Food, Family, and Memory

ashtabula1Until I was sixteen, Thanksgiving was spent at my maternal grandparents’ house in Ashtabula, Ohio. Often prefaced by a blizzard, and by my father worrying about making the five hour drive with 5% visibility and black ice on the Interstate, these holidays really began when we arrived, cold and tired, to find a House Full O’ Jews at 5105 Chestnut Street. We put our bags in our assigned bedrooms (I preferred the front bedroom, with its partially removed, politically incorrect and leering 1940s Cleveland Indian stuck to the mirror), and found our way to the living room, where there was always chopped liver with crackers.

My grandmother’s chopped liver, a miracle never repeated in my lifetime, was smooth, addictive and so delicious that I could completely disregard the fact that it was made largely of chicken livers and rendered chicken fat, along with some egg and onion. If you have never had good chopped liver, I fully understand that you may find the idea repellant, and that you are possibly imagining liver and fried onions, raw liver, or some other equally unredeemable and noxious substance. This was not that; this was intoxicatingly rich, bore no resemblance to liver in its original state, and could have been classified by the DEA as Hungarian Crack. The fact that my brother and I loved it from the time we were small (notwithstanding the fact that we both hated liver) and would have eaten until we foundered, should give you an idea of its universal and supernatural appeal. Now, of course, no one has my grandmother’s  recipe and we are all doomed to wander the kosher delis of the universe, trying in vain to get just one more bite of what we can only have in our dreams. (There’s probably a joke in there somewhere, about “wandering jews,” but it’s just too easy).

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butcher-paper-packageMy favorite Sunday night dinner is braised lamb shanks cooked with basmati rice or what we call “lamb and rice” at our house. It’s simple to prepare, truly, not because I have made it hundreds of times and could do it with my eyes closed.

It’s so fragrant and beautiful when finished; a plume of aromatic steam floats above the shank that’s covered with random pieces of tomato and onion, sitting on a mound of tomato red colored long grain rice perfectly separated.

Calliope Athanus, my Greek grandmother made this dish. She taught my French mother, who taught me. There were always lamb shanks in our freezer growing up. The butcher at the A&P saved all of them for my mother-she bought them all. When the two of us grocery shopped she always repeated to me, “ it must be the front shanks”, the fore shank. “Watch out, they always want to sell you the rear shanks” -she would shake her head and say - “they just aren’t the same.” She told me this every single time.

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holly_sunflower_sm.jpg I had my first dinner party when I was twelve years old.  I invited six girls.  I can name them all now:  Annie Kleinsasser.  Katie Kleinsasser (her thirteen year old knowing and powerful big sister who wore a bra).  Sara Bingham.  Kathy Golden.  Sue Cross.  Dee Dee Ruff.  We were just finishing the sixth grade.  We’d be going on to Junior High School.  

This was going to be something BIG. 

I felt it was worthy of celebration.   I would have liked to invite six boys but I also would have liked to travel to the moon and I had about as much chance of that as getting the nerve to cook and then eat actual food in front of Kevin Hoffman, Bill Holland, Dan Chapman, Steve Acker, Jamie Oyama and Robbie Ellis.   

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anchovies-goldfish-and-shannon-in-the-background-300x270Last year, we had friends and family over to celebrate La Vigilia, which is a traditional Christmas Eve feast that had its beginnings in the south of Italy. It celebrates the wait for the birth of baby Jesus. Vigilia – the wait. Traditionally the meal is comprised of seven fish dishes – including shellfish, of course – and it can be one of the great feasts of the year. It can be a blowout, actually, un cenone, which means a very large and very long dinner.

We decided to go another way. Yes, we would do the seven fishes but we would take it easy on ourselves – just three courses instead of seven – plus dessert at the end, of course — and we split up the work load between four cooks: myself, the eminent Don Michele di Sicilia, our daughter, Alison and her beau, Shannon. So it was a kind of BYOF – bring your own fishes.

We had twelve people for dinner. We started with one of my favorite appetizers – anchovies on sweet-buttered bread. That’s it – as simple as you can get, but the combination of the briny fish and the sweet butter is one of the great single bites of all time.

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clean.jpgYesterday morning, I stood at the entranceway to our living room and surveyed the damage.  There were stacks of books and magazines on the coffee table, tumbles of blankets on the couch, a smattering of empty mugs with used tea bag strings dangling over their rims.  My abandoned crutches were leaning on the door, my physical therapy CPM machine on the floor. 

Two weeks after my hip surgery I can finally walk without assistance.

This, unfortunately, means I can clean as well.

It’s fine.  I like it actually.  It’s very cathartic after two weeks of being absolutely still.

Shannon, my insane boyfriend and exceptional caretaker, has taken the weekend off to run a marathon in Niagara.  He’s an ultra runner.

This marathon is 100 miles. ONE HUNDRED MILES. I know. I think the same thing.

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