To her legions of fans, public television personality Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is the smiling face and comforting voice of regional Italian cooking. Watching the energetic grandmother on her show Lidia’s Kitchen; visiting her restaurants in New York City, Kansas City, Mo., and Pittsburgh, Pa.; the Eataly markets in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles in which she is a partner; or reading one of her seven books, it would seem that Bastianich has been a connoisseur of fine food her entire life.

But there are Drake’s cakes, Jello, and Duncan Hines cake mixes in her past. “I loved all of that stuff when we first came to this country,” said Bastianich, who will make an appearance at Princeton’s Dorothea’s House on Sunday, February 24. “I thought it was wonderful. But then of course, I began to revert back to my culture and the Italian cooking that I knew from childhood.”