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Greenwich Priest to be Featured on the Cooking Channel Sunday

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Even at a young age, it was obvious that St. Roch's Father Matt Mauriello was destined to enjoy cooking.
Even at a young age, it was obvious that St. Roch’s Father Matt Mauriello was destined to enjoy cooking.

 

By Chéye Roberson
Sentinel Correspondent

The Rev. Matthew Mauriello, of St. Roch Church in Greenwich, has the ability to brighten your soul with either a sermon or a traditional Italian meal.

It’s no wonder his contribution to his parish and his talent in the kitchen caught the attention of the Cooking Channel. The warm-hearted and well-traveled Father Matt, as he is more casually known, will be featured on the upcoming episode of the Cooking Channel’s Holy & Hungry with Sherri Shepherd.

“They watched me cook in the rectory kitchen,” said Father Mauriello. “So I made the tomato sauce in front of them. I made the Italian pasta in front of them—they saw me stirring and whisking and all of that. And they took pictures of all that, too.”

Coincidently, “From A Rectory Kitchen” is the name of Father Mauriello’s cookbook, published in 2011.

Father Mauriello will appear on the Sept. 20 episode of Holy & Hungry. For the show, Father Mauriello made manicotti. “They’re the rolled ones with the cheese inside,” he said. “They’re made like a crepe. So you add in flour, eggs and milk. And you make it like a thinner pancake batter. And once it’s cooled, you add the ricotta, the same filling that would be for ravioli or lasagna. And then you roll it with tomato sauce and you bake it.”

Father Matt Mauriello grew up enjoying cooking with his mother.
Father Matt Mauriello grew up enjoying cooking with his mother.

The recipe can be found in “From A Rectory Kitchen.” The book was co-authored by Franca Bosio Bertoli, the cook at St. Joseph’s Church in Danbury, where Father Mauriello was assigned in 1992.

“My parentage and heritage is from the south of Italy and her heritage is from the north of Italy,” Mauriello said. “So, it was like a combination of the north and the south, and her heritage recipes from her parents, her mother, her grandmother. And with me, my mother, my grandmother, and my relatives. So we did a combination.”

Father Mauriello enjoyed his experience meeting Holy & Hungry host Sherri Shepherd. “She was very upbeat. She was cheerful and kind, and we got along. We had a couple of laughs together. She’s sweet,” said Mauriello.

“They said to me, ‘Can you use a restaurant?’ I said I really have no connection to a restaurant,” Mauriello said. “The way I do my outreach is, after Mass, I’ll invite people over. I’ll call them in advance to say, ‘What are you doing Saturday after Mass? Come over and we’ll have a bite.’ I’ll prepare a meal for a husband, a wife, or maybe a couple I’m preparing to marry, or sometimes a few couples, and people get to know each other and things like that. It’s fun.”

Father Mauriello has been connecting friends and family within his parish over hearty meals for many years.

“I’m in St. Roch in Greenwich since 2009, and that’s six years. When I was in my previous parish in Bridgeport, I got there in 2002, so I actually even did it then,” said Mauriello. “I’ve also invited priests friends over Sunday night after the masses are over; just sharing in fellowship and camaraderie and a little conviviality.”

Born in New Jersey, Father Mauriello was a missionary priest in Puerto Rico from 1987 to 1991. But he took up an opportunity to live closer to his family when a bishop in Connecticut needed a Spanish-speaking priest for his parish.

“And I use my Spanish frequently, even in St. Roch,” said Father Mauriello. “There are a lot of people who speak Spanish. And I converse with them and help them out.”

Father Mauriello has been known to combine certain elements of Puerto Rican cooking into his own, for example with the use of green bananas and plantains.

”I still sometimes have a desire for that, so I take plantains, you fry them, you press them and you fry them again,” Mauriello said of a dish called tostones.

He has traveled widely and always tried to pick up something from the national cuisine, whether from Uganda, Israel, or Switzerland or elsewhere in Europe. “Wherever I’ve traveled,” he said, “I’ve incorporated something I like. I pull it together.”

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