A love of cooking and baking runs in this Gurnee family
This week's spotlight lands on cooking cousins who learned to cook from a master, their papa Bill Rivelli, who incidentally, has also been a Cook of the Week. Blaise LaVista, 9 and his cousin Audrey Silverman, 11, both from Gurnee, have been cooking for "years," with their parents and their papa.
"He cooks everything," says Blaise, "honestly, he cooks a lot for everyone, our family and for special events. He makes this old recipe - a sauce from the 1800s or something - where he pre-measures everything." This pair has spent a lot of time in the kitchen learning from Papa Rivelli: both cooking techniques and good cooking habits.
"He always tells us to clean up as we go," says Audrey.
"Yeah, but I've never seen that man do it!" quips Blaise. When asked who the second best cook in the family is, Blaise answers diplomatically, "the safest answer is that we all have different 'specialties.'"
Audrey's specialty is Lemon Ricotta cookies; Blaise is known for his oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
The cousins do also enjoy creating savory dishes, too, for their families, such as garlic shrimp. Audrey has devised a twist on tacos - taco cups made in a muffin pan. Blaise makes a side dish with broccoli, carrots and lemon. They have even tried their hands at homemade pasta, using another cousin's pasta machine.
"It's pretty good unless you mess it up. When you mess up pasta it tastes like chunky dirt!" says Blaise. The pair is interested in trying out Blaise's mother's new Himalayan salt block next.
"You can cook on it or freeze on it!" says Blaise, who would also like to get his hands on the grill, though he is still in negotiation.
"I like to clean the grill, but this guy never lets me put anything on it," he says referring to his Dad.
Still, the real passion for these two is baking.
"Baking is best because it tastes better!" exclaims Blaise, "Of course, it's not exactly healthy for you …" They like to make cookies, cakes, cupcakes and have even attempt fancier desserts like the dessert they made for Mother's Day last year, with raspberries and chocolate Grenache.
"I just like baking better," says Audrey, who would like to own a bakery some day. "My papa says I should call it, 'This is My Grandpa's Bakery, but I do all the Baking,'" she laughs.
"And I'll get free stuff!" says Blaise, who isn't 100 percent sure what he wants to do when he grows up, but is certainly a fan of Audrey's skills. Audrey recently made an Oreo cake for a special school project.
"Basically, it was your favorite dream on a plate," says Blaise, "twenty pounds of sugar loaded up with Oreo cookies!" Audrey also made a special cake for Easter this year.
"It was a lemon pound cake with lemon buttercream frosting. The recipe called for butter and shortening, but I just used butter, "explains Audrey. "It kind of fell in, but I fixed it by piping it with icing."
"It was awesome," exclaims Blaise. "She is really good at decorating with icing."
Blaise plans to bake a cake for his teacher's birthday.
"She's an awesome teacher," he explains, "so I'm making an orange cake." It is one of the recipes in their Google doc cookbook that they share with each other online.
It isn't a surprise to learn that these two enjoy the Food Network.
"A bunch of people tell me I should be on 'Chopped Junior,' " says Blaise. "We've done a Chopped competition at home - it didn't end very well," he laughs.
Audrey, naturally, is a fan of "Cupcake Wars" - she's held her own 'birthday' cupcake war on her last birthday.
But for now, Blaise has a mess in the kitchen to deal with.
"I actually made something this morning, and it's still not cleaned up," he confesses. He says that first, he'll call in the dog, Oliver, "to do the vacuuming."
In this family, everyone loves to be in the kitchen.
• To suggest someone to be profiled here, send the cook's name, address and phone number to food@dailyherald.com.