Nana: A Love Story

Published by Tuesday, September 24, 2019 Permalink 1

by Leo Racicot

Along with an uncanny mastery of seven languages perfected while she was a scholarship student at L’Université de Paris plus a crystalline singing voice that gained her entrée to the finest church choirs in Europe, my Nana brought with her to, of all places, Lowell, Massachusetts, the Egyptian/Syrian cooking she learned as a girl in her native Alexandria. Sudden love for a fellow Egyptian émigré, Ralph, a barber, took Adele away from her academic and musical aspirations.

Egyptian women in market in Aswan

Muslim women in Aswan market, Egypt.

Ralph had an idea that opening his own shop in America, the land of opportunity, would put him and his new bride on roads paved in silver and gold. Before she knew what hit her, Adele (called by everyone Lena) found herself transplanted to a blue-collar town with a blue-collar man. The pair had four children in quick succession, each born two years apart: Mariam (Marie), Helen, George and my mother, Edna, nicknamed “Topsy.” Life and the barbershop landed them if not on Easy Street at least on This is Okay Way until Ralph died suddenly and young of a massive heart attack. My mother was six months old. Nana, unable to work full-time and raise four, small children alone (Lowell, after all, wasn’t Paris), took a job doing piecework in Hub Hosiery, one of the city’s many sweatshops and reluctantly put the kids in Franco American Orphanage where they would remain until they came of age.

Pistachio baklava

Middle Eastern pistachio baklawa or baklava.

By the time I knew her, Nana had left her dashed aspirations and heartbreak on the curb and gone about the business of “getting on with it.” Perhaps to make a second stab at rearing the children she, herself, had been unable to raise, she and Marie, who stayed single and made a home for her mother and herself, became co-parents to my sister, Diane, and me. We, too, had been orphaned at a very young age, leaving our mother in the same mess her mother had known. I grew up then with all women: my mother, my sister, my aunt, my Nana, the nuns at school. I witnessed firsthand the power of the female ethos, the banding together of women when Fate has removed all men from the picture, to step in and nurture, as individuals and as a group. I loved my women, but Nana I adored. The love life denied her giving to her own children she heaped on Diane and me. A more caring, hospitable, convivial spirit I have never known. And so, this is how, among other facets and aspects of my growing up years, I was exposed to the Syrian/Egyptian kitchen.

Assorted mezze.

Assorted mezze.

I loved being with Nana in her kitchen, watching her cook. We learn so much from watching. An almost pastoral calm would come over her as the small, old bones of her hands deftly tucked the Mahshi (Malfouf) mixture into the cabbage. In a flash, the stuffed wonders would layer up to the brim of the kettle (Nana pronounced it “cuttle”) to be doused with ripe, good garden tomatoes, homemade tomato sauce, and some water. Even more fun to watch was the way she would fashion a design, using only two turkey needles, into the top of a baked Kibbeh loaf. With the greatest care, too, she placed pine nuts (Snooba) strategically throughout the neat cake (not too many, not too few!). Kibbeh Nayyeh (raw hamburger or lamb) was also a staple of our family table.

People cringe now hearing that we ate raw meat (chased with raw onion). “Cannibals!,” they cry. I don’t know how I, so picky an eater I wouldn’t put a plain slice of American cheese in my mouth, got to love uncooked meat, but I could never get enough of the stuff – one of the treats of going over to my best friend, Anthony Kalil’s house, was the always-waiting Nayyeh on the table – Anthony’s father was a butcher so the house was well-stocked with the very best cuts. I loved the hurry-scurry of Anthony’s three brothers — his poor mom, outnumbered — racing in-and-out of the kitchen on their way to a date, a ballgame, a concert, tearing a piece of Syrian bread (the term, “pita” came into use much, much later on), scooping up a clump of Nayyeh, a bite of onion and chowing down. What with today’s heavy chemical treatment of meats and other No-No’s in meat products, I’m not so sure I would “go raw” now but I can still taste the sting of onion, the salted, peppered meat on my tongue and in my tummy. Good nourishing food.

Never-ending were the delights to be had in Nana’s kitchen. There was Gusa (stuffed zucchini though any squash could be used) with its aromatic garden flavors, bitter to the taste in a good way. Baba Ganoush, a tangy yogurt/eggplant spread, perfect for dipping or eating plain. Nana was never 100% satisfied with her own yogurt. “Is it too tart? A little bit, huh?” There was Makdous, tiny, marinated eggplants sprinkled with walnuts, Fatoush, a fresh lettuce and tomato salad splashed with lemon juice and sumac – a regular visitor to Nana’s table, it made my cheeks pucker. Halami, Halwah (pronounced ‘Ha-lay-wee’), Baklawa, Hummus, Tabouleh, M’jadara (lentil porridge), Za’atar (the best!). How could anyone not leave the table fat and happy?

Egyptian-style stuffed zucchini.

Egyptian-style stuffed zucchini.

Special Sunday trips were to nearby Lawrence and Bishop’s (Aunt Marie at the wheel) where, if the Arabic food wasn’t quite as good as Nana’s, well, “Hey, I’ll take it!” Our friend, Al, the waiter, would bring us extra olive oil, extra mint, extra bread. Al had a genial face. He looked like Abe Burrows and Sam Levenson, popular humorists of the day, and was funny the way they were funny. After feasting, we would go tramping unsavory neighborhoods in search of Melia A’asi, a girlhood friend of Nana’s in Alexandria. Nana knew Melia lived “somewhere in Lawrence.” Melia became somewhat of a legend in family lore. We never did find her. (Interesting aside: years later, after I told M.F.K. Fisher this story, she thought it would be fun to co-write a mystery novel with me, The Case of Missing Melia A’asi. My pseudonym, she decided, would be “Ricochet Raincoat.” Like Melia, though, the book never materialized.) At least Aggie Michael, Nana’s Lowell friend, existed. Nana and I would regularly visit her home peopled with life-sized statues of every saint in the canon. Aggie was a funny, fat, little Buddha with Orphan Annie hair. I liked her, but Nana and I always heeded Marie’s warning, “Don’t ever eat anything there; she cooks spaghetti in the same pan she washes her feet in.”

Nana’s desserts were my favorite. I could eat Ma’moul, the anise-and-date-scented pastries ‘til they came out of my ears. When Anthony and I brought along a paper bag full of them on our choirboys’ field trip to Boston’s Museum of Science, the other kids made throwing up sounds ‘til we passed the tantalizing cookie-cake-y wonders around. Everybody was our friend that day.

My most-loved sweets were Ka’ak, Proustian in its fragrance and its tastes, Turkish Delights, plump with pistachios, homemade Marzipan (not as hard to make as you’d think) and – heaven in a cup – the Egyptian delicacy, Umm Ali, its circus-y colors beckoning you to become a professional glutton.

Baba Ganoush or eggplant purée.

Baba Ganoush or eggplant purée.

I liked few things better than being with my Nana, sitting beside her in her kitchen waiting for everything to cook. I can still hear the good heat bubbling up from oven cups of custard, cinnamon-laced, rice and grape-nut puddings, too, and Knefe and Atayef. My whole boyhood early on was exoticized by almonds, the scent of sesame, strong licorice, black and running out of the corners of my mouth. Nana is teaching me how to make tissue paper carnations, pink. I’m not a very good student. Her chatter is punctuated by delightful Malapropisms, mangling the names of favorite entertainers: Florence Welch (Lawrence Welk), Furry Como (Perry Como), Pranky Pontaine (for Frank Fontaine), Ed Solomont (Ed Sullivan) and the funniest – Alfred Pitchfork (He was a bit of a devil!). We crack each other up; she, correcting my Arabic, I, correcting her English. Nana was petite, her white hair pulled up into a donut at the top of her head (very Marseille market). Nana was an anomaly; raised as an Ottoman Jew in Alexandria, schooled in Paris, she came to the new country equipped with a repertory of Baptist hymns (go figure!). Diane and I, per order of our very Catholic dad, were raised in his faith. So Nana and I would alternate dueling music genres: myself trilling The Angelus, The Kyrie and she, in her sweet, clear soprano intoning the old hymns: In the Garden, The Old, Rugged Cross, Abide with Me. Our songs and our laughter lifted the kitchen curtains high while the food cooked and heaven hovered quiet just over in a corner. I never heard her put on airs. She was plain, without make-up or pretensions. I never heard her speak an unkind word against anyone. She did like to thumb her nose behind Marie’s back whenever Marie criticized her about spoiling Diane and me. “Next thing, they’ll want we should build them their own Taj Mahal.”

Turkish delight or lokum

Turkish delight or lokum.

If there were times whole oceans rose up in her old eyes, well, we knew why; thoughts about a life that might have been. But she never let tears wet her bosom for long – she moved on – in acceptance, in grace, loving her life, her family, her kitchen.

The kitchen and her heart went dark in the year of The Bicentennial. So broken by grief was I, I ran away to avoid the wake. I couldn’t bear to say goodbye. I keep every day for saying goodbye by firing up the stove for cooking up a cauldron of Koshari, frying up a mess of onions in good olive oil for M’jadara, closing my eyes and conjuring up Nana in her kitchen, persimmons in ceramic bowls, hard candies and oranges and apples for anyone who might drop by. We learn so much from watching. We celebrate the nurturing women in our lives by nurturing ourselves and others. We nourish ourselves. We eat.

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The Four Courses of the Apocalypse

Published by Thursday, July 25, 2019 Permalink 0

Remembrance of Food Past:

The Four Courses of the Apocalypse

by Leo Racicot

One of the glaring ironies of my life consisted of being pals with food goddesses Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher, and yet not knowing how to make anything other than a peanut butter sandwich. My friends used to tease that, “Leo could burn boiling water if you don’t keep an eye on him.” When I was a kid, my poor mother, who often claimed I was her ticket to sainthood, would prepare the evening meal for my father, my sister, Diane and herself, and a lonely hamburger on a back burner of the stove for me because other than it and the peanut butter and bread, I refused to so much as look at any other kind of food. “This isn’t a restaurant,” my mother would say, but I was willful, wanted my burger and nothing else. So, in later years, it was of particular surprise to many, and especially to me, when I became a private cook to two former members of the Roosevelt administration, Hilda and Francis Shea, their son, Richard, and their live-in staff of 15 to 20 men.

Leo Racicot Julia Child in her Kitchen

Julia Child in her kitchen in 1997 (R).

I can boast a little bit now that I am quite the accomplished cook – I whip up a mean jambalaya and can flambé and sauté with the best of ‘em. But I did myself at the time no good throwing the names Fisher and Child around because that made Ms. Shea assume that I, too, knew how to cook. “Oh, Leo. Do you know how to make a Sauce Soubise?” she intoned, summoning up her most aristocratic accent. “Suuuuu-beeeeeze??” I said I did not and reminded her she had hired me to be Richard’s companion/caregiver. It led anyway to the dread question, “Well, did you ever take Chemistry 101 in school?” “Sure,” I said. I was then led by the nose over to shelves heavy with cookbooks of every decade and design, names so dear to me now but which instilled instant quivering in my spine when I first laid eyes on them: some vintage such as Michael Field’s Culinary Classics and Improvisations, and of course, the twin bibles of every serious kitchen: Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking and Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and some quirky, even strange cookbooks such as Cook It Ahead, Live High on Low Fat, John Thorne’s Outlaw Cook, Only Kosher Cooking Matters, The Zodiac Cook Book. Ms. Shea waved her hand à la Vanna White showcasing letters of the alphabet and said, “Well, this is just like Chemistry 101, only with food.” She showed me where the apron was and left me to my folly.

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Lemons

Published by Tuesday, December 4, 2018 Permalink 0

by Marlena Spieler

I come from a land — California — where lemons grow on trees. To buy them in a store would be ridiculous since they grow outside your window. And if you don’t have a lemon tree, your neighbor does and will share them with you. In season, there really are lemons everywhere.

Once, I wrote a humorous-ish front-page column for the San Francisco Chronicle about how there are lemons everywhere in the Bay Area, and that every time I pass a tree, I stash one or two in my handbag. They ran a cartoon of me dressed up as a burglar, reaching into lemon trees.

Lemon Stand Naples by Jonell Galloway

 

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Venice: The Alternative to Italy’s Pasta

Published by Tuesday, October 16, 2018 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

No, I’m sorry. The staple of Venice is not pasta.

Yes, in Italy, they eat pasta, but Venice and the neighboring Veneto region are relative newcomers to both pasta and Italy. Venice and the Veneto, which the Venetian Republic dominated for centuries, only became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 to escape the rule of the Austrian Empire, imposed after the Napoleonic Wars. Before that, the people of the Veneto didn’t speak much Italian; they primarily spoke Venetian. The Italian language and customs? They’ve adopted those, including pasta, relatively recently.

Abandoned agricultural storage building in a rice field in northern Italy

 

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The History of Roquefort French Dressing

Published by Friday, September 14, 2018 Permalink 1

by Gary Allen

Roquefort cheese has been made in the caves of Combalou, Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, at least since Gaul was occupied by the Romans — Pliny the Elder spoke highly of it, and he was not the sort who normally gushed gourmet superlatives. By 1411, Les Causses had been granted the exclusive right to the name “Roquefort,” and all other blue-veined cheeses had to make their own reputations. Salads, of course, go back much further — they were known to the ancient Greeks — but didn’t have an entire book devoted to them until 1699, when Robert Evelyn published his Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets.

When salad and Roquefort cheese first got together is somewhat more mysterious. Usually, recipes just “happen,” they evolve — often in several places at the same time — in response to new tastes, the availability of new ingredients, etc. Recipes, or “receipts,” have only found their way into print after a sufficient number of people found them useful. Only rarely can we provide, with any certainty, the “who, what, where, when and how” of a recipe’s creation.

Handwritten recipe for blue cheese/Roquefort dressing

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Relaunching of The Rambling Epicure Website

Published by Tuesday, August 28, 2018 Permalink 0

I launched The Rambling Epicure e-zine, this website, nearly ten years ago as a literary culinary electronic magazine with a host of well-known food writers and photographers, all of whom are still active members of the related Facebook groups Culinary Travel and Mastering the Art of Food Writing. Editing and publishing this on my own required an incredible amount of gratifying work and because I was busy with my personal projects, I have left it semi-dormant for the last year or two. Today, I would like to relaunch it in a different form as part of an effort to encourage conversation about food, cooking, and writing.

My primary goal is for The Rambling Epicure to become a wellspring of enlightening epicurean essays and culinary fiction. We all have captivating personal and family tales about what we cooked and what we ate through many generations, during good times and bad. These memories are part of our food culture—and our food heritage—and should be an effective way to transmit our experiences and values beyond our front doors.

But my ambitions are greater than just memoir: I’m also interested in publishing articles and essays related to historical research in the field of gastronomy and in reviews of food books.

I would like to make this a cooperative effort that opens the door for us to share our potential as cooks, diners, and writers. Together, we will create a literary culinary site unlike any other, with information and stories that can be passed down to future generations.

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Taste Unlocked: Food & Thought

Published by Tuesday, June 26, 2018 Permalink 1

Taste Unlocked: Food & Thought

France and Italy’s relationship through time, wine & food

PROGRAM FOR 4-DAY MASTERCLASS TASTING WEEKEND IN CHARTRES

with Jonell Galloway and James Flewellen

4th to 7th October 2018
——-
Course Overview

FRANCE AND ITALY ARE TITANS OF EUROPEAN culinary culture. The nations of today are inheritors of rich culinary traditions that are the result of millennia of interweaving relationships between the peoples who inhabit these lands. This is a process that predates even the Romans and continues very much into the 21st century.

Over this four-day weekend, we explore the culinary and vinous relationships between France and Italy from Roman times through to today. We will look at what each nation has gifted the other through various lenses, including food, drink and culinary culture.

The masterclass involves sumptuous feasting, tutored wine tastings, and intellectual discussion. Bring your taste buds, something to say and a willingness to learn!

 

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Relaunching of The Rambling Epicure E-zine

Published by Wednesday, April 25, 2018 Permalink 0

I launched The Rambling Epicure e-zine, this website, nearly ten years ago as a literary culinary electronic magazine with a host of well-known food writers and photographers, all of whom are still active members of the related Facebook groups Culinary Travel and Mastering the Art of Food Writing. Editing and publishing this on my own required an incredible amount of gratifying work and because I was busy with my personal projects, I have left it semi-dormant for the last year or two. Today, I would like to relaunch it in a different form as part of an effort to encourage conversation about food, cooking, and writing.

My primary goal is for The Rambling Epicure to become a wellspring of enlightening epicurean essays and culinary fiction. We all have captivating personal and family tales about what we cooked and what we ate through many generations, during good times and bad. These memories are part of our food culture—and our food heritage—and should be an effective way to transmit our experiences and values beyond our front doors.

But my ambitions are greater than just memoir: I’m also interested in publishing articles and essays related to historical research in the field of gastronomy and in reviews of food books.

I would like to make this a cooperative effort that opens the door for us to share our potential as cooks, diners, and writers. Together, we will create a literary culinary site unlike any other, with information and stories that can be passed down to future generations.

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Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life

Published by Friday, April 20, 2018 Permalink 0

TRE Book-a-Month: Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life

NOTA: For technical reasons (I am not sure to have WiFi for the next week or so), I have moved the dates to May 10 through May 31. Do you have any particular topics you would like to bring up in the discussions?

Join us in our Facebook group The Rambling Epicure, Mastering the Art of Food Writing, from May 3 to May 17 for the TRE Book-a-Month reading, discussion and, if you like, cookalong, of a biographical cookbook about legendary food authority Paula Wolfert, which includes 50+ recipes, by Emily Keiser Thelin.

“All recipes are, in some way, an exploration of the link between food and memory. We cook the food we remember loving and, in so doing, make new connections and bonds. The amount of love, through food, Paula has given so many over the years makes this biography-cum-cookbook a truly wonderful project. — Yotam Ottolenghi

“Every serious food person knows that Paula Wolfert changed our world, but in this book we learn what a fascinating time she had while she was doing it. Part biography, part cookbook, part history, Unforgettable introduces our greatest cookbook writer to the wider audience she deserves. There has never been a book quite like this one. — Ruth Reichl

“Unforgettable is a brilliant summation of the resilience, exuberance, and expertise that we know and love of Paula Wolfert. — Mario Batali

“We’re all truly indebted to Emily Kaiser Thelin, Eric Wolfinger, Andrea Nguyen, and Toni Tajima for capturing these beautiful, inspiring, and very important memories of Paula’s life and travels. — April Bloomfield

 

“Unforgettable is the story of the exacting, passionate, genuine, driven and indefatigable Paula Wolfert, the ultimate expert on the cooking of the Mediterranean. Emily Kaiser Thelin’s well-written and poignant narrative recounts the tale of this true pioneer of American culinary history. — Jacques Pépin”
 
Excerpts from Goodreads
 

 

 
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Happy New Year 2018

Published by Tuesday, January 2, 2018 Permalink 0

May the angels be with you all the year long.

 
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