Food, Family and Memory

My dad clumsily peeled the skins off a few garlic cloves and then looked up at me with an expression I didn’t recognize.  He looked like a little boy.

“I’m nervous cooking for you,” he said.

I smiled at the slight power shift from the man whose passion in the kitchen inspired my career– and intimidated the hell out of me.

“Naw, Pop, you’re just using cloves closest to the center of the bulb.  The skins are thinner, especially if they’ve been around a week or two.  I had the same problem the other day in my kitchen.”

He steadied his hands, deftly chopped the garlic and tossed it into the pan of onions and chili flakes sauteing on the stove.  He pulled the can opener from a drawer and opened some DOP San Marzano tomatoes.  He was preparing a simple arrabiatta sauce.

I fished the garlic that I was blanching out of a small pot of boiling water and washed some basil for the pesto.

A sizeable t-bone steak rested in butcher paper on the marble counter, seasoned and coming to temperature before getting tossed on the grill outside.

As my birthday approaches I can't help but think of my sisters - I'm the middle one - and my maternal grandmother. My sisters and I are born two years apart, with our birthdays all in the last week of September. If you do the math, I guess one can blame the joyful spirit of the holidays on the closeness of the timing.

My brother, as the oldest and only boy, always seemed to get special treatment over us girls. I'm sure he felt tortured by his loud, energetic sisters, but at least he never had to share his birthday party. I can't really blame my parents for lumping our "big days" all together on the middle weekend between them all. My father worked two jobs to support his young family, so lack of money paired with convenience produced - throughout our childhood - one giant party for "the girls." It was a "more-the-merrier" type of event and we were all showered with enough gifts to make us contented despite the lack of individual attention.

When we were very young my mother took care of the cake, but as we got older and began developing our own opinions, all we ever wanted was my grandmother's Red Velvet Cake. I can't remember the first time I ate it, but I can still taste it today. It was the same every time with a dense, almost chewy texture; the sweet tang of the cream cheese frosting; that distinct something-more-than-just-chocolate flavor that distinguishes this classic cake from all others.

When I was 4 years old I was on Kids Say The Darndest Things with Art Linkletter. My folks told me the teacher in our Nursery School recommended me. When I think about the fact that I once called her ‘fatso’ just to try out the word, nothing personal, and she got so mad she locked me in a broom closet, I’m ever convinced of the altruism of teachers.

I told some outstanding whoppers to Art Linkletter and my lies are preserved in perpetuity on a 78 recording that was issued to each family along with a Tiny Tears doll for the girls. This thrilled me no end. 

Until 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).