Extended family: Mary Ann Esposito (back row, third from left); grandmother "Nonna" Galasso holds the baby.

Fenneman recognized Esposito's potential from their first encounters. Esposito had been teaching cooking classes through UNH's Division of Continuing Education, when she first proposed a cooking show to New Hampshire Public Television in the mid-1980s. Nothing came of the idea because the station's studio in the MUB was just too small, but when the station moved to its current larger quarters, that obstacle was removed.

The key to a good cooking show is the host's ability to make average viewers feel like they'll be a success in the kitchen, Fenneman says. To determine how Esposito would fare on video, the station taped a pilot program. On what Esposito recalls as "the hottest day of the year," the NHPTV team arrived at Esposito's Durham, N.H., home with makeup, lights, cameras and production crew. "I remember Cynthia saying, 'Be up, up, up,' so I was talking in a high voice," Esposito notes. "I had my experience as a teacher to draw on. I can talk to two or 250. I just wanted to explain Italian food to people."

The pilot aired to great reviews, and Ciao Italia was launched.

Esposito has four main criteria for what gets on the show. "It has to be something I like to eat," she says. "The ingredients have to be available, and the recipe has to be something you're not familiar with. That's the fun part of teaching -- introducing viewers to something they didn't know existed. The reward is seeing them get excited."

The fourth criterion? It has to be something the kitchen staff can manage. Behind every episode of Ciao Italia is a team of 20 volunteers led by Esposito's old friends Donna Soares, Ruth Moore and Liz Hayden. This season's 13 episodes -- 32 recipes in all -- were shot in two weeks last summer. That meant taping two to three episodes a day. Everything is made from scratch in the studio, and to ensure the taping goes smoothly, multiple batches of the same dish must be prepared, each left at a different stage of the recipe, so Esposito can cover in a few minutes a recipe that would actually take several hours from start to finish.

Esposito plans everything out with the kitchen staff. Moore is in charge of ingredients, scouring local markets for the ripest fruits and vegetables, the best meats and fish, driving to Boston for specialty products. Each dish is assembled the day of the shoot. "We have to know what we're doing each day and who's in charge of each recipe," Esposito explains.

Soares is in charge of breads, but is called on for other duties as well. Once when Esposito's spatula broke in the middle of a show, Soares crawled on her hands and knees to give her another one, unseen by the cameras. "If it happens in your kitchen, it's happened in the Ciao kitchen," Soares says with a smile.

Now produced by Mary Esposito Productions, the shows are still taped at the New Hampshire Public Television studios, using a set put up for that two-week period and loosely based on Esposito's own kitchen. The view through the set's window was painted to resemble the view of the Oyster River from Esposito's own house. The shows are not scripted. "I talk from my experience," she says. "If I had to talk from a script, I couldn't cook. I like to have fun in the kitchen."

She does, however, map out every show and test every recipe. "Thinking out a cooking show is like going through a maze. You have to think, 'What do viewers need to know that they don't already? What can I fit into 26 minutes?' If I'm making yeast bread, is it more important for people to see how to proof yeast or punch down dough or measure flour?'" When she's not taping the show, Esposito is doing research, writing, testing recipes or signing books at one of the 40 appearances she makes around the country each year. "I wake up every day thinking about food," she says. "There's so much to know. Last night I was reading about olive oil before I went to bed. This is all-consuming."

For Esposito, food is part of family life, and holidays revolve around cooking and eating together. Daughter Beth, who graduated from UNH in1990, will drive up from Boston if she knows her mother is making a special meal, and she'll take the leftovers back with her. Esposito's own 80-year-old mother was planning a visit over Mother's Day. "I know exactly what she'll have in her suitcase," Esposito says. "Three pounds of my brother's homemade sausage."

Preparing food as an expression of love is something Esposito learned from her own mother. Once, when she had an event to do in Buffalo, she asked her mother to make one batch of pizzelle, the Italian waffle cookie. "When I got there, I asked Mom if she'd had a chance to make them," Esposito relates. "She told me they were in the refrigerator. She opened it, and it was loaded from top to bottom with pizzelles. There must have been 500. 'Everybody in the audience has to have one,' she told me. That spirit of generosity is something I try to live by, but my parents always are my example." ~

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