The Alternative Press

LIVINGSTON, NJ – Somewhere in New York, Mo Rocca was wishing he knew how to cook. Somewhere in New Jersey, Frank “Pop” DiGregorio was learning how to cook. And tonight, Cooking Channel fans everywhere will see what happened when the two crossed paths.

DiGregorio, a longtime Livingston resident and retired doctor, is one of the guests on Rocca’s Cooking Channel special “My Grandmother’s Ravioli,” airing tonight at 8 p.m.

The hour-long show features Rocca, a journalist who also stars in “Food(ography)” on the Cooking Channel and is a correspondent on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” setting off to meet the best cooks in America – grandmothers and grandfathers.

“I don’t know how to cook,” Rocca told The Alternative Press. “I’m sort of ashamed of it. One of my fondest memories is these elaborate feasts at my grandmother’s house. I can still taste the ravioli. I can smell it. I can feel it.”

Rocca said his grandmother, who worked in the china and crystal section of a department store until she was 87, would spend hours in the kitchen, making a big meal for her family, and they would “gobble it up and then leave.” His special, he said, is a bit of penance.

“If I could go back in time, I’d show up early and spend some time in the kitchen with her, have her teach me how she made that ravioli,” he said. “She made it all from scratch. It’s hard not to be clichéd, but it was great gift, and I want to be able to give it to someone else.”

So with the memory of his grandmother’s ravioli lingering in his memory, as sharp and sweet as good parmesan, Rocca set out to create what ultimately became tonight’s television show.

“I wanted to do something more personal. Learning how to cook from a book would be boring for me to do and boring for you to watch,” said Rocca, who says he doesn’t even have salt in his apartment. “I wanted to learn from grandmothers and grandfathers, from uncles and aunts. I love projects where I get paid to learn.”

In some ways it’s a new road for Rocca, whose career as a journalist, political satirist, writer and stage actor (yes, he’s the same Mo Rocca who played in “South Pacific” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in 1994) makes it somewhere between difficult and impossible to put a label on him.

“I’m like a TV grifter,” he joked. “Too bad I’m not a criminal – I’m so good at being elusive.”

And in other ways, it’s a familiar terrain. As a journalist known as much for his writing as his wit, Rocca has interviewed everyone from Loretta Lynn to New Providence’s own Tracy Beckerman. His new TV special, he says, is basically what he’s always done, with the exception of learning to cook.

“It’s really consistent with my main job, which is CBS News Sunday Morning,” Rocca said. “The guy who runs the Cooking Channel said to think of Charles Kuralt, of finding people whose stories you wouldn’t ordinarily hear. I don’t feel like this is much of a leap from what I’ve been doing for the past five years.”

The political commentator who provided campaign coverage for The Daily Show’s “Indecision 2000” and a few years later, covered both major political party conventions for Larry King, said the only big variation between his previous work and tonight’s special is the political part.

“Unless I learn to cook from Mitt Romney’s mom,” he added. “Food is generally bipartisan, except for maybe veganism. And grandmothers are pretty bipartisan. If you hate grandmothers and hate home cooked meals, do not watch this show.”

Part of what drew Rocca to travel to Livingston and learn to cook from “Pop” DiGregorio is his own Italian heritage.

“My father is Italian, and my mother is Columbian. In other words, I have people on both sides of my family who could hurt you,” he joked. “Pop taught me to make focaccia and cacciatore. So who knows? At the end of this whole journey, I’ll go home to my apartment and maybe I’ll make my grandmother’s ravioli.”

Meanwhile, back in New Jersey…

“I was at home, baking one of my herb focaccias, and my daughter stopped by with one of her friends,” DiGregorio said. “She asked if she could take a picture of it, and she posted it on the internet, and about a month later I got a call from the Cooking Channel asking if they could talk to me.”

Most cooks would jump at a chance like that. But not this one.

“I’m a medical doctor, I don’t go for publicity,” said DiGregorio, who was a practicing ob-gyn in Livingston for more than 40 years. “So I told them ‘I didn’t do anything. I just cook what I like to eat.’ But my daughter talked me into it.”

Like Rocca, DiGregorio hasn’t always known how to cook. During his long marriage, his wife handled the cooking.

“She knew what to do,” he said. “She knew what I liked and how I liked it. When she died, that was it.”

Not being a fan of dining out, (“I want to eat when I want to eat. Period.”) DiGregorio learned a few cooking basics from a couple of friends and his sister. Eventually he called a bistro in Montclair where the chef was a friend of his daughter’s, and got himself an internship of sorts. For nine months, he learned to cook in the bistro’s kitchen so he could make his favorites at home and, as he puts it, survive.

And that’s the knowledge DiGregorio imparted to Rocca the day they stood in Pop’s kitchen, making focaccia and ‘chicken’ cacciatore. (It only tastes like chicken. To find out what it really is, watch tonight’s special.)

Despite his early misgivings and the fact that he insists he’s not an actor, DiGregorio now says the whole experience wasn’t too bad at all.

“The Cooking Channel people are nice people,” he said. “And Moe is an excellent guy. We like a lot of the same things. We just clicked right away, like we’d known each other a long time. It’s hard to find a guy like that who knows so much and is still so eager to learn. I like that.”

DiGregorio describes himself as a modest guy who doesn’t like attention and “doesn’t need any super-duper things,” but admits he was taken with watching how the TV show was done.

“It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot,” he said. “When I was a kid, I was an usher at a movie theater in Brooklyn, but I never paid attention to how they actually made the film. This was a new experience for me. Mo learned how to cook, I learned how they make a TV show.”

“My Grandmother’s Ravioli” airs tonight at 8 p.m. on the Cooking Channel.