English and Italian

"The Beginning of a Short Cooking History"

My mother was an adequate cook.

She could turn.

The way she wielded a pairing knife was mesmerizing. She could peel an apple or a potato in one long, delicate, thin strand that I would carry around the house to look at, and try not to break.

She liked to cook. But she didn't strive to improve. And much of it was mediocre. Sometimes it seemed as if it were more important that the food be hot, than whether it was good. I never stopped hearing about how food needed to be eaten piping hot. She also would carry on about how raw vegetables could give you a stomach ache. But, on better food days she would order French Onion soup or something like that, to get me something good. Something with a course taste she knew I would really like. She had a taste for brie, and liked to cut up pepperoni with Dad and me in front of Love Boat and Fantasy Island on Wednesday nights.

My Grandmother on my mothers side was proper French and my mother, proper English by birth, as much of her family was in England by the time my mother was born. They were French and Romanian. Jewish. They went to England because of the War. The stories are spotty. My mother grew up in county of Kent. 

Mom did not come from a talented line of cooks is what I've come to know the story as, and I can’t say I saw a lot of French or Romanian cooking at her families table either. I think I saw a lot of burned onions is what I saw. Always these same onions, partly black, nutty, slightly acrid. Not terrible. Onions can sear very well and in some situations these onions could have been charming. But they were everywhere.

No,…most everything I had from that side of the family; a simply awful, atrocious variety of English cooking. Vegetables boiled to death. Meat over seared, under cooked and tough. Not all of it was bad, and she did have her moments.

She made latkes. They weren’t like any latkes I’ve had since. Certainly not like the shredded potato pancakes that latkes are. They we’re made of matzoh meal which is basically crushed up matzoh. A fine, airy breading is what it amounts to. Her latkes were made from whipped egg whites folded into yolks, matzoh meal, a little milk, probably baking soda, that were pressed into hand shaped patties. They were fried in oil and served with powdered sugar and then sprinkled with lemon juice. Very tasty. If I could have her here I’d ask her to make those.

Another odd thing is what she called schnitzel. Real schnitzel is some kind of meat, pork usually, pounded thin, breaded, and fried. Served with lemon. Mom’s Schnitzel were like long burned hamburgers. I think she put Cup-a-Soup powdered onion soup in the mix. They as well as the latkes had that hand shaped, pressed to the edge form. Mom cooked the hell out of those too. I never liked them very much. It could get pretty bad. There was this Weight Watchers dish she made with liver and green peppers that if I really think about it, could be one of the most god awful things I've ever eaten.

Pot Roast was made occasionally, but again for some reason she would select the leanest eye-round or rump she could find, sear it to absolute death, braise it in some icky mixture darkened with Gravy Master and thickened with corn starch. The meat was as tough and dry as a tweed cap. The carrots were so over-cooked all the time that to this day I can't really enjoy cooked carrots very much. I would just pick at the egg noodles.

The pot roast worth going on about came from my fathers side.

Grandma Kate’s Pot Roast.

This perfect rendition of great English cooking stormed the table every once in a while. Creamy, falling apart, moist. This pot roast was so good that you wanted to write stories about it. We would get up from the table so full it would ache. Still we had another helping. A sane man would wish it wasn't so. You didn't get pot roast at Grandma's like this every day at all. It was spectacular.

I don’t know what kind if cut she used. It was something fatty. Probably a cheap as a wooden wheel chuck roast. She didn’t use red wine or anything. Only a little apple cider vinegar, some water, a well built seasoning, onions, garlic. I don’t think she even put in any dry or fresh herbs. There was a bay leaf floating around. She didn’t thicken it with corn starch. It was definitely more of a roux based gravy. She may have even used Wondra for all I know. The recipes have become mostly lost.

Grandma Kate was, simply, an amazingly good cook.

She had her repertoire. It was solid, immovable cooking. Soups, stews, stuffed cabbages she called "galunkie". Potatoes one hundred ways. So many good soups. Chicken neck soup. Bean soup. Pea soup so good. She would make pea soup and we would beg for more and she would say "No, I don't have a ham bone. Next time we have ham I'll make pea soup." And we'd say the same thing the next time she'd make it. And she would say the same thing back. She was a real bacon and eggs grandma.

Katherine Briggs was born in Banbury England!

“Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross,

To see an old lady upon a white horse,

Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes

She shall have music wherever she goes."

”Does anyone remember that? She had five sisters. Here is a picture of them. That’s Grandma Kate in the middle. Everyone called her Kitty. It’s the last time they were all together, in this picture, taken in Banbury of course.

And put aside the roast. Grandma Kate made the best Yorkshire pudding in the world. Truly. The town of Yorkshire must have subcontracted with ladies from Banbury because there is no way theirs could have been as good as this heavenly dish.

I don’t know what kind of Yorkshire pudding anyone else has had, but my Grandma’s Yorkshire pudding was cooked in a roasting pan and never saw a muffin tin. She put about 3/4 of an inch of batter in a smoking hot roasting pan of drippings and stuck the whole thing under the rib roast, propped up on a roasting rack. The drippings and juice slowly fall into the batter as both cook. It sounds simple enough, but since she died the family has been trying to replicate it, and although we’re getting close after a number of years, all of us have admitted it greatly falls short hers. She knew just when to put the pan of batter in, because the pudding takes less time than the roast itself. It was a shuffle of cooking times. When it was done the batter had puffed up around the edges of the pan like a pastry and the middle had the texture of some delicious, magically beefy custard. It got cut into nine square pieces. There were brutal arguments about who was going to get the middle piece. The piece that was directly under the roast. Most people who have had Yorkshire pudding don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. It must be a regional thing. When people talk about Yorkshire pudding, they always seem to talk about these pop-over things. “Yorkies” are the proper. I have had them made skillfully and they accompany a rib roast well, but I'm still trying to perfect grandmas and I never make this other kind.

I never met my Grandfather. He was Sicilian. More of a freemason than any kind of mobster. He had a bar that was also a small restaurant, and loads of friends. Dad waited in the car a lot is what I've heard. The most information on him I have is that he was quite a good cook himself, and in tandem with being a good party thrower he was a great stuffed artichoke maker, probably a pretty gook martini shaker as well, as there are also stories of my dads, about waking up and there being people flopped around everywhere. Sounds like a lot of fun. He died of Parkinson's before I met him. Here is a picture of him covered in parrots.

I ate of that thread when I was really young at Ma mahs house. Accent on the second ma. I think everyone called her Aunt Santa as well. I'll have to check. Her and Uncle Joe lived in another part of Jersey, somewhere close to Garfield. They had some grapes growing up on the porch. Lots of Italians playing cards in the basement. Many many dishes of food came out. Linguine with peas. Zeppoli. Eggplant parmesan. Cannolis. I was tiny. I'm surprised I remember anything at all. There was a red checkered tablecloth. It smelled thick with smells there and my dad told me to eat. Thats all. Since then Dad told me that even then, when I had been to the house, it was nothing like it had been when he was a kid. When ma ma was young. As it goes the story basically is that ma ma, my grandfathers sister, was the best cook of all, which is impressive to hear and everything, and I’m sure the food was incomparable, but, for me its just a little too far back to remember.

In addition to growing some fairly outrageous Jersey tomatoes, my Dad cooks some formidable Italian as well. I remember him sauteing down big piles of red and green peppers with olive oil to have with our eggs. Bread had to have a hard enough crust so it cut the roof of his mouth, and he showed me how to use it to mop up sauce, or the juice from a steak when I was just the size of a pea.. He took me to shop through all of the deli’s around north Jersey. Each one had huge provolones hanging in the windows, and they all had the richest and most pungent smell of sausages and garlicky marinara cooking in the back. Boxes of imported goods that lined the floors, made from the chunky, brown, almost larded floorboards.

When we got home he fed me fresh buffalo mozzarella by hand, dropping the cold milky treat onto my tongue with sprinkles of salt, all the while telling me it was better with tomatoes and basil while we both knew it might be all by itself that is best. The famous dish he makes is the Sunday Sauce. An involved Bolognese really. The red sauce was slaved over for a for a full day and is crowded pork ribs, sweet and hot sausage, little chicken braciole tied up with parmesan and pignoli nuts, and meatballs made with beef, pork, and veal, with enough bread they fall apart, and off the fork on the way to the mouth. The rich sauce is cooked down just enough that it clings to the pasta and the olive oil becomes a dangerous red that coats our lips and ruins our clothes.