We wrote January 05, 2001:
Hello Gina: Thanks so much for sending this
discussion on puttanesca sauce and two recipes. You make this situation
very clear. I have seen different recipes, but didn't know what to make
of them as they are so different.
I am curious how you have gotten so
knowledgeable. I imagine that you are a cooking pro of some sort.
Larry
Gina wrote 1/6/01:
Unfortunately, I'm not an expert...unless
eating lots of Italian food growing up makes me one. My grandparents
came from Italy and my mother was from southern Georgia, so of course
whenever my grandmother came over she had to give my mother a cooking
lesson to remedy what my grandmother viewed as a sad lack of knowledge
about Italian food.
Naturally, I was able to look on, but some
details were lost in the translation because my grandmother never
learned to speak English. Whenever my Dad was around though, he would
help clear up some of the confusion.
Their pizzelles were always a treat, and they
used the old kind of iron that you hold over the stove to make them. I
had it at one time, but unfortunately left it in the back of a cabinet
when we moved from one of our former homes and never recovered it!
Oh well. C'e la vita. Now they have electric
ones anyway! All the best, I enjoyed your site.
Gina
We wrote January 09, 2001:
Hi Gina, Thanks for your nice description
of your grandparents and mother. I am wondering--Do you have any
Georgian recipes? I understand that Russians are stuck with cabbage and
potatoes, but in Georgia they have pomegranates and other lovely things,
and a fine cuisine.
I made your puttanesca sauce, second version,
the other night. It was just fine. I adapted by cooking longer, about
half an hour, to eliminate the anchovy fishy taste. I added the capers
and olives just for the last ten minutes.
Incidentally, I wonder why you say no oil in
the pasta? A friend told me that her mother (English) always added oil
to keep the pasta from sticking. I don't know what the pros and cons
might be.
Larry
Gina wrote 1/9/01:
My mother is actually from the US Georgia, that
great southern state where they grow peanuts and eat grits. That's why
my cultural identity is so completely confused.
I've had to be very careful to keep grits from
migrating into my lasagne recipe....although I do have a recipe for
cheese grits that is layered like lasagne: with jalepeno pepper sausage
in the bottom, then a layer of grits, and finally cheese on top.
Delicious, but my Italian grandmother would turn oxymoronically over in
her grave if she were alive today and caught me dead making such a
thing.
Oil and Pasta
The "no oil" embargo I didn't
understand either for a long time. My grandmother added only salt to the
water and no oil, so I just followed the example until later I was
visiting a friend in Italy and she told me why.
Apparently (at least, many Italians believe
strongly) the oil will coat your pasta and inhibit the sauce of your
choice from adhering to it properly. Salt, used instead of oil, will
keep the pasta from sticking together, keep it more firm and
additionally will help bring out the flavour of the pasta and meld it to
the flavour of the sauce. That's the theory anyway.
Of course, we probably all to a degree hold
strong opinions about things based on tradition more than we realize,
myself included. Have you heard that story about the woman who always
cut the ends off her roast before putting it in the pan?
Well, she reamed out her husband when he tried
to roast something without cutting the ends off, so he asked her why it
was necessary. After mumbling something about the fact that her mother
taught her to do it, she decided to call said parent and get actual
facts. "Why did you always cut the ends off the roasts, Mama?"
Without hesitation, the reply came, "Well,
that's the way my mother always did it." Thankfully, great-grandma
was still alive, so the phone line hummed again.
"Great-gran, why do you cut the ends off
of your roasts?"
"Well, dearie," shouted great-grandma
over the wire, "that's the only way it will fit in my pan..."
So you see, maybe it's just that way back there
somewhere, some Italian chef ran out of olive oil in the middle of a
cooking lesson just as he was about to boil the pasta..... One never
knows, I suppose.
Yes, I'll be happy to send other recipes. Maybe
I'll even be inspired to pull out my mother's and grandmother's old
clipped and handwritten recipes and try a few new ones. I keep meaning
to, it's just I have two daughters, and somehow between them they manage
to see that my free time remains relatively scarce....
All the best, Gina
