Cooking for loved ones is one of Sara’s greatest pleasures, and for her, it’s not so much about the meal, but more about the people she shares it with.
This weekend, Sara gets to show off her actual nonna, Carmela La Pegna, at Sydney’s Festival of Nonna.
Launched last Thursday by Sandhurst Fine Foods, the two-week festival is a rooftop celebration of Italian cuisine featuring those who know it best: cooking royalty and their nonne.
Sara’s cooking career began with a life-changing leap into the unknown, when she left her job in advertising without much of a backup plan.
Applications were open for Series 7 of MasterChef Australia, and in a “why not?” moment, Sara decided to see where her passion for food could take her.
Little did she know, that two months later she’d be demonstrating her innate cooking ability on national television.
“It was a great experience and a total whirlwind; you feel pretty much every emotion on the spectrum every day,” Sara says.
“It was incredible and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Sara was a stone’s throw away from victory, making it to the top five before being eliminated in Finals Week.
Her food journey didn’t end there, however, and she has since gone on to collaborate with numerous brands, featuring in cooking demonstrations and online presentations, alongside working with Wesley Mission Victoria to promote their Food for Families appeal.
“I have a creative advertising background and my job involved being behind the camera and setting up online content, and now I am the content, which is quite cool,” she says.
While food is now a profession for Sara, it was once just an integral part of family life.
The passionate foodie was born into a lively family of Southern Italians, predominately from Sicily, and spent much of her formative years at her grandparents’ house.
“My grandparents love cooking; my nonno makes olives, we make our own sausages and we used to do our own sugo where everyone would come over and make tomato sauce,” Sara recalls.
“It was literally like the opening scene of Looking for Alibrandi!”
Long and leisurely meals accompanied by plenty of wine and endless chit-chat were a huge part of Sara’s upbringing, and she’d spend hours in the kitchen watching her nonna, picking up little tips and techniques here and there.
Having since moved to Melbourne, Sara savours the moments in which she gets to return home and share an Italian feast with her family – an event she describes as “a circus, but the best circus ever”.
Interestingly, Sara can’t recall a single time in her whole 28 years when she’s seen her nonna follow a recipe.
In fact, in the lead up to tomorrow’s workshop, Carmela came up with about 14 different versions of the same recipe for one of Sicily’s sweetest treats, cannoli.
“We’re very carefree people, and [following a recipe] is not something that runs in our veins,” Sara laughs.
“For me Italian food isn’t about following the recipe and it’s quite liberating in that way. When you understand how to start a dish and where it can go, it’s all about your instinct.”
To Sara, that’s the beauty of Italian cooking, and while it may be hard to pick up at first, it means that you can create anything out of nothing using even the simplest ingredients that happen to be on hand.
Sara and Carmela will be running interactive demonstrations tomorrow and Saturday at 1 pm, so that even the most inexperienced cooks can learn how a few flavours and a pinch of instinct can create something truly magical.
The menu is as Sicilian as it gets, too, from squid ink pasta to eggplant crostini, blood orange and radicchio salad, and cannoli.
For Sara, this weekend will be all about celebrating the woman who fuelled her passion for cooking and has been a significant guiding figure in her food journey.
“To cook next to somebody who has inspired me so much, is one of those things that I’ll look back on for a long time,” she says.
“I can’t wait to share my nonna around, and even if you’re not Italian, you get to have one for a day.”
