When I was growing up on rare occasions my mother would make pancakes for dinner. This was an incredible treat and felt like being on vacation in the middle of the week. Although she made different sorts — including potato pancakes which I will write about another time — my favorites were made with buttermilk. This particular kind of pancake was referred to as “Finnish”; although that name referred to our family heritage, at the time it sounded as luxurious as having breakfast for dinner actually was. Many years later, my mother’s recipe is alive and well as part of my comfort food collection. Continue reading
Call me a romantic, but the smooth, shiny exteriors of chestnuts remind me of a teddy bear’s nose. Just looking at them brings back a flood of memories guided by the senses. Visions of roasting chestnuts over an open fire, popping open in netted baskets only to reveal a nut filled with earthiness and faint wisps of smoke pass for my minds’ eye. Christmas market memories in Florence, Rome and the mountain town of Bassano del Grappa, come vividly to life and I have half a mind to jump on the night train to Milan.
A simple bowl of beans floating in a steaming vegetable broth, accompanied by the occasional tube-shaped pasta served in ceramic bowls meant for caffè latte in the morning. . . . . .
Spring arrives in April or May and slowly but surely baskets of strawberries begin to overtake the fruit vendors shelves in my neighborhood. The brighter their color, the more often I find myself cheerfully adding strawberries to my fruit macedonia and picnic-style shortcakes. The days stretch out into long evenings full of light. All of a sudden, or so it seems, deep ruby-red strawberries fill my favorite vintage porcelain plates daily in the kitchen. Just about mid-June, strawberries become so luscious and full of perfume that nothing short of a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of honey and some flowering lavender are needed for the perfect midsummer dessert. This is the moment when I hope that summer will last forever.
Picnic baskets filled with bowls of potato salad, marinated green beans, fried chicken and carrot cake. Those are the family food treasures that come to mind when I recall summer visits to the Lago di Garda. As a child I remember being mildly surprised by the detailed questions my Mom’s friends inevitably asked her about just how she made her potato salad. To me it was as constant as the sunrise and brown-bag lunches for school every morning. Obviously potato salad was meant to taste like my Mom’s, and it was something she was pretty famous for.
Some dishes are not made up of exactly measured ingredients because the recipe is an intuitive part of family history. Certain foods define a mood or trace memories shared. In my family zucchini soup is the definitive comfort food. It is not just a simple, thick Italian vegetable soup. It is the soup served at family get togethers. It’s fragrance serves as an unconscious reminder of the good life in Italy, of camping trips and of the entire family talking at the dinner table. It is one of the foods we always asked my Mom to make.
As a child living in the idyllic village of Caldogno, I had no idea how much work it was to fill the cupboard with jars of peperonata.. In the last part of September my mother would take a trip to the local market to buy the best sweet peppers the late summer had to offer. Coming home from school, I would enter the kitchen, only to find it absolutely filled with wooden crates of yellow and red peppers The countertops were covered with glass jars, while cast-iron skillets of sliced yellow and red peppers simmered in olive oil and garlic. A day or so later the crates were emptied and the glass jars were filled with colorful stewed peppers. My mother intended the efforts of her labor to keep for a while. But her jars of peperonata simply didn’t last that long. Everyone in my family loved them.
Cranberries, apples, sage and thyme are the symbolic elements of winter holidays at home. Christmas brings back visions of favorite family moments, of avid conversation against a backdrop of lively kitchen noise made by a stove filled with pots and pans. My absolute favorite at the Thanksgiving table was my Mom’s stuffing made with mushrooms and apples. As a child I ate spoons of it at dinner, covered with ladles of warm gravy. Next to stuffing, I loved the bright tanginess of cranberry relish made with oranges. The following recipe works perfectly for filling poultry. It also stands beautifully on its own as a deep dish casserole or as the filling for a squash or pumpkin. It is yet another of countless examples of my mother’s intuitive talent in cooking that I proudly carry on in my everyday tasks in life. 
Beautiful Food Stories 