Johanne Killeen

Johanne Killeen and George Germon, a husband-and-wife team who have owned Al Forno, an award-winning Italian restaurant in Providence, R.I., for 27 years, took up the Chef on a Shoestring challenge on The Saturday Early Show and prepared a soul-satisfying Italian meal for four people on a budget of $40.

"On Top of Spaghetti" is the couple's second cookbook, and as you might guess, it focuses on their restaurant's popular pasta dishes.

Jo and George met while they were attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Each then went off separately to Italy, where they promptly fell in love with the country's food and independently decided to pursue culinary careers.

Upon returning to Providence, they wound up working in the same restaurant. The two fell in love, opened their own Italian restaurant and got married. They've won practically every culinary award, including a variety of James Beard awards and Food & Wine's Best New Chefs award. They have also cultivated many of today's hottest young chefs, including Suzanne Goin, Ken Oringer from Boston and Wylie Dufresne.

Their restaurant, Al Forno (which literally means "from the oven") was inspired by the opulence and style of Northern Italian cuisine, which makes extensive use of wood-burning ovens and open-flame grills. Among their new, creative dishes: the grilled pizza (George's invention).