Elena and Stefano Faita welcomed us in the heart of Little Italy, where they manage several businesses. The host of MasterChef Quebec is delighted to see his mother realize a big dream with the publication of her recipe book Elena’s kitchen. Moreover, the love of cooking and the importance of a job well done are at the heart of the values of this family of Italian immigrants.
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We met in the premises of the former Mezza Luna cooking school, located a few steps from Quincaillerie Dante, which Elena has run with love since 1981. Although she has not taken over the reins of the school after the pandemic, it still occasionally offers training there. She points to a large wooden board that sits at the back of the room. “See, over there, in the corner? This is the circular board that my mother used to make her pasta. All I inherited from her was her roller and this board. This object is sacred to me; It brings me luck, and I plan to pass it on to my grandchildren!” confides Elena.
Even today, Elena prepares her pasta on this board with the same skill as her mother, a way of perpetuating family traditions. “Cooking is at the heart of our family. Culinary traditions were passed down to me from my grandmother, Concetta, my mother, Teresa, and my mother-in-law, Angela. Each had their own method, and I always loved learning. When the children were little, we entertained a lot at home!” says Elena.
Stefano remembers the excitement at home on Saturday evenings during his childhood. “My mother preferred to receive rather than be received. She quietly prepared the dishes all week and, on Saturdays, she assembled them before the guests arrived. She had the gift of always serving them hot.” Elena, who often cooked for her four brothers before getting married, considers this type of group evening to be obvious. “Preparing a meal for eight people is completely normal for me!”
L’immigration
Elena’s kitchen is not just a cookbook; he also tells the story of his family’s history. Originally from San Vittore del Lazio, she immigrated to Montreal in the early 1950s. “I tell the story of my family and our immigration to Quebec when I was seven years old. I wanted to show the difficulties we encountered leaving Italy, and the pain we felt leaving our grandparents behind. These goodbyes were final: my father and mother never saw their parents again. Then, life here was not easy. We had nothing. We built everything by working very hard and learning the language. We were coming from afar. What kept us going was our family unity!”
The kitchen was the heart of this united family, a place where they gathered to prepare delicious dishes and be lulled by the opera arias of Giuseppe. “One of my brothers is a great opera singer. He got a scholarship and went to study singing at the Milan Conservatory. He had a remarkable career in Europe. So we grew up surrounded by opera and classical music. The piano and the metronome vibrated in the house!”
Stefano was looking forward to this cookbook. “It tells the story of our family. It talks about our loved ones, the important women in my mother’s life, and the chefs invited to her cooking school. I am very proud of her! At 77 years old, she finally managed to make her dream come true. This is a real feat! Having published cookbooks myself, I understand the effort involved. And this book is extremely valuable to my children (he had two daughters and a boy with the actress Isabelle Lemme) and those of my sister, Christina. For them, it is a very important heritage!”
The market of possibilities
“My parents and I lived on rue Drolet,” Elena remembers. “Our window overlooked the Jean-Talon market, where my mother, Teresa, worked. In the morning, around 4 a.m., the vegetable producer, Mr. Joly, arrived with his harvest. My mother would see him from her window and go to his stall to sell his products as if they were her own. At that time, immigrants were looking for certain rarer vegetables, almost impossible to find in Quebec, such as eggplants and Italian tomatoes. My mother suggested that Mr. Joly grow them, and his stall quickly became very popular with immigrants!”
Stefano also has good memories linked to the market. “When I was younger, you could buy live chickens and rabbits there. I remember my grandmother arriving with a live chicken, which she then prepared from scratch. For her, living near the market was important, because it reminded her of her life in Italy and its traditions. My first job, at 12, was selling vegetables at the market like she did!”
This place also provided an important opportunity for Elena. “I sent Stefano and Christina to the market during the summer to keep them busy and teach them the importance of work. That’s where I started doing demonstrations for visitors. It was the beginning of sharing my cooking knowledge!”
An Italian hardware store
On the front of the hardware store, decorated with abundant flowers, we can read “Dante since 1956”. This store, opened by Elena’s uncle, was taken over by her in 1981, alongside her sister Maria and her brother Rudy. “It was the first Italian hardware store in Montreal. We mainly supplied Italians working in the construction sector. During the first 25 years of Quincaillerie Dante’s history, our clientele was exclusively Italian. However, with the advent of big box hardware stores, many small stores closed their doors. Our accountants warned us that if we didn’t change anything about our business, we risked the same fate. At that time, we already offered cauldrons, pasta machines, equipment for making sausages… Stefano worked with me at the hardware store on weekends. My daughter Christina, who had just graduated from college, told us, “We need to remove all the hardware and paint. We must renew ourselves! Instead, we’re going to sell high-end kitchen items!”
Elena’s husband and best friend, Mattia, who died of cancer in February 2022, greatly encouraged her to make this big move into hardware. “My husband was the director of a large company. Yet, despite his responsibilities, he came to help at the hardware store every weekend, and he even helped my parents at the Jean-Talon market. He was my best friend and an exceptional father. He supported me in everything I did. I still miss him every day!”
Not like the others
“It was also my sister Christina who thought about opening a cooking school,” says Stefano. This idea was born after an edition of the Home Show where my mother and she demonstrated fresh pasta, which was a phenomenal success. That’s when Christina suggested, “Why don’t we teach cooking classes?” Thus was born Mezza Luna, our cooking school. Every week, my mother would prepare a recipe, my father, my sister and I would taste it, correct it, then teach it. It was quite a process! At first, the school was located in my sister’s apartment. We could only accommodate six to eight people. Obviously, with the growing success of the courses, she had to leave her apartment, which had become too busy and sometimes filled with unwanted odors, and we expanded the school to accommodate up to 24 people!”
At that time, Elena was still nervous about teaching. “I didn’t speak French very well. Few people know that the nuns refused to teach us in French, because we were immigrants. I learned French thanks to my cooking school. Then the media became interested in us. I made my first television appearances in the 1990s, in the cultural magazine Clémence’s little joyshosted by Clemence DesRochers. I must admit that I didn’t always understand his jokes very well! (laughter)»
A thousand jars of tomatoes
One day, a cook showed up at the hardware store with the crazy idea of preparing 1,000 jars of canned tomatoes for his restaurant, and he wanted to know how to do it. This young chief, still unknown to the Faita, was called Martin Picard. “I said in Italian to my daughter: ‘He’s completely sick!’ Elena remembers. Martin came back and asked for our biggest tomato grinding machine and 1000 jars. He then invited me to his restaurant. When I walked into her kitchen, all 1,000 jars were lined up on the counter. My daughter Christina and Martin fell in love and were together for four years. Today, he is like an adopted son to me!”
We know the rest: Martin and Stefano now co-host the popular show MasterChef Quebec. We understand better where their beautiful complicity comes from.
In his image
Elena generously shares her mother’s recipes, notably that of her sauce, and she offers one for pizza dough with a touch of maple syrup, another for hunter lamb, a favorite dish of her father, Luigi. , as well as that of the polenta of his mother-in-law, Angela. She also reveals the recipe for the famous he pleaded on the phonethis dish that Stefano has loved since childhood… and he still has hundreds of recipes in his files. We are already waiting for the second volume of this book full of tenderness, memories and delights!
The book Elena’s kitchen is published by Éditions Trécarré. Stefano co-hosts the daily MasterChef Quebec Monday to Thursday, at 7:30 p.m., on TVA.
