Over the years she also perfected a few dishes from other countries, which became staples of her repertoire. One year paella appeared, cooked and served in an elegant orange and white Dansk casserole dish. Brimming with clams, mussels, shrimp, chicken, and lobster tails （at the time lobster was somewhat affordable）， it became a special treat for years to come. Crepes made their way onto our table at some point in the early 1970s, no doubt inspired by Julia Child. Light and airy, they were stuffed with chicken in a béchamel sauce and greedily devoured by us all. Rich, thick chili con carne appeared every now and again, speckled with green and red peppers, its meat made unctuous by rich red tomatoes and olive oil. This dish was often specifically made for some neighbor’s annual Super Bowl party. We never threw any such fête, as no one in the house was in any way a football fan.
It should be obvious by now that when I was young, my mother spent most of her waking time in the kitchen, and she still does to this day. Cooking for her is at once a creative outlet and a way of feeding her family well. Her cooking, like that of any great cook or chef, is proof that culinary creativity may be the most perfect art form. It allows for free personal expression like painting, musical composition, or writing and yet fulfills a most practical need: the need to eat. Edible art. What could be better?
Because of my mother’s culinary prowess, eating at neighbors’ houses as a kid was always a bit of a struggle. The meals were bland or just plain not good. However, my friends were more than happy to spend time at our table. They knew the food at our house was something quite special. The ingredients had been carefully chosen or grown according to the season; each dish had a cultural history and was lovingly made.
It was not only the food itself in which they delighted but the passion with which it was made and presented, as well as the joy our family took in its consumption. The moans of satisfaction that the meal elicited from us were enough to convince one to enjoy the meal even if one wasn’t already. Between moans there was the usual discussion of how and why it was all so delicious. “The best you’ve ever made, Joan,” my father would say about one dish or another every night. We, my two sisters and I, would agree as my mother would mutter something about there not being enough salt or something needing more cooking time, or saying, “It’s a little dry, don’t you think?” and so on.
This discourse was followed by stories of previous meals, imagined ones, or desired preferences for those to come, and before one knew it the meal had ended and little else had been discussed other than food. Politics, luckily, were quite low on the list. No matter what one ate, even if it was just cold cuts and olives from a delicatessen, it was elevated to a new level of flavor in my parents’ home. A college friend once said to me when eating prosciutto, bread, and cheese in my first apartment in New York City, “Stan, how come even though I buy the same stuff from the same store, it tastes better when I’m at your house?”
“You should visit my parents,” was my reply.
In Italian families, nothing is discussed, ruminated on, or joked about as much as food （except death, but I’ll save that subject for another book）， and hence there are quite a few food-related expressions that have been passed down through my family over many generations that I continue to use to this day myself.
My father is a voracious eater, and during dinner, while savoring his food （in truth he would be eating it very quickly, as savoring is something neither he nor I practices, although I suppose we are experts in the postprandial savor）， my father would inevitably utter the rhetorical question “My God, what does the rest of the world eat?!!!”
To me, given the quality of the food, it was a more than fair question. When he was told that dinner was soon to be served, he would take a sip of his scotch, slam the glass on the butcher-block counter, and loudly pronounce, “Buono! Perche io ho une fame che parla con Dio!”
This translates as…
“Good! Because I have a hunger that speaks with God!”
God has paid little attention, it seems, to truly sating him, as my father’s biblically proportioned hunger returns every evening.
When he was young, my father would, as all children do, ask the question, “Mom, what’s for dinner?”
His very sweet mother （sweet by all accounts, for I didn’t know her well, as I was only seven when she died） would respond with “Cazzi e patate.”
This translates directly as “Dicks and potatoes.” In other words, “Leave me alone,” or “Bugger off,” as the Brits might say. In today’s “PC” climate, a social worker might be brought into a household to oversee parents who spoke to their children this way. One could only hope for a social worker with Italian roots.