Amy Ephron

My mother had a lot of china that I don’t have – ceramic oven proof shells for devilled crab, individual servers for escargot and 8 accompanying silver snail scoopers (I’m sure there’s a name for that tool, but I don’t know what it is), a bowl for dip that was set and centered into a plate for chips, an electric carving knife (which I always thought was silly and held great possibilities as the basis for a comedic horror film or a cartoon with an accompanying caption.)

I do have champagne glasses (although not as many as I’d like because our cabinet space is limited to say the least); a monogrammed caviar dish (yeah, it was a gift) that we don’t use nearly as much as I wish we did; a Jack La Lanne juice and vegetable squeezer that seemed like such a good idea at the time and that is, now, either in the pantry or the garage – and I’m not sure I could find all the parts to it if my life depended on it. Maybe then.

We do have a cuisinart electric citrus squeezer which is pretty great (even though I do think it’s a little larger than it needs to be for what it does) and a tomato knife which I think is my favorite utensil.

Confession: I love food that comes in the mail.

I, also love having something in the freezer just in case we decide on a whim to have eight people for dinner tomorrow night. Or tonight for that matter, but this only works if you decide this early enough in the day to defrost whatever it is you have in the freezer just in case you’re entertaining on a whim.

A few weeks ago, I was sent samples from Edwards & Sons Virginia Traditions BBQ. It was summer and I was really excited to get them, especially since the samples included an entire pork roast butt (completely suitable for a dinner party of eight or more).

I don’t write about things that are sent to me unless I love them. Those “crabcakes” from Baltimore come to mind, the ones that sort of resembled a baseball. We tried everything – we even put them in a tomato sauce and put them on top of spaghetti – no luck. A crabcake should not resemble a meatball!

Back in the days when evening television was interactive family entertainment, when Ed Sullivan and "College Bowl" were on, my family used to gather in the TV room. In our house, that was the bar. It had a Fleetwood television built into the wall, with the controls built in next to the silk-covered sofa on which my mother would always lie, on her back, her head propped up by four pillows.

Next to her, on the coffee table, was a Dewars-and-soda on ice and a pack of Kent filters. My sisters and I would lie on the floor, my father would sit in his teak rocking chair, and we would watch television and eat TV snacks—clam dip baked on toasted Pepperidge Farm white bread; Beluga caviar, whenever anyone sent it over; a really disgusting (but great) dip made out of cottage cheese, mayonnaise, chives, and Worcestershire sauce, with ruffled potato chips; and Mommy's favorite, blanched and toasted almonds.

"Oh, goody," she would say, " 'College Bowl' is on tonight. Let's make blanched almonds."

Have you ever tried to make something once, (twice, three times, with three different recipes from three different cookbooks) and it never quite came out the way it was supposed to. And your husband, who’s a better cook than you are (or at least better at actually following the recipe) tries the same from yet another cookbook and then another (at least we’re persistent) and it never works, never quite tastes the same tender, delicious way it does in practically any Italian restaurant on any corner in any city in the world.

So, you put it in the category of “Don’t try this at home.” Osso Bucco. It’s never quite tender, never quite fall off the bones delicious, Italian, melt in your mouth restaurant perfect!

But, a couple of months ago, I was at the butcher in the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and they had these perfectly lovely cuts of Veal Shank, really cute, and so (what was I thinking), I bought them for the freezer. And last week, when there was nothing in the house, I defrosted them.

Alan did say to me, when he came home from work and asked what was for dinner and I announced, “Osso Bucco.

“Really,” he said with a smirk, “What are you thinking, you know that never works.”