Nothing brings back memories like food to me. See, back in the day in Chicago, I would spend a lot of time at my Italian grandmother’s house.
My grandmother, was actually born in Brasil to Italian parents. They later moved to Conzenza, Calabria in Italy and lived there before she moved to and settled down in Chicago. Elisabeta was her name. People called her Elise, but I knew her only as “grandma”. She almost reached five feet tall, was round and had long grey hair that was always braided and carefully positioned in a bun on her head.
She wore the same kind of dresses all the time (never pants) that stopped right below her knee and always had some kind of pin with the Virgin Mary or some saint on her lapel.
Originally, my grandparents and their family lived on Taylor Street in Chicago - this was where lots of Italian immigrants lived at the time. The area is known as “Little Italy”. They lived in a house with a few families - if I remember my father correctly, they were all related somehow. When the city was building Cook County Hospital, they bought out the house where my father’s family was living and they moved to a small Georgian in Mt. Greenwood on the South Side. It was there that my grandparents lived out the rest of their long lives - and it was obvious that not a day went by that they took that home for granted.
Approaching the house from the street, you might see my grandfather sitting outside watching the driveway or talking to company. If my grandmother wasn’t inside cooking, she would be sweeping the walkway or driveway clean.
During the daytime in the week, she was constantly in the garden. All along the side and back of the house were roses and flocks of all different colors. Towards the back of the yard was her herb and vegetable garden. I could easily guarantee that she was the only person on the block to have a grapevine that produced beautiful white grapes in the summer months. In the center of the back yard was my grandfather’s pear tree. Every year, it would produce the most delicious, juiciest pears you could ever imagine.
My grandmother always greeted everyone with a good kiss and some massive cheek-pinching - no matter how old you were. And if you bought friends to visit, she would kiss them and pinch their cheeks as well. If you arrived on a Sunday, she would first greet you at the door with a sprig of parsley dipped in fresh holy water from church that morning. She would practically beat you with the parsley, mumble some blessing in Italian and then proceed with the cheek-pinching.
Sometimes we would go to have dinner at her house - and my parents would end up in the kitchen until late at night playing Scopa or Briscola with my grandparents or whomever else decided to stop in that night. Usually, my great uncle Louis, great aunt Teresa, aunt Mary, Big Joe, my aunts and uncles, or the neighbor from down the block, Rose, would be there to play cards, have coffee and talk about the old days. The kitchen would smell of coffee and anisette - either because of the anise cookies that my grandmother would always have available to eat, or the Frangelico Liquor that the men all put in their coffee.
It’s the smells that I distinctly remember from her kitchen that really inspire my sweet and savory cooking. In fact, the flavorful food that came out of her house really has become my standard from which I judge the Italian cuisine that I make and eat today. Not only was my grandmother a great cook, but she could cook in enormous quantities. With five children and over 30 grandchildren and even some great grandchildren stopping at her home intermittently throughout the week, she must have been cooking on the same scale as a small restaurant. No wonder why my sister Liz always recalls that every time she came into Grandma’s house, she was in the kitchen cooking something or other - and you always knew that after the cheek-pinching you would hear “Mangiate!” Eat!
Her legacy in our family was the infamous meatball, but there were so many other things that she could do - and so many wonderful flavors that she introduced to us. She made veal milanesas, aranchini, pasta sauces, all kinds of meats, lasagnas and pizzas (ohhh she made the best pizzas!). She knew about cooking simply to bring out the flavor of the foods. She made these wonderful lemon glazed shortbread cookies - although my aunt Marilyn would always come over with the best sweets.
When I saw this weeks choice at Tuesdays with Dorie for Almond Biscotti, it just bought back all of these memories of my grandmother’s kitchen. That’s usually what happens when I hear the word “biscotti”. My friend Zoe came by on Monday and I took some time out from cleaning the mess left by the painters in my house to get some sanity and work a bit in the kitchen. The biscotti, although a nice flavor, to me - weren’t the consistency of a good biscotti. They should have been crisp, and less crumbly. Although the cornmeal was a great addition to the recipe and gave a lovely flavor - it’s just not how a biscotti should taste, look or feel. That being said, it’s the only dissapointment that I’ve found in Dorie’s book so far. The rest are gems.
