The middle of five children, Mark Evangelista was born in Wheaton, Illinois, to Mark and Suzanne Logan Evangelista. His great-grandparents emigrated from the Abruzzo region. Evangelista grew up close to his large extended family. “We were always by family,” he says. “Sundays were either at our house, Grandma’s or my aunt’s house.”

His aunt and grandmother wrote down their recipes and their descendants had the good sense to preserve them. “The grandkids took these loose-leaf sheets of paper that have scribble on them and we kind of published it and made it so we could all have a copy,” says Evangelista. “It’s awesome, so it will never die.”