artichoke stuffing?

It's truly just garlic in olive oil until you can smell it, and then I put in the breadcrumbs. It has to be on a medium to low heat, and you cannot walk away. You need to just constantly stir. The second you see color on those breadcrumbs, you kill the heat and keep stirring. It's going to keep browning. 

 

Add two inches of water to the pan. Photo by Meghan Birnbaum.

What's the best way to cook stuffed artichokes?

My favorite is just steaming them, and I've done it a few different ways. Sometimes, when I steam them, the water rises too high and kind of goes over the top, so the breadcrumbs on the top become mushy, which is fine. It's mushy on the inside, too, and that's a good texture. So if one batch boils over and it gets mushy, I'm still going to enjoy it. But I love it when I steam it just enough that it doesn't get to the top, and the top is still brown and crispy. When it's gotten mushy on top, I put it in the oven afterward to crisp it, but it's kind of a lost cause at that point if there's too much water on the top of the breadcrumbs. 

I have baked before. That was a more fool-proof method. If you want to make sure you just get crispiness on it, you just put a little water into the pan, and then it'll steam and bake at the same time. 

 

What do you hope people will take away from this recipe?

It's an intimidating recipe, but it's also one that you just don't find in restaurants. So I hope that people will feel encouraged to make this and know that they can make traditional recipes that are not restaurant recipes but rather home recipes.

 

It uses fresh, homegrown ingredients with very Mediterranean vibes. Homemade bread does not go to waste because you're grinding it into breadcrumbs. You're also really utilizing the harvest of the olives and the olive oil. It is like a little Mediterranean treat using what the resources and the produce available have to offer.

 

>>Get Meghan's full stuffed artichokes recipe here!<<

 

 

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