Kitchen Yarns Read online

  The day I went into labor with that second baby, the midwife sent me home after she examined me and ordered me to eat a good lunch. Before long, my father was in my kitchen with a pot of beef stew. Beef stew was actually one of his more successful dishes. He carefully trimmed the beef himself and used tomato sauce for the broth. The canned potatoes and carrots lost most of their metallic taste after the stew had simmered all morning. That September day, my father and I sat in my big kitchen with rain splashing the windows, and he filled my bowl with stew. “I will never forget the day you were born,” he told me, marveling at how well I was handling my labor. “It was the happiest day of my life.”

  I held out my bowl for more.

  A WEEK AFTER my daughter Grace was born, my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. By winter, he was bald and weak from chemo and in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and infections. In February, he entered for the final time and stayed for two months. At first, he was lucid and hungry, despite the tubes pumping oxygen into his nose and the mask over his mouth providing still more oxygen. He asked me to bring him Chinese food and ribs from our favorite rib joint.

  Soon, though, his appetite began to wane. Every morning, I dressed Grace in pretty dresses with matching hats and stopped at my father’s favorite bakery for Danish pastry. He took the white cardboard box from me happily. When he opened it, he’d say, “Oh! You got blueberry, my favorite.” But the Danish remained uneaten, nestled in the box. He would take Grace from me, too, and hold her for as long as he could. “You were the most beautiful baby I ever saw,” he said to me. “Until I saw Gracie.”

  The hospital bed had a scale built into it. Every day I watched my father’s weight drop. Desperate to keep him alive, I invented a concoction of Ensure and Häagen-Dazs ice cream, rich with calories and fat. I convinced myself that if he ate what I fed him, he would not die. He always ate a spoonful or two and pretended for my sake that he would finish the rest in a little while. But he never did. Despite my blueberry Danish and Ensure milkshakes, on a gray April morning, my father died.

  That was more than twenty years ago. Even now, past the age of sixty, when I need to make a decision of consequence or heal a wound of the heart, I long for my father’s advice, his stories, his easy smile. He used to take my hand in his big one, the tattoo from his days as a teenage runaway faded beneath the blond hair on his forearm, and tell me it would be all right. “Whatever it is,” he always said, “we can get through it.”

  On days when I need that reassurance, I reach for the box of Shake ’n Bake I keep on my pantry shelf and make pork chops with it like my father did. Once a friend stopped by and watched in horror as I placed them on a plate and added a side of Rice-A-Roni. “Really?” she said in disbelief. Yes, everything was too salty, too thick on the tongue. But I love those flavors, the chemical smell of the spice pack, and even the comforting sound of the chops bouncing around in that plastic bag filled with who knows what.

  When I’m feeling really low, I open my recipe box and take out the index card with the heading “Baked Macaroni à la Poops!” The nickname came from our time in Virginia, where the Bolivian family downstairs called their father Papi, which somehow morphed into Poops for my father. The paper is splotched with sauce, the ink faded to pale blue. But as I stand at the stove stirring the American cheese into the white sauce, I begin to feel better. By the time I pull the pan from the oven, the Progresso bread crumbs golden brown on top, and take my first bite, I can almost feel my father’s hand. I can almost hear him laughing. The baked macaroni is filling. And wonderful. It feeds me still.

  BAKED MACARONI À LA POOPS

  My father loved The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Fannie Farmer was a real person, born in 1857, who wrote the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook in 1896. That book had almost two thousand recipes in it, and was the first to implement the use of standardized measurements such as cups and teaspoons. I guess my father was right when he’d say, “Whatever I want to make, I can find it in the Fannie Farmer.” He used that cookbook so much that his copy fell apart. Pages were missing, and other pages had gotten smeared with something or gotten wet enough that the recipes were impossible to read. However, my guess is that his baked macaroni recipe came from that cookbook. I tried to find which edition he used, but the cover was long gone, and all I can say for certain is that it was a paperback. This recipe is the one masterpiece my father made. My kids grew up loving it, and it’s a standard side dish every Thanksgiving. If the idea of using American cheese makes you queasy, substitute cheddar. Or do what my niece Melissa does and use half American, half cheddar.

  Serves 6 to 8 as a main course, 8 to 10 as a side dish

  INGREDIENTS

  1 pound elbow macaroni

  2 sticks butter

  6 tablespoons flour

  4½ cups milk

  1 teaspoon dry mustard

  1 teaspoon celery salt

  Black pepper to taste

  1 pound American cheese, diced and divided into two portions

  1 cup bread crumbs

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

  Cook the elbow macaroni in boiling water and drain. Set aside.

  For the sauce:

  Melt 1 stick of butter.

  Add the flour and blend with a whisk.

  Add the milk, dry mustard, celery salt, and black pepper and stir.

  Bring the mixture to a boil and then add half the American cheese and stir till melted.

  Move the macaroni to a large ceramic bowl, pour the sauce over it, and transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

  Put the remaining half pound of American cheese on top.

  For the topping:

  Melt the remaining stick of butter.

  Place bread crumbs in a bowl and pour the melted butter over them.

  Stir to mix, and sprinkle the bread crumbs on top of the macaroni.

  Bake the macaroni for about half an hour.

  Carbonara Quest

  In the Italian American household where I grew up, red sauce ruled. Every Monday, my grandmother Mama Rose made gallons of it in a giant tarnished pot. She started that sauce by cooking sausage in oil, then frying onions in that same oil and adding various forms of canned tomatoes: crushed, pureed, paste. Without measuring, she’d toss in secret ingredients. Red wine. Sugar. Salt and pepper. Parsley from her garden. Always stirring and tasting and shaking her head, dissatisfied, until finally she got it just right. At which point the sauce simmered until, as Mama Rose used to say, it wasn’t bitter.

  On Mondays, my after-school snack was always that freshly made sauce on slabs of bread, a taste sensation that I have never been able to duplicate. For the rest of the week, red sauce topped chicken, veal, pasta, meatballs, and even fried eggs for those Eggs in Purgatory, which we ate on Friday nights when we Catholics had to abstain from meat. We ate our pasta and all of our parmigianas, from chicken to eggplant, drenched in sauce. There was always a gravy dish of extra sauce on the table, and we used it liberally.

  Such were my southern Italian roots. And until I was out of college and working as an international flight attendant for TWA, to me Italian food was always red. I had no idea that Italy was really a country of regions, with each region proud of and exclusive to its own cooking. Of course I had general knowledge of Italian history, and I could place Florence and Rome and Venice correctly on its boot shape. But the particulars of each region and its cuisine were a mystery to me.

  In those days, I was ignorant about a lot of things. I’d led a fairly protected life in my small hometown in Rhode Island, surrounded by other southern Italian immigrants. We went to what was called the Italian church. Little old ladies dressed in black walked the streets of my neighborhood clutching rosary beads. The music there was the sound of our harsh Neapolitan accents, the perfume the smells of the grapes and tomatoes that, just like in the old country, grew in our backyards. Wine was red and made in basements, served cold. It was so bad that I never even considered ordering wi
ne at a restaurant until I was well into my twenties.

  Suddenly, at the age of twenty-one, with a degree in English from the state university, I found myself in a Ralph Lauren uniform flying all over the world feeding passengers on 747s. I learned how to get around Paris on the Métro. I tasted razor clams in Lisbon and moules frites in Brussels. I got used to buying Chanel No. 5 and Dom Pérignon in duty-free shops in international airports. Still, whenever I went home for a visit, I wanted spaghetti and meatballs in red sauce for dinner. Mama Rose had died by then, and now it was my mother stirring that pot of sauce until she got the perfect combination of flavors, simmering it all day, and letting me dip bread into it when it was finally ready.

  The first time I had a layover in Rome, I imagined that the food there, the spaghetti, would somehow be even more heavenly than what I had grown up eating.

  Struggling with the unfamiliar items on the menu, for some reason I ordered spaghetti carbonara. I suppose I thought that spaghetti would be safe, familiar. Because for all my newly found confidence and sophistication, truth be told I was often struck by homesickness during those early days of flying. Jet lag kept me up all night in unfamiliar hotel rooms. My junior status kept me on reserve, so that I never knew when I would be working or where I’d be going, which led to me flying with different crews every time. Many layovers found me on my own, wandering the streets of a foreign city, trying to muster the courage to go into a restaurant or café or museum alone. Eventually, I grew used to this upside-down life spent mostly by myself, but for the first year or so, thrust into the big, wide world after such a sheltered life, it was often difficult.

  Perhaps on that afternoon in Rome, I believed spaghetti would span the miles between me and my family, connect us in some way.

  Instead, what the officious waiter in the bow tie put in front of me was yellow. And speckled with brown instead of red.

  “Uh,” I managed, “I ordered the spaghetti carbonara?”

  What followed was a rush of dramatic Italian, much pointing to the menu and the spaghetti, and then the waiter’s departure, in a huff and without my plate of spaghetti.

  I was hungry.

  I was alone in Rome, the rest of the crew asleep or off shopping for cheap designer handbags.

  What could I do, but eat?

  I took my first tentative bite, and what I tasted was maybe the most delicious thing I had ever had. Salty with cheese and bacon, creamy with eggs, the spaghetti perfectly al dente like nothing I had experienced before. I tried to thank the waiter, to explain my folly in trying to send it back, but he ignored me. I didn’t really care. I had discovered something new, something delicious. I left that restaurant in love with spaghetti carbonara.

  In those days, I was not much of a cook. But I knew I needed to learn to make carbonara. I scoured cookbooks and tried different versions of the dish. Back then, Italian cookbooks were few, and for some reason I could only find terrible recipes that used cream, or added mushrooms or onions. None of them were even close to the blissful dish I’d eaten in Rome.

  Then, one day in a bookstore in Boston, I found an old cookbook filled with the recipes of Rome. I looked at the one for spaghetti carbonara; it was devoid of anything except bacon, eggs, and cheese. I bought the book, and the ingredients, and made it that very night.

  We all know that when we have a perfect meal in a perfect faraway city, we can never quite duplicate the taste. But that night, I came close. And I used that recipe for every dinner party I had over the next couple of decades. Or, I should say, some version of it, because over time I lost that cookbook. Though it didn’t really matter, because by then I’d tweaked the recipe enough—increasing the bacon, decreasing the cheese, changing the proportions each time—to make it my own, just like my mother did with her meatballs.

  Spaghetti carbonara has become my comfort food, the food I make when I’m lonely like I was that long-ago afternoon in Rome, the food I make when I want to welcome others into my home. I still love my red sauce, and I dip my bread into that simmering pot on my mother’s stove. But to me, spaghetti carbonara is the food not of my youth, but of my first steps into adulthood.

  MY PERFECT SPAGHETTI CARBONARA

  I am begging you, please do not put cream in your carbonara sauce. Don’t even order carbonara in a restaurant if cream is used. The creaminess comes from the magical alchemy of Parmesan cheese and eggs and pasta water. Once I went to a dinner party where carbonara was served and it not only had cream, it also had mushrooms! Which is, I suppose, fine, if it’s not called carbonara but instead is described as pasta with a mushroom-and-bacon cream sauce. However, feel free to use a pasta other than spaghetti, such as rigatoni or anything with the shape and ridges to hold the sauce. In Italy, there are somewhere between 260 and 350 types of pasta—the number varies with your source—and they are specifically designed with the purpose of clinging to a particular sauce in mind. It is said that the best carbonara is made with guanciale, which is cured pork jowl, or cheeks. Since this isn’t typically available at your local Stop & Shop, pancetta can be substituted. But I am a big advocate of using very good bacon. Do not put butter or oil on the cooked pasta—that prevents the sauce from clinging to the pasta. And be sure to cook the pasta only until al dente, which is usually about 9 minutes. But you can only be sure by tasting. I once had a date fling some spaghetti against the kitchen wall to see if it was cooked; this method, though dramatic, proved fallible.

  Serves 6

  INGREDIENTS

  1 pound spaghetti or other pasta

  Salt

  A drizzle of olive oil

  1 pound bacon, chopped

  3 eggs, with another 1 or 2 optional

  Black pepper

  1 cup Parmesan cheese, plus more for sprinkling on top

  Cook the spaghetti in rapidly boiling water to which a big handful of salt has been added.

  While the pasta is cooking, pour that drizzle of olive oil into a frying pan and heat it until hot.

  Add the chopped bacon and cook over medium heat until browned.

  Remove from the heat.

  Beat the eggs until yellow and frothy.

  Drain the al dente pasta, saving ¼ cup of the cooking water.

  Put the drained pasta in your prettiest bowl.

  Add the cooking water and eggs and toss vigorously.

  Add the cooked bacon and toss vigorously again.

  Add the black pepper and the cup of cheese and toss yet again.

  If the pasta does not look creamy enough or you just feel decadent, add 1 to 2 egg yolks and toss again.

  Sprinkle with more cheese.

  Eat and swoon.

  I love the carbonara at Otto in Greenwich Village. There they add curls of scallion on top, which looks pretty and adds a little kick to the dish.

  PASTA AMATRICIANA

  My daughter Annabelle prefers carbonara, but my son, Sam, prefers amatriciana. Amatriciana comes from the small town of Amatrice, which, sadly, was in the news in 2016 when an earthquake nearly destroyed it. I’ve been told that it is a dish to keep you warm and was fed to shepherds in the Apennine Mountains. Carbonara’s roots are less traceable. Though it’s known as a Roman dish, some people also trace it to the Apennine region, where woodcutters used charcoal for fuel. Carbonara translates to “in the style of coal,” so other stories link it to something coal miners ate. And still others link it to the food shortages after the liberation of Rome; Allied forces handed out bacon and powdered eggs, which the Romans put on stored dried pasta. What I do know for sure is that both sauces use bacon (or guanciale or pancetta). I always have pasta and bacon on hand because either dish is easy for a weeknight meal. Traditionally, amatriciana is made with bucatini, a long spaghetti-like pasta with a hole running through the center of its length, which is how I prefer it. However, I can’t always find bucatini in the grocery store, so feel free to substitute spaghetti or any short pasta that will hold the sauce.

  Serves 6

  INGREDIENTS />
  1 pound bucatini or other pasta

  1 pound bacon, chopped

  2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

  1 small red onion, sliced

  28 ounces diced canned tomatoes, preferably San Marzano

  ¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper

  Salt and pepper to taste

  1 cup grated Parmesan, plus more for serving

  Cook the bucatini until al dente in rapidly boiling water to which a good handful of salt has been added.

  Cook the chopped bacon in the olive oil until crisp; remove with a slotted spoon to a plate.

  Cook the onion in the oil and bacon drippings.

  Remove the pan from the heat and add the tomatoes, crushed red pepper, and salt and pepper.

  Return the pan to the stove and simmer for twenty minutes.

  Add the bacon to the tomato mixture.

  Drain the cooked pasta and place it in a pretty bowl.

  Pour the tomato-bacon mixture over the pasta, stir in the Parmesan cheese, and mix very well.

  Serve with passed bowls of extra cheese and crushed red pepper for those who like more kick.

  Sausage on Wheels

  Long before the Dessert Truck and Kogi Korean BBQ and the Grilled Cheese Grill, before the Mighty Cone and Frysmith, there was Sausage on Wheels.

  No one would ever call my parents trendsetters. My father wore Harris tweed to work as the operations manager for the IRS in Government Center in downtown Boston, and flannel shirts and jeans on weekends. My mother still favors Liz Claiborne for dressing up. Other than the Italian food my grandmother made, we ate the staples of the 1960s: meatloaf made with Lipton dried onion soup, canned vegetables, hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on the backyard grill. My parents drove Chevys, watched Hee Haw; they drank whiskey sours and Michelob, line-danced and played Bingo. Yet in 1979, my safe, predictable parents bought a truck, converted the cab into a kitchen, and sold sausage-and-pepper sandwiches and meatball grinders from it.