Here’s the thing about Bill Maddalena’s award-winning spicy dessert, the Twisted Brownie Sundae: he’s never tasted it.

“I don’t like chocolate,” said Maddalena, a Berlin, N.H. firefighter for 18 years. “I’ve never tried it.”

Maddalena will be in the Videovision studio in downtown Barre Thursday evening for a live taping of New England Cooks. In addition to his dessert, Maddalena will also be preparing Deep Fired Mac-and-Cheese.

The brownie sundae won Maddalena $5,000 and second place in Tabasco’s annual Cook and Ladder competition in New York City earlier this year. Half went to Maddalena and half went to the Berlin FD for a new cooking range for the firehouse. The dessert includes a few shakes of chipotle pepper sauce.

“I’m not afraid to try different things,” said Maddalena.

How do you deep-fry macaroni-and-cheese?

“Here’s what happened,” said Maddalena. “I had a half a casserole sitting around and you know how it gets when it’s been in the refrigerator? I cut a hunk of it off, breaded it and deep fried it. It came out really good.”

Maddalena will prepare that as well Thursday night, but he confesses his real cooking love is Italian.

“When my grandfather died a while back, I found an old metal box in his kitchen,” remembers Maddalena. “ It had all of his family recipes from the old country, near Naples. That was an emotional discovery. That box and those recipes mean an awful lot to me.”

His favorite, both to make and to eat, is lasagna. He’s made it for the boys at the station and at an annual Christmas Eve buffet he puts on at the station for anyone – EMT’s, police officers, nurses – who are working that night.

“I’ll make a stromboli, a lasagna, a real feast,” he said. “People look forward to that buffet every year.”

Maddalena says he learned to cook out of necessity.

“When I go out of the navy, I came back home to Berlin and joined the fire department,” he said. “I could barely afford to pay the mortgage so it was either cook or die. I got hold of a crock pot and a recipe book, and off I went.

“And I’m a cook, not a chef. I have a cousin in Rhode Island, he’s a professional chef. I’m just a cook.”

A cook who obviously is not afraid to try new things.

Join us Thursday night for a taste of Bill Maddalena’s passion for cooking.

Cheers!

Tony