Now I’m going to tell you why my family put me to work cooking for them at the age of five. As I said earlier, one of the first things I ever learned to make in the kitchen was an Italian (of course!) apple cake. (You can find the recipe on here).

Basically, I ended up learning this recipe because my grandfather used to keep gunpowder around the apartment for when he went hunting pheasant and wild boar. When I was five, I started secretly stealing bits of his gunpowder and collecting it in a little plastic bag. Fire and explosions fascinated me. I had some friends who had a television, and together we used to watch American imports dubbed in Italian. My favorite show was The Dukes of Hazzard. For me, that was the life—jumping into a car through the window, blowing things up, and shooting things.

One day, when I had enough gunpowder saved up, I made a paste from the gunpowder, some of the rubbing alcohol my diabetic grandma used for her insulin shots, and olive oil (I’d heard on television that if you mix gunpowder with oil, the fire burns more slowly). I spread it on the floor all around the couch. Then I climbed up on the couch and lit the paste, just for the fun of it.

So there I was, standing on the couch with this barricade of flames around me, yelling “Victory!” There was smoke everywhere. My great-grandma wheeled herself in and got the fiery paste on her wheels. She looked like a moving firework—screaming, lit up, rolling, screaming some more. She tried to grab me but couldn’t because of the wheelchair. My dad was taking a shower, he heard me shouting “Victory!” and Great-grandma screaming, he saw thick smoke and had no idea what was going on. He thought the house was on fire. He got Great-grandma out of the wheelchair, her blanket half on fire, grabbed me by the T-shirt, and put the fire out.

My family and the next-door neighbors (who used to sometimes help look after me) had a summit at my kitchen table. No one could afford a babysitter, so all they could say was, “What are we going to do with this kid?” Great-grandma said, “I’ll take care of him.” Everyone said, “You’re crazy! You can’t take care of him. You can’t even follow him—you’re in a wheelchair!” But she was smart and she said, “I have an idea.” She used to cook all day. She made bread, fresh pasta, and prepared the eggs for the evening meal. She told them, “This kid wants to play with fire”—we still had a wood stove—“I’ll teach him how to cook.” My mom was doubtful: “You’ll never get him to stand still for more than ten minutes.” But my great-grandma said, “I’ll do it.” And she did.

My great-grandma guided me through all the recipes she had. If I was out of control, she whacked me on the hand with a long wooden spoon; she had about three feet on me at any given time. She kept the spoon where a cop keeps a nightstick, and when Grandma was looking at me and she had her hand on the wooden spoon, I froze. But no matter what I did, she was never upset with me. She and my dad would argue about it, though, and she would beat my dad with the spoon if he yelled at me. My dad would say, “You can’t hit him with a wooden spoon!” And she’d say, “You yell at him all the time when he misbehaves!” And then he’d yell, “Yelling is not hitting with a spoon!”

But mostly the spoon was for cooking. Great-grandma started by having me use it to make batters. Then she let me put wood in the stove and sauté things. Because of her wheelchair, she couldn’t really reach the table, so she made fresh pasta from eggs and flour in an aluminum bowl on her lap. The pasta machine was at the edge of the table so she could roll out the dough.

She used me as an extension of her own body. I would stand on the wheelchair, waving a spoon like a cavalier’s sword. Standing between her legs, I could reach the stove and the table, and as she wheeled around, I cooked for her. That’s when she started to make things like chicken cacciatore, slightly more complicated recipes. She couldn’t butcher a chicken, but I learned how to do that and much more as a five-, six- and seven-year-old. Because of my poor health, I missed a lot of school, so I spent a lot of time at home with Great-grandma, and together we cooked for six people every day.

She’d be in her wheelchair holding the bowl steady on the table and I’d stand on a chair mixing fresh pasta dough or apple cake with a spoon. I’d say, “Can I go play?” And she’d say, “You can’t go play until there are no more lumps.” I had a wooden spoon and I was five years old: There were going to be lumps for three hours! But she really got hold of me and redirected my energy. I could have destroyed life and appliances and furniture in those three hours and instead I was just stirring a freaking cake.

And do you know how many hours I spent stirring polenta? Standing at the stove on the wheelchair, my grandmother holding the back of my shirt with one hand and the chair with the other, I stirred polenta with an old whisk for hours on end. Hours! Her face was so wrinkled up that you could barely see her eyes, but she saw everything. I’d say, “Grandma, I’m done.” And without even looking at it she’d say, “It isn’t done. That’s not good. You have to do it more.” And I’d say, “How can you even see?” And she would just repeat, “It can’t be done. Do it more.” She’s the person who taught me to do it right or do it twice. For her it was all about doing it right the first time. After I set her on fire she said, “I’m eighty-seven and you’re only five but there’s got to be a way.” She knew better. She found my soft spot and then I made a career out of it.