A judge on a new show, Paola Carosella talks about her interaction with her daughter at the stove and her relationship with Brazil, where she doesn’t intend to leave

Argentinian Paola Carosella learned to cook with her grandmothers. The Italian immigrants taught one of the most famous chefs working in Brazil the secrets of making a beautiful macaroni dish, a dish she resorts to on days of impatience.

— When I’m not in the mood to cook, pasta is what I do with my eyes closed — says Paola, 50 years old: — It could be lasagna or ravioli. I do these “italianadas” very well because I learned them since I was a child.

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And this interaction between generations in the kitchen, so essential in Paola’s upbringing, is precisely the motto of the new reality show on which she is a judge. In “My mother cooks better than yours”, which debuts this Sunday afternoon, 29, on Globo, after “Maximum temperature”, she and chef João Diamante will keep an eye on the dishes prepared by three duos formed by celebrities and their mothers, or famous mothers and their children. The presentation of the program is in charge of Leandro Hassum.

— The children cook and the mothers, at the beginning of the dynamic, cannot help. So, they give tips, like “put the pan there”, “cut this here” — explains Paola: — After the first ten minutes, they have the right to enter the kitchen, but the clock runs faster.

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Every Sunday there are two tests. In the first, two pairs win and move on to the “affective memory” phase. At this time, mothers and children will make a recipe inspired by a dish from a family in Brazil. Whoever wins the program takes R$ 20,000 to donate to an institution of their choice.

It’s up to Paola and João to spy on how each pair’s preparations are going, creating suspense and, of course, proving the final result. Famous for her rigid temperament in the evaluations she made on “MasterChef”, Band’s reality gastronomy show that projected her to Brazil and in which she participated between 2014 and 2020, she guarantees that now she will take it easy:

— In “My mother cooks better than yours”, there is no amateur cook who wants to become a chef. We don’t need to find Brazil’s new revelation. They are very talented people who are successful at what they do and who are in the program to have fun and do good. There’s no tension. The program is now a party, a Sunday meeting.

The kitchens of her restaurants (Arturito, in São Paulo, and the empanada chain La Guapa, with branches throughout Brazil), she says, are not as stressful as “MasterChef” or a Sunday party. Paola says she values ​​creating structures to work “calmly”:

“I have too many people in the kitchen precisely so that no one has to run. The menu is appropriate for the size of the kitchen and demand. But many restaurants are crazy. In France, I worked in cruel places. Perverse to the point of leaving the employee locked in the cleaning for six hours without water, if he did something wrong.

The chef’s serenity when cooking, however, does not seem to have attracted Francesca Carosella’s attention. Paola’s 12-year-old daughter, for the time being, is not very interested in her mother’s work.

— When she wants to surprise a friend who is at home, she says: “I’m going to fry an egg”, “I’m going to make a cake”. But when I’m cooking, she pulls away. He has no intention of learning from me,” says Paola.

Francesca, born in Brazil, is one of the roots that the Argentine has planted here. Living in São Paulo since 2001, when she accepted an invitation to take over a restaurant after passing through the United States and Europe, the chef does not intend to move. So much so that, last year, she became a naturalized Brazilian. Her main goal was to vote in the presidential elections.

“This is where I’m going to live. My daughter is Brazilian, my restaurants too. It’s where I communicate and work. And it seemed to me that I couldn’t live outside, that I needed to participate in decisions — she says: — I wanted to have the right to vote. There was something that bothered me a lot: every time I spoke out, many people said: “Shut up, you are not Brazilian”. They keep saying the same thing, but now at least I know I did everything I could. I’ve been a resident for 22 years, now I’m a naturalized Brazilian citizen.