My Inheritance

My favorite breakfast as a child was Quaker instant grits and fried eggs, an unusual fare for a Western New Yorker. None of my friends had heard of grits. (“What’s a grit?” I now hear Joe Pesci ask in My Cousin Vinny.) I don’t know how I explained grits to my friends, if I even tried. I’m certain it included butter, though. My mother went to the University of Mississippi and it was there, I suppose, that she became acquainted with grits. (It certainly wasn’t from Caracas, Venezuela, where she spent her formative years.) Mom’s saying “grits for breakfast” is at the top of the charts of all my 70s childhood memories of anticipation, right up there with Santa, the first snowfall, Columbia House Records for a penny, and anonymous love notes. Even though there is not much “love” in an “add water and stir” recipe, grits from Mom is a cherished memory, and I believe it was “the grit” that sparked my love for food.

             I know today that there is more love in a popover than in Mom’s grits. Popovers and split pea soup, another of my favorite Buffalo, New York cold-weather meals. Mom had the Joy of Cooking to assist her. (Some consider this the Bible of cooking; the sixth edition, at any rate. Apparently, the Rombauers decided to go “light” in subsequent publications, which is “shameful” in the vernacular of Cordelia, my mom’s mom.) I still have Mom’s copy, and she made notes in pencil: at least 4 hours! she scribbled next to “room temperature” for the milk and eggs. The popover, a relative of Yorkshire pudding —milk, eggs, butter, flour— but minus the beef fat seems like such a simple creation, one for which my mom (and my grandmother, Cordelia) had one simple rule: no running or stomping! Today, I recall the admonishment, delivered with pointed finger, far more clearly than I recall its purpose: was I that heavy footed and energetic, a ploy to get me to chill; or, would external disruption really impair the “popping over” of everyone’s favorite sin, THE CARB? Whatever, Mom and Grandma had it down: airy, slightly crisp buttery goodness, the perfect complement to the soul-warming soup.

             Who’d have thought that the best part of the ham is found in the hock? (If you love bacon, that is, and who doesn’t?) Mom, and her mom, would use the hock to “flavor” the soup (to also make it fatty, AND YOUR BODY NEEDS FAT) and I, as a child, would earn the hock meat for the low, low price of peeling the carrots. (Grandma kept the peels on, said that’s where the flavor is, so all I had to do was wash them, and keep her company.) Naturally, cubed ham was added, because there is no such thing as meatless soup in the frost of Buffalo, New York.

             Any self-respecting Buffalonian knows not to mess with the Buffalo Wing: if you can’t do it right (and it is an art) it’s the Anchor Bar, Duff’s, or LaNova’s (all subject to debate, of course), and if you’re going to try a roast beef sandwich it must be on kummelweck (“beef of weck”). I did like Grandma’s wings, but that was okay because she lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1,500 miles away from home.

Despite its similar don’t-touch reputation on the Italian west side, I do recall making pizza with Mom, the pride found in creating my own with the variety of toppings she provided, the love I put into the decorating. That was an experience that Grandma could not top, because she insisted we make our own crust, and she absolutely refused to have anything jarred in her kitchen so there went the Prego pizza sauce. Mom did make her own puttanesca sauce for the noodles, though. I found this delicious. Pasta was also risky where I lived in Buffalo, though she added tuna fish for the protein which was perhaps considered a blight in the old country.

             And this is where that story ends, unfortunately, for this budding epicurean. Cordelia was a cordon bleu. There was love in her food. She had studied under the distinguished Jacques Pepin and (the more recognizable) Julia Child, and while there were framed pictures of her with these celebrities in her cast-iron kitchen, I, as a child, was fed more pedestrian fare the few times we visited her. And Mom…well, Mom worked to support her two children, so Mom provided as she could, which was evidently (albeit limitedly) remarkable.

However, the wisdom I have gained through the adventures in my own kitchen has its roots in this nostalgia; often when I “chef” (yes, I used it as a verb), it is a time travel.

             I’ll get this out of the way first: my popovers never pop-over, and if Mom today didn’t have Alzheimer’s I would ask her what I’m doing wrong. How disappointed I was when I’d raved to my wife about Mom’s and Grandma’s popovers, only to have them not pop over, and no one was running or stomping in the house and I’d left the milk and eggs out for four hours. They always come out muffin-like, and it’s not because I’m overfilling the ramekins either so don’t suggest it. Christyn politely suggested it was the difference in altitude, but every suggestion is ludicrous to the chef who fails and I’m stale on my topography anyhow. Now, can we drop it?

             But, I will say that I have taken Mom’s grits to a new level, having discovered Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and borrowing Bill Neal’s shrimp and grits recipe. If my own children liked grits, I would never “add water and stir,” regardless of how busy I am. This is the snobbery that comes from knowing how great it can be, the snobbery I am certain Grandma is smiling upon. The love in grits (I like Palmetto Farms Stone Ground) comes from the chicken stock, half and half, and cheddar, whether you’re serving it as a side to your fried eggs or as the bed for your shrimp, scallions, and mushrooms-sautéed-in-bacon-fat celebration.

             The same holds for the pizza. Grandma wanted to take it to a new level, but a homemade pizza crust was evidently too sophisticated for an elementary school boy. Today, pizza is a staple in my kitchen, and it can be used as an infinitive, say, HOMEMADE: THE ONLY WAY TO PIZZA. In my Disco Kitchen (dubbed so because of the strobe light Bluetooth), I (for the most part) abide by Grandma’s rules —no jars— and I make my own sauce, al dente: vine-ripened tomatoes, paste, salt, garlic, oregano, sugar. (While I like to use natural sweeteners in food, like carrots, the yield of my sauce doesn’t accommodate that. Because I am a food snob, like Cordelia must have been, I needed to include that.) The recipe for pizza dough is simple, you can Google that, but there are steps for the pie itself. You may inbox me for the details, if interested, but only if you own a pizza stone.

             For Christmas, Christyn had given me a pasta maker, and this was a game changer. Homemade pasta is no less expensive than a box of Mueller’s, and it is far more time consuming, but where’s the love in opening a package and dumping? Create a cavity in two cups of flour; add three eggs, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ tablespoon olive oil; rapidly stir with a fork, from this inside-out, gently scraping the sides of your flour depression and slowly forming a delightful custard-like mixture. Once it thickens, use your hands to gently knead your dough into a ball (CHEF’S TIP: be certain to use as much of the discarded flour as possible, and knead that into the center to eliminate stickiness); wrap it tightly in cellophane, and let it sit for an hour. There’s the love, and I know both Mom and Grandma are proud of what this boy has inherited.

             I attempted a puttanesca several weeks ago. Garlic and anchovies liquified in olive oil? Amazing, but that’s some lovin’ right there that I didn’t know my mother had. I was delighted. No, tuna fish was not in the Food and Wine recipe, but I did add shrimp —gotta have the meat— and wow, what a journey. With the first bite, I was transported to our little kitchen in Buffalo, New York. It was probably snowing outside, and Mom was probably humming. With that first bite, I recalled how Mom hummed when she cooked. I recalled the little table around which we sat, and I recalled a flavor that was the exact duplicate of what I was now enjoying some forty years later.

Mom resides now in an Alzheimer’s unit three hundred miles from me. I do not visit her as often as I should. I think, though, through sharing these experiences with you, that I will make a trip soon; and when I do, I will bring her my pasta ala puttanesca. If food can create such powerful memories in me, perhaps it will for her as well. Perhaps. Perhaps I will get a smile; perhaps she will hum. And perhaps Grandmother will be smiling down on us both, proud the love that began with her.