THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410170246
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY FLACHSENHAAR, SPECIAL TO SUNDAY FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines
WHEN SHE LEARNED earlier this month that her recipe for black bean soup had won an honorable mention and $1,000 in a nationwide cooking contest, Rachel Sancilio was surprised.
``I had already entered four other recipes in the contest,'' said the Virginia Beach homemaker. ``The soup was something I'd just thrown together at the last minute, kind of an afterthought. I never thought it would be a winner.''
She should have known better.
The olive oil, vegetables and seasonings the soup calls for are typical ingredients. The salsa is more unusual. But what makes Sancilio's soup so special are the heaping portion of grandmotherly love and the generous pinch of determination that have become her trademark ingredients, both in and out of the kitchen.
Sancilio entered the fourth annual Newman's Own Inc. & Good Housekeeping Recipe Contest for just one reason: All winners are required to donate their prize money to charity.
Her dream was to win the $50,000 grand prize, which she planned to turn over to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk. When she receives a check for $1,000 in a few weeks, she will present it to the hospital in honor of her 8-year-old grandson Michael John Sancilio.
Four and a half years ago when Michael was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of leukemia, he was not expected to live more than a year. He is alive today largely because of his Grandma Rachel's magic ingredients, love and determination.
A week after Michael was discovered to suffer from chronic myelogenous leukemia in early 1990, his grandmother read a newspaper article about a child with Fanconi's anemia who had received an umbilical-cord blood transplant, a procedure that had been performed only two other times in the world. Wondering if such a transplant could help Michael, she boldly called the doctors who had pioneered the surgery. They agreed that there was a good possibility that Michael could be helped.
A few months later, at Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, Michael received umbilical cord cells that had been collected at the birth of his sister Christina in May 1990. When his leukemia returned 10 months later, Michael received a bone marrow transplant from Christina.
Three and a half years later, he is still in remission, although he suffers from graft-versus-host disease, in which the donated bone marrow cells attack tissues and organs. Earlier this month at King's Daughters, Michael underwent surgery on his badly crippled knees, with the hope that he'll be able to walk a little better.
Like many other members of Michael's large extended family, Rachel Sancilio has been a powerful source of love and support. When Michael's leukemia returned in 1991, Sancilio gave up her hobby of teaching cooking at local stores and schools to devote herself wholeheartedly to helping Michael, his older brother Anthony, his sister, and their parents Denise and Tony, who is Rachel's son. The family lives five minutes from the Hilltop-area home of Rachel and her husband, Larry.
Sometimes the Sancilios provide childcare for Michael's siblings, especially when Michael and his parents are in Baltimore for his monthly checkups at Johns Hopkins. More often Rachel helps by doing what she does best - cooking for those she loves.
Often at the end of one of the long, discouraging days that have been so numerous during the past four years, there is Rachel in the kitchen, stirring a pot of homemade soup, or setting out a platter of ravioli that have been rolled and cut by hand. When Michael returned from three days at King's Daughters last Sunday night, Grandma Rachel hurried over to the house with a bowl of pasta and meatballs for her weary family.
In a family that practices courage daily, this tiny, energetic grandmother, who always seems to have a cooking spoon in one hand, is a symbol of comfort and love. FOOD EQUALS LOVE
Rachel Sancilio wasn't even tall enough to peek into the pot of tomato sauce that always simmered on the stove when she realized that in her family, food meant love.
In the house where she grew up in Glen Cove, Long Island, her parents, four siblings, and her Italian-born grandparents sat down every evening to a big dinner that nourished the spirit as well as the body.
``In an Italian family food is the way we say `I love you,' '' said Sancilio. She preserved the tradition of a large, sit-down dinner every evening when she and Larry began raising their five children in the mid-1950s.
When the Newman Inc. cooking contest questionnaire asked semifinalists to tell a little about themselves, Sancilio wrote:
``Cooking is a way of life in Italian families. . . . All the fashionable foods of today, gourmet pizza, fresh herbs, tomatoes, homemade pasta and fresh garden vegetables were a part of my heritage, a part I took for granted. I thought everyone did what my family did.''
What Rachel's family did was to sit down daily to freshly made, well-rounded meals that included lots of vegetables and just a little meat. Leftovers were never tossed but reappeared on the next day's table in magnificent but unrecognizable form. For instance, one day's roast would be ground to make filling for the next day's ravioli.
Impressed by how well Sancilio's family ate, a friend who worked at Kitchen Barn invited Rachel to teach Italian cooking at the Hilltop shop in the early '80s. With her children grown, Sancilio agreed, and her hobby turned into a part-time job.
After her stint at Kitchen Barn, she was invited to teach northern Italian cooking through a Johnson & Wales course that was given on the Norfolk Naval Base. Later, she taught at the culinary school's campus off Military Highway.
She realized then that food is a way to learn as well as to love.
``My family and my husband's family are from southern Italy, so that is the style of cooking I knew,'' said Sancilio. ``Johnson & Wales wanted me to teach northern Italian cooking from their cookbook, so first I had to teach myself about cream sauces and about going to market every day before you cook and the other things northern Italians do.''
She so loved learning about the country of her ancestors that she took a cooking class from Italian master Giuliano Bugialli. That she lived in Virginia Beach and the class was taught in New York City did not discourage Sancilio.
``Every Tuesday morning for six weeks I hopped on a plane to New York and went to class,'' she said. ``In the afternoons I shopped in Greenwich Village for ingredients and came back home by plane that night.''
Her appetite whetted, she went back for a second helping of Bugialli's classes. This time she had to travel even farther. Food became her passport to adventure when, in 1985, she spent one week in Florence, Italy, where Bugialli taught a course in northern Italian cooking. The following year, she went back for another of his one-week classes.
Blending travel with food has always appealed to this cook.
``My husband is in real estate, and we always traveled a lot,'' said Sancilio, whose repertoire has expanded to include Chinese and vegetarian cooking. ``Wherever we would go I'd try to take a cooking class.'' A GIFT SHARED
Sharing her knowledge is almost as fulfilling as sharing her food.
She has taught international cooking to children at the Norfolk Academy Summer Arts Program and assisted with the cooking classes that used to be given at the Giant Open Air Market at Wards Corner in Norfolk. Since the onset of Michael's illness, she has given just an occasional class for friends in her home.
Besides cooking comforting family dinners, her only current food project is the cookbook of heirloom family recipes she is putting together. The seafood salad of shrimp, scallops, conch and squid that Sancilio serves to her family every Christmas Eve will be included, as will her recipes for spumoni and biscuit tortoni, some of the family's favorite desserts.
The book's purpose is to preserve cherished family memories and also to raise money for The Michael John Sancilio Fund. Once again, food is a way for this devoted grandmother to show love. It also becomes a way to for her to feel hope. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
ABOVE: Rachel Sancilio will give her prize money to Children's
Hospital of The King's Daughters, where her grandson Michael was
treated for leukemia. At left is his sister, Christina. RIGHT:
Rachel Sancilio's black bean soup.
Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
Butch's Black Bean Soup won Rachel Sancilio an honorable mention in
the Newman's Own Inc. & Good Housekeeping Recipe Contest.
Graphic
ABOUT THE CONTEST
From thousands of entries in the fourth annual Newman's Own Inc.
and Good Housekeeping Recipe Contest, Rachel Sancilio's recipe for
black bean soup placed in the top 14, earning her an honorable
mention and $1,000. She plans to donate the money to Children's
Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk.
What makes this contest different from most and what attracted
Sancilio is the stipulation of its originator, Paul Newman, that all
prize money be donated to charity.
Since it began in 1991, the contest has contributed more than
$750,000 to charity, according to Linda Rohr, director of marketing
and communications for Newman's Own Inc.
Sancilio was one of five runners-up. Nine contestants who made it
to the finalist category will travel to New York City for the
announcement of the grand prize winner on Tuesday.
After tasting the nine dishes at The Rainbow Room on that day,
Paul Newman will select a grand-prize winner, who will receive
$50,000 to donate to charity. The eight finalists will each receive
$10,000 to donate to charity.
All recipes submitted were required to include one of the food
products manufactured by Newman's Own Inc., a company that, since
its inception in 1982, has donated to charity all of its profits -
more than $56 million. The company makes pasta sauces, salsa, salad
dressings, lemonade and popcorn.
The same rules will apply when the fifth annual contest is
announced in the May 1995 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, said
Rohr of Newman's Own Inc.
Interested cooks - and Rachel Sancilio hopes there will be lots
of them - may want to begin working on their recipes now.
``What we need is more contests like this one,'' said Sancilio,
whose 8-year-old grandson is in remission from leukemia.
Mary Flachsenhaar
by CNB