Chris Fennimore goes Italian on ‘When in Rome’ pledge drive for WQED
Chris Fennimore has demoed hundreds of dishes during his 29 years as WQED’s resident chef and much-loved cookbook author.
And talk about a recipe for success: All 100 or so episodes of the “QED Cooks” show, in which the Regent Square resident cooks alongside various guests to raise hundreds of thousands of pledge dollars for the public broadcasting station, have followed the same format: A live broadcast from the station’s Oakland studio, with no edits or do-overs when someone makes a mistake.
His upcoming membership drive on Dec. 10 takes a slightly different tack. For “very practical” reasons — including greater control over the creative process — the two-hour premier of “When in Rome” was taped in October to make the transition from cooking to pledging less hectic.
“And we have more time to clean up and reset for the next demo,” Fennimore explains. “But once the cameras are rolling, we go straight through.”
Also new: Instead of focusing on recipes contributed by viewers, Saturday’s cooking marathon will shine the spotlight brightly on Fennimore, and the recipes he has amassed and perfected over the last six or seven years during his months-long stays in Italy.
He’s actually had the idea in his head for a while now. His daughter, Mary Ann, and her husband, Andrew Kranis, have lived for more than a decade in Testaccio, a residential neighborhood in Rome’s historic city center. (She’s an art teacher at the Ambrit International School and he’s an architect and college professor for various U.S. colleges abroad.) So every year after Christmas, Fennimore spends January and February there, soaking up and celebrating what he calls “the Roman way of eating.”
Romans, he points out, are very
different in the way they go about shopping for meals. Americans tend to buy many days’ or even a week’s worth of groceries at a time at super- sized grocery stores. Italians, conversely, go to their local mercata every day to buy just for what they’ll eat that night for dinner from the local butchers, cheesemakers, fishmongers and farmers they’ve known for years, if not generations.
“And you can see everyone, from harried moms with strollers to little old ladies and men with their pushcarts,” says Fennimore.
As for the mercatas themselves, which you see all over Rome, the focus is on food artisans who specialize in selling a particular product — everything from handmade pastas to organic produce to Romanian meats, such as porchetta and mortadella, and freshly caught fish.
“And it’s all seasonal,” he notes.
During artichoke season ( from late winter until early spring in Rome), for instance, vendors might offer 10 different varieties of carciofo in their stalls “and they are piled from the floor to over their heads,” Fennimore says, adding, with a laugh, “You’d think they eat nothing but artichokes. It’s stunning, just stunning!”
All those wonderful selections led to an equally wonderful daily routine. Every day after his two grandsons went to school and he’d had his morning coffee, Fennimore
would head to the Testaccio Market, across the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, and take a walk around to see who had what. Then, he cooked it.
When it came time to start planning the first QED Kitchen pledge drive postpandemic about a year and a half ago, those circadian market walks and the delicious meals they helped create quickly came to mind. Or as he puts it, “I thought, ‘ There’s something here that’s special that people in Pittsburgh would appreciate,” even if they couldn’t exactly replicate it.
WQED’s co-chief operating officer Lilli Mosco agreed it was a great idea, and even told him, “Sign me up for the first cookbook!”
That’s right: a cookbook. As per custom, the pledge drive comes with a book of the recipes featured during the show as a thank you to those who contribute. “When in Rome” counts 100 recipes — some Fennimore learned in Rome and others he made up upon returning home — that range from appetizers such as caprese salad and mains like beef straccetti to pasta dishes including potato gnocchi and cacio e pepe, which is ubiquitous in Italy’s capital city.
“Even little pizzerias will make you an order,” he says of the simple dish made with butter, grated cheese and cracked black pepper.
Nancy Polinsky, who has been cooking on-air with Fennimore since the “QED Cooks” series started in 1993, will once again cohost, and the pair also will be joined by Fennimore’s son, Joseph, along with guest cooks Jolina Giaramita of La Tavola, Doug Heilman of Luminari’s Camp Delicious and Beth Taylor, chef instructor for Common Threads. They’ll cook eight recipes in total, including Roman meatballs made with ground-up mortadella.
“When in Rome” premiers at 10 a.m. Dec. 10 on WQEDTV, with an encore broadcast at 10 a.m. Dec. 17. It will air nationally through local PBS stations in 2023.