My Name is Rocco Gizzo, I am an author and a passionate home chef, a sucker for pasta and pizza, and I’ll never turn down a good red wine. I was born and raised in Pelham, New York. Currently, I live in New York City.
My passion for cooking and love for food started when I was a little kid - this was definitely a result of growing up in a big Italian family where Sundays were dedicated to “Sunday Dinner”. Growing up, I consistently watched Food Network and their various cooking competition shows.
From eating good food to consistently watching the Food Network, I found a love for cooking towards the end of college and began working full-time. To start, I would typically cook lunches that I would make as a meal prep for the week. However, my love for cooking continued to grow even more when I moved into my first apartment and would have fun experimenting and cooking various dishes for my wife (girlfriend at the time). In addition to trying to recreate some of the dishes we watched on Food Network, we lived in NYC, so we would consistently go out and try NYC's top-rated Italian restaurants. After trying various types of new restaurants and all their top dishes, I would always head back to the kitchen to try and recreate their dish.
I am still determining how it happened or what triggered it, but in 2019 I started my @cooking_with_rocco Instagram account, and then in the spring of 2020, I started my www.cookingwithrocco.com blog. Since then, it's just been non-stop cooking and content.
Now, I use the Food Network and different restaurants we see as inspiration and will try to recreate their dishes with my own twist.
When I’m not at my day job, I spend most of my downtime trying new restaurants in NYC, sipping on wine, and coming up with my next favorite dish.
My cookbook, SAWCE, is an easy-to-follow guide for anyone looking to make incredible Italian dishes at home. With homemade pasta, and over twenty different sauces. and four bonus recipes you are sure to please any crowd.
Some of my future goals are to compete on Food Network or as part of another cooking competition, have a product/food item that I can sell in grocery stores, small boutique stores, and do pop-ups or have a storefront where I can sell signature dish creations.