The Sicilian Mother-Daughter Duo Taking Over the Internet with their Recipes

Rosemarie and Pina Sparacio discuss their Sicilian roots and love for cooking

Since September 2021, Rosemarie and Pina Sparacio have been taking the internet by storm with Pina’s Kitchen, an Instagram and TikTok account that has produced hundreds of videos of mouthwatering recipes that honor their Sicilian heritage. Their dishes, a wide range of Italian and Sicilian specialties, have been incredibly popular – a stuffed artichoke recipe gained a whopping 1.4 million likes and 11 million views on TikTok. With more than 450,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, 26-year-old Rosemarie and 65-year old Pina are arguably the internet’s most popular Italian American mother-daughter duo. 

Hailing from New York by way of Palermo, Sicily, the duo bring to light traditional Sicilian dishes as well as cherished family recipes. Pina, who was born in the small town of Roccamena, located in the province of Palermo, immigrated to New York with her parents in 1970 at the age of 13.

Much of her family, including her grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins,  were already living in the United States at the time. Although Pina was young when she left her country of origin, home was never really far behind her. Her mother, Rosemarie’s nonna, taught her to cook, eventually also teaching Rosemarie as a way of staying connected to their Sicilian roots. In fact, many of the videos feature heartwarming moments in which mother and daughter reminisce on family through the foods they cook. It’s a touching sentiment that resonates with thousands, regardless of their background and culture. 

America Domani sat down with Rosemarie and Pina to chat about the inspiration behind Pina’s kitchen, some of their favorite Italian recipes and what cooking together means to them. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

America Domani: What are some of your earliest memories regarding food and cooking Italian meals?

Pina Sparacio: I always cooked Italian, my mother always cooked Italian. We never had any other cuisine except Italian.

Rosemarie Sparacio: My earliest memory is with my nonna. My mom worked when I was little and I was really raised by my nonna and she always made me what I wanted for lunch. I helped her make cookies, I helped her make pizza, so I was always in the kitchen learning from my nonna. 

AD: Is there a specific childhood dish that your mother/nonna would make that you remember the most?

PS: Everything my mother made was really good. She used to make Sicilian pizza – spingione. It’s different than regular pizza. There was no mozzarella, it was made with pecorino, onions, anchovies and tomatoes. She made it every time it snowed and we didn’t have school. 

RS: That carried on until I was little. And she’d make the fried dough.

PS: Oh, yes the fried dough. She would just cut the pieces of the pizza dough and fry it up in oil and sprinkle it with sugar. And that was so good. But she’d also make sauce and pasta al forno with ziti instead of anelletti, which is how you do it in Sicily. But my family preferred the ziti, and everyone wanted that dish all the time. I left Italy when I was young, so she taught me how to peel tomatoes and save them for the winter. There isn’t one specific dish, there are a lot of things she did well and she taught them to me.

AD: Where do you buy your ingredients for the dishes you cook now?

PS: In our neighborhood, there’s a very big Italian community. It’s dying out now, but there are Italian-owned fruit stores, meat stores, and fish stores. They sell the things we’re familiar with and what Italians like to cook.

AD: So when did the idea behind Pina’s Kitchen come about and what was the inspiration behind creating that internet presence?

RS: I guess I’m the mastermind. I always had this idea of making a cooking show with my mom. I went to school for film and I want to be a director. I’ve always had ideas for stories I could tell and have always been inspired by the stories of my family. 

I was on TikTok during quarantine and I was doing my dances like everyone else and I got a pretty cool following – I had like 10,000 followers. One day my mom was making a Sicilian eggplant dish and I filmed it and posted it to TikTok, not expecting anything. But, it got 200,000 views. This was September 2021.  And then I posted another video of my mom, thinking it would be a one hit wonder, and it got 500,000 views. And then I filmed her making polpette di ricotta, [ricotta meatballs] and then went up to 1 million views and started a controversy if we were cooking it right or wrong. So that kind of blew us up and I decided to keep going with it. 

AD: Do you have an idea of what videos usually do best with viewers?

RS: It’s usually when she’s making a recipe that’s more common and traditional or whenever she makes something with artichoke– artichoke videos always blow up. Or it’s something that they’ve never seen before, and it looks appetizing to some and not to others. That’s when it gets crazy in the comments. 

AD: Do you have a favorite recipe that the two of you cook together?

RS: I think baking the cuccidati [Sicilian fig cookies] at Christmas because there’s so much history. We love to do those. It also reminds me so much of my nonna, too. 

PS: They bring back a lot of memories from when I was little and I used to see all my family members do it. I remember them working around the table.

AD: What does food, family recipes and cooking in general represent to the both of you?

PS: It means family to me. It’s a way for me to bring it forward, to teach it to my daughter and son. It’s something to teach them and do it and remember you by. And then hopefully your grandchildren will do it too and remember you. That’s what it's all about. 

RS: Everytime we got together as a family, there was food involved, just like most Italian families. Everytime I bite into something that reminds me of nonna, it starts a conversation. Food has an interesting way of transporting to you a specific time.It’s family, it’s tradition. 

AD: What would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment so far regarding Pina’s Kitchen?

PS: I’m still amazed that all these people follow me. It’s an accomplishment for me that I was able to resonate with so many people. 

RS: We always get messages from people telling us that our videos remind them of their relationship with their mother or their nonna. So that feels like an accomplishment, that we’re able to touch people and allow them to reminisce and find comfort in the videos. 

PS: I’m grateful for every follower that I have. I really am grateful for them. Even if there’s bad comments, I don’t care. I’m always grateful. 

AD: What would be your absolute dream come true regarding Pina’s Kitchen?

RS: We hope to bring Pina’s Kitchen to Youtube and make it a long form show. We hope to make it a show that feels like a community where we can invite other cooks to talk about the similarities and differences in our cultures. We want to make the show bigger than us. We also want to take on a travel angle. We’d love to go to Sicily and film us cooking and eating around Sicily.