Cooking smart

After three heart attacks, Christina Maiellano has tried her best to adapt her kitchen cupboards to improve her health, but one question remained: Would her cooking suffer?

"I could’ve made it better," she said somewhat dissatisfied, glancing at a bowl of her famous Summer Linguini, "but I’m trying to change my eating habits — margarine instead of butter, and a Heart Smart olive oil."

But the summer linguini, a warm, flavor-infused mixture of pasta, peppers and tomatoes was anything but a disappointment. After preparing an impromptu Friday lunch in her home, Maiellano, of the 2500 block of South 10th Street, took a timeout from running around her kitchen to speak passionately about food.

"I’m Italian," she said while stirring vegetables, "and we like to eat stuff that’s made. Give me taste, give me something fattening, something filling."

Maiellano has lived in South Philadelphia her entire life, lining up for food in the hallways of her first home on 13th and Wharton streets with her 13 brothers and sisters, plates in hand.

"We always ate in shifts," Maiellano recalled. "It was the first seven and then the second seven all my life."

After watching her mother cook for years, she, the 13th out of 14, was one of the only children to inherit "the eye," a useful trait when it came time to sewing, crocheting and cooking. Her mother cooked like an Italian was taught, Mariellano said, always throwing ingredients into the mix and barely ever touched a measuring cup.

"She had a good hand, but now you have to be more conscious of measuring in order to stay healthy," Maiellano said.

Though she loves to eat, Maiellano is a firm believer that a quality meal derived from the best ingredients — she prefers meat straight from the butcher — is the best thing for a person’s food regimen.

"A lot of people today say women can’t cook," she said, waving her red fingernails through the air. "They can. It’s just easier not to be afraid of [cooking]. We have to eat anyway, so just chop and boil."

The Italian mother of one has a certain knack for the entire process. Moving around her kitchen with certainty and excitement, she mentions she had just thought of a new recipe that day, but hadn’t had the chance to write it down.

"I concoct recipes in my head all the time," she said.