Life From Scratch (22 page)

In those few short weeks before my sophomore year, Mom moved smoothly from touring restaurants in the North End to a frenzy of home cooking, reaping the recipes of my Italian and Hungarian relatives. She served them up to me with methodical precision. The two of us holed up in the apartment around that old gas stove flanked by gallon jugs of apple cider vinegar and olive oil.

Mom was up no later than 5 a.m. making breakfast. Scrambled eggs were her favorite. She ushered me from the table to demonstrate how to whisk the eggs with heavy cream until they were pale but not frothy, just as she’d learned from
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
. Then she’d cook them over a double boiler into soft, wet curds. The whole spectacle took 15 minutes. I wasn’t convinced the extra labor or dirty dishes were worth the trouble.

Mom encouraged me to start a recipe journal. I picked out a heavy-duty, spiral-bound sketch pad with a moss green cover and spent many hot afternoons at her worn kitchen table with glue and scissors. I filled the pages with recipes I loved and recipes I was curious about. When she clipped articles about the dangers of aspartame, the importance of salt, and how to make the best use of MSG, I added them.

Recipe by recipe, the food gradually became less Julia Child and more like that of my childhood. Like farmers in late August, we toiled with increasing intensity; from dawn until sunset, cooking was our only activity. In the morning Mom fried stacks of the homemade crepes I’d remembered so fondly, rolling them with plain yogurt, raspberry jam, and heaps of banana, strawberry, or pear.

For lunch, we enjoyed room-temperature slices of torta di riso, the savory rice casserole enriched with rendered bacon and a sprinkling of parsley. For dinner, we’d pluck the petals from Grammie’s stuffed artichokes until we, too, were glutted.

When Mom prepped the artichokes, she didn’t snip off the prickly tips of the petals, nor did she bother to trim the stem. She just hacked off the tops, stuffed the crevices with an eggy slump of Parmesan, bread crumbs, and garlic, and then steamed them until the fresh green turned muddy. As we dipped the petals in melted butter and lemon juice, the thorns jabbed my fingertips.

“Pricking our fingers,” Mom said, “is a small price to pay if it means we get to the heart sooner.”

Stuffed Artichokes

Mom got this recipe from her mother, who surely got it from her mother. Mom never actually wrote it down, so this version is the result of fastidious note taking while watching her work. The stuffing can be heaped rather decadently onto two globe artichokes, or spread more elegantly over four smaller artichokes. I prefer the former, as it makes a complete meal
.

Artichokes cook best when there’s room around them for the steam; a large oval pot (like an oblong Dutch oven) can hold two artichokes with room. In a pinch, multiple small pots can be used
.

2 to 4 artichokes

For the stuffing:

3 large eggs

¾ cup Italian bread crumbs

A handful parsley, coarsely chopped (¼ cup)

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan (heaping is best)

1 large clove garlic, crushed

½ teaspoon baking powder

¾ cup milk

Salt and pepper

Finishing touches:

Paprika or parsley for color

Melted butter with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice for dipping

First, prepare the artichokes. Lay the artichokes on their side and use a sharp chef’s knife to cut off the top 1½ inches. Trim the stems so they will stand up straight (and fit in the pot), and pluck off one layer of the outer petals (they’re tough).

In a medium bowl, stir all the stuffing ingredients together. Pull the artichoke open slightly and spoon the filling on top and into the crevices behind the petals. Steam for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the petals are tender and pull easily from the artichoke (cooking time will increase dramatically if the artichokes are pressed up against each other when steaming). About halfway through cooking, check the level of water in the pot and replenish as necessary. Serve hot, garnished with a sprinkling of paprika or parsley.

To eat: Pluck off each petal, dip into melted butter and lemon juice. Use your bottom teeth to scrape the fleshy bit that connects to the artichoke base, and then discard the petal. When down to the petals as tiny as fairy wings, pull them away to reveal the hairy “choke.” Use a spoon to scrape it away and reveal the heart—the most tender and flavorful bit.

Enough for 2 to 4

“Did you cook like this even when I was in Europe?” I asked Mom on my last night in Jamaica Plain before I returned to Wesleyan.

She shook her head and laughed.

“I weighed 89 pounds when you were in Europe. I lived off a Hostess CupCake a day.”

Her voice softened. “I didn’t have anyone to cook for. I wasn’t very hungry.”

“What
did
you do while I was gone?” The question felt brazen, but neither of us had made a move to talk about the past since our last blowup about the card. We were running out of time.

“Nothing.” she shrugged. Her arms tossed indifferently, but her eyes begged to be left alone.

I waited.

She sat back and shook her right hand in the air, more Italian than ever. “I woke up, did data entry at the Trial Court for eight hours straight, came home, slept. After two years I worked my way up to the clerk magistrate’s office. On the weekends I made pot holders from boiled sweaters—filled half a dozen crates with them. That was my life. You kids were gone. Michael was …”

Her face crumpled slightly before she recovered: “Sasha, I just want to forget that part of my life. I feel like
I
was dead all those years.”

“You must have had a boyfriend … something?”

“There was nothing!” She paused and then shook her head. “I didn’t talk to anyone after Michael died. Not Connor, Tim, or Grace—no one. I don’t think I said his name for seven years. The whole thing just … blew me away.”

“You didn’t say his name for seven years?” I didn’t even try to mask the sarcasm. “I find that hard to believe.”

She stared at a stray crumb on the table. “Well, there was one person I talked to …”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “What is this, an interrogation? Come on, Sasha, this is our last night together for who knows how long. Can we just enjoy it without bringing up all that junk?”

I looked at her in disbelief. “I don’t even know why you bother. You say you want me to consider you family, and then you shut down like this? How am I supposed to trust you?”

She looked at me unblinking.

“OK, then answer me this—why did you give up Michael and me? There had to be another way—something else you could have done?”

She slumped down into her chair again. “I had no choice, Sasha. The only way for you to have a normal life was to get you out of the Boston court system. Those social workers were like … vultures, circling our lives. They weren’t going to stop.”

As she spoke, darkness crept into her eyes. Her face changed until suddenly her expression looked so familiar that it took my breath away. She looked exactly as she had the day she announced we were moving in with the Dumonts.

If Mom really had no life except for work, it meant she’d spent the last decade living on nickels and dimes, scrimping and saving. A new realization hit me: Using some of her savings to get the loft in the North End was the same sort of lavish gift newly divorced parents get their kid. She couldn’t sustain it on her salary, so she’d used the awkward kitchen as an excuse to cancel the lease.

I wanted to reach across the table and clasp her hand. To say I understood. But there were too many questions left unanswered.

“You know, Patricia and Pierre saved our lives, Sasha. They got you kids out of that mess.” She looked down and shook her head. “They did … what I couldn’t.”

We were silent a moment.

“But you didn’t even write, Mom. Not for years.”

She sat a little straighter. “You were never going to connect with the Dumonts if I kept butting in. I had to create some … space. You have no idea what I went through, losing you kids.”

The morning of my departure, I found a few blanket-stitched pot holders and a greeting card propped up on the bedside table. The lithograph on the front depicted a formal dining table spread with a white-and-green cloth and set for a formal tea. Five tidy place settings were set under five vases filled with irises and wild ferns. Curiously, there were only two chairs, both empty.

Inside was the recipe for my grandmother’s torta di riso, carefully penned in blue, green, and purple ink. Mom’s handwriting was neat, legible, determined. It was a slip of paper, but to me it had all the trappings of a family heirloom. I pasted it in the book.

That was it. The summer was over.

Mom dropped me off at Wesleyan. Sophomore year was upon me. I felt a disappointment when the summer ended. I’d been able to spend time with Mom and had even answered a few questions, but they only seemed to complicate my understanding of my childhood. And I’d never mustered the courage to ask about my dad.

Still, I did know a heck of a lot more about my culinary heritage and food in general. Those recipes—and even the restaurant outings before them—made the reunion bearable. Mom and I had shared a project, something to take the focus off the intensity of coming back together after so many years. Perhaps that had been Mom’s intent all along.

As she still likes to say, “You can’t put the cart before the horse.”

Torta di Riso

This is a simple recipe that makes use of leftover rice—both practical and economical. Mom made torta di riso often, taking chilled squares along for our frequent walks in Boston’s Blue Hills or drives up to Cape Cod, where we camped most summers. The traditional recipe uses salt pork, but I like the smoke and relative leanness of bacon. Sometimes I omit the meat altogether, opting instead for the clean taste of olive oil. As far as the parsley, anywhere from a sprinkling to a ¼ cup
chopped is delicious. Tip: ¾ cup of uncooked white rice will make just over 3 cups cooked
.

6 slices bacon, chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for baking dish

1 onion, chopped

3 cups leftover, refrigerated white rice

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

6 eggs, lightly beaten

A little parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Sauté the bacon in olive oil over medium heat until the fat begins to render. Add the onion and lightly brown. Set aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, add the cooked rice, Parmesan, eggs, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to a large bowl. Stir together with the cooled onion mixture. Pour into a lightly oiled 2-quart baking dish (such as an 8 × 8-inch). Bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Cool 15 minutes before cutting into neat squares or diamonds.