I couldn’t help but be hooked from the first episode, when I started watching Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel. I was already familiar with actress Debi Mazar and had been following her Italian husband Gabriele Corcos on his website Under The Tuscan Gun and his presence on Twitter. I’m not sure what I was expecting but the chemistry between the couple and their love of each other, their daughters and the food they loving prepare, just jumps off the screen. I had the most lovely conversation with Gabriele a few weeks back and turned it into this article which appeared in the April 2011 issue of Dream of Italy. While print newsletter articles are usually only available to paid subscribers, I’ve made it accessible to all:
When you’re Italian man, you move to the United States for love but you can’t legally work here yet, what do you do? Cook. At least that’s what Gabriele Corcos did and in the end it led to a television show that you may have seen over the past few months — Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel. Corcos met American actress Debi Mazar in Florence in 2001 at a dinner party for a mutual friend. It was love at first sight and soon the jazz musician, who hails from the town of Fiesole which overlooks Florence, moved to Los Angeles to be with the star. But as soon as he arrived, Mazar was off to Canada for several months to shoot a Jackie Chan movie.