A Recipe For Success: After cooking up MVP-type season last year, Giants shorstop is ready for an encore.(Interview)

RUMOR HAS IT THAT SPORTSWRITERS appreciate a good meal now and again. If the writers who cast National League MVP ballots last year only knew that Rich Aurilia can cook a mean shrimp scaloppine, he might have cracked the top 10 in voting.

But hey, 11th place for MVP isn't bad for a shortstop in his coming-out year as one of the league's elite hitters, especially considering the roster of boppers who finished ahead of him. It started with teammate Barry Bonds, followed by Sammy Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman.

You grow up in the part of New York where Aurilia lived, and food is serious business. It's not just sustenance. It's Italian art, and in his household, Aurilia was an eager apprentice to the master, a baby-sitter who could color the canvas on a stove.

"When I was growing up, I had a lady who watched me when my parents were working, from the time I was six months till the time I was 10, a little old Italian lady," Aurilia said.

"Everything that she made was from scratch. I would just sit there and watch her all the time. That's where I got it from."

Now a 30-year-old baseball player, Aurilia loves to visit the kitchen when he goes to a restaurant. He learns recipes he can try at home, where he figures he cooks about 80 percent of the meals for his grateful wife, Raquel, who enjoys having a husband who knows strikeouts from strombolis.

"He's a great cook," Raquel Aurilia said. "Actually, he doesn't let me into the kitchen half the time. When he has the time at home, he'll tell me to go away or go somewhere with the baby so he can cook.