London’s front line health care workers get fresh pasta from former Vancouverite
Former Vancouverite is cooking up comfort food for frontline health workers in London
Cooking has been a lifelong passion for Marla Liguori.
“I’ve been cooking ever since I was able to reach the countertop,” Liguori says. In a sense, a love of food is in her blood. “My family is Italian and therefore always, a): in the kitchen, b): eating at the dinner table or c): talking about food.”
Growing up in Vancouver, Liguori’s “nonna” Ida Liguori taught her how to make staples of their culture’s cuisine such as pasta, bread and pizza, while her dad Tony passed along the value of slow cooking.
“He takes his time in the kitchen,” Liguori says. “You can taste the love in his food.”
The Liguori family also instilled in her the value of growing one’s own food — even within the small confines of a Vancouver backyard — a process she says greatly influenced her understanding of where food comes from.
“You quickly realize how much effort and care goes into growing a single tomato,” Liguori says. “In turn, you learn to appreciate that single tomato and not waste it. It’s all about honouring ingredients.”
As Liguori’s life progressed, her love of food and cooking grew, manifesting as boisterous dinner parties for family and friends hosted alongside her fiancé in their Yaletown residence.
“We had dinner parties once or twice a month,” she say. It was a tradition she carried with her when the couple decamped from Vancouver and moved to London, England.
In her new city, the selftaught home chef who describes her cooking style as “playful, soulful and experimental” would scour the local Borough Market for ingredients to use in her increasingly elaborate dinner party meals.
“I (would) walk home with winter truffles from Italy, smoked garlic from France and fresh figs from Spain,” she recalls. “I have the best of Europe at my doorstep.”
But, as the COVID-19 situation called for physical distancing and staying home, Liguori’s beloved dinner parties came to a temporary end. It didn’t take long before she missed the “creativity aspect” involved with creating her own recipes and dishes to serve to others.
“Cooking is my creative outlet in life,” Liguori says.
Working from home during lockdown for her job as a marketing professional, she says she found herself with extra time on her hands.
“I wanted to use mine doing something productive for society,” she says. “There’s only so much Netflix you can watch.”
In mid-April, Liguori came up with an idea to create fresh, tagliatelle pasta to donate to frontline healthcare workers who were battling COVID-19 for the National Health Service in area hospitals.
“In the first two weeks, I made 50 packages of pasta for 50 doctors, nurses, radiographers, admin staff, etc.,” she says.
She pays for the pasta-making project with money she admits she would have, otherwise, been spending on her dinner party menus.
“When it comes to buying ingredients, I don’t factor in the cost,” she says. “It’s the only thing I splurge on in life. When I paused to think about what I spent on an average dinner party, I quickly realized I could feed 100 NHS staff for the roughly the same cost as a couple dinner parties.”
Liguori lowers the packets of handmade pasta down from her apartment window by a string, to the waiting health-care workers below.
Not having to think about dinner is one less thing they need to do at the end of a shift.”
Marla Liguori
“(They) love that I lower the pasta down from my window. I love it too,” she says. “The whole experience is quite fun. Someone took a video of me lowering the pasta down from my window for their mom in Australia. She wanted to reassure her mom that she was eating well. I know my mom is worried about me being in London, away from home.”
A competitor on the latest season of MasterChef UK, during which she made it to the show’s top 10, Liguori says she hopes her packets of pasta are providing the workers with a little bit of comfort — and, of course, full bellies.
“Not having to think about dinner is one less thing they need to do at the end of a shift,” she says. “My goal is to make them feel cared for and loved. You can do that through food. I guess the idea of a former MasterChef contestant making pasta for them is kinda fun. It has certainly established a level of trust, given most people have just seen me on TV.”
On her Instagram account, @cookingwithmarla, Liguori shares a glimpse into the pasta-making experience, as well as additional Italian recipes, with her followers. Sharing a bit of what she calls "quintessential Canadian kindness” that she was taught by her family as a child is something she plans to do for as long as her pasta is in demand.
“Feeding people is my true calling in life,” she says. "I would be doing the exact same thing if I was back in our Yaletown apartment.
“I’m happy to make fresh pasta every day — as long as there’s NHS staff who want dinner after their shift.”