Growing up Italian meant growing up with TONS of great Italian food. For as long as I can remember, our freezer has been filled to the brim with containers of fresh, homemade spaghetti sauce. When we would visit my Nonnas' house (Nonna is grandmother in Italian), we would always bring a cooler so we could stock up on her fresh sauce. Eventually my mother was handed the wooden spoon and instructed to keep the tradition going. For years, she raised her own tomatoes and at the end of the summer, she would spend weeks cooking up batches of sauce for the entire family. After several bountiful harvests, we had dozens of containers from different years to choose from, so it became the family joke of "what 'Vintage' would you like for dinner?"

Now it's my turn. We confined The Sauce to our family's kitchen for long enough... It's time to show the world what homemade sauce really tastes like!

About the Chef:

From the time I was four, I was helping my parents in the kitchen, although they told me it always took longer when I "helped". By the time I was in high school, I was taking on internships in some of the best restaurants in Colorado Springs - this time my efforts were really helping! I then won a scholarship to Johnson & Wales University, in Providence, RI, one of the top culinary schools in the country - thanks to some killer poached pears and a crazy, healthy chocolate cake. For four years, food really was the center of my universe.

Throughout college my friends and I would get together for "Family Night" where I would run our own mini-restaurant from my apartment-sized kitchen. I was Head Chef and my friends made up the rest of the crew (mostly clean-up for them!). That tradition has continued to this day. Among my friends, I am known as Chef Tuzel.