Cooking With My Sisters by Adriana and Mary Yolanda Trigiani, Part Two
Thursday, August 8th, 2019On Monday, I posted Part One of this review. Here in Part Two are some additional tips, quotes and recipes to show you how the memories learned from preparing meals shaped the lives of the Trigiani family. Here is the link to Part one: https://www.menupause.info/review-of-cookin…rigiani-part-one/.
NOTE: There was no photo of just the polenta in the book, so I lifted one from the Internet. This recipe is actually part of another recipe. I wanted to post just the polenta, since I don’t eat chicken, which is the first part of the recipe. (ellensue)
The Polenta
(You can generally follow the instructions on any polenta package and you’ll do just fine.)
6 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
2 cups cornmeal or polenta meal
Bring the water to a boil, then add the salt and olive oil or butter. Pour the cornmeal into the water slowly, stirring constantly — you don;t want lumps. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens. To serve,prepare individual servings in the kitchen. Spoon the polenta on a dish and add a couple of pieces of chicken with sauce. Put extra sauce on the table in case a guest likes a little extra.
A Tip from Mom: Buy coarse-ground cornmeal and make the polenta the old-fashioned way, stirred slowly; it’s better. A lot of restaurants serve a watery,pale concoction they call polenta, and it just doesn’t hold up to many sauces. For example, this dish (recipe below es) requires a hearty consistency in order to support the flavor of the special sauce.
Sautéed Mushrooms
Serves 4 to 6
Again, this photo is also from the Internet
1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 pound whole white mushrooms *
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon fresh oregano
1/2 teaspoon fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white wine
In a large sauté pan, heat the butter. Add the onion and sauté until golden. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer slowly for 45 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender.
Place in a serving bowl and serve with your favorite dish. The sauce makes an excellent accompaniment for any many meat dish.
(Note: I would use the mushrooms over a medley of vegetables. ellensue)
A Tip from Pia (another sister): Really make this dish pop by adding a dash of hot sauce just before removing it from the heat.
Here are some additional quotes (See Part One for more). These show the strong link between memories of childhood and memories of meals around the kitchen table.
p. 36 Cooking with Grandmom was one way to get close to the roots we pulled up when we moved to Virginia. (They moved to Big Stone Gap, VA, which became a movie. es)
p. 80 But the best thing about the stuffed peppers is telling you about them, and all these other delightful dishes, brings me back to my mom’s kitchen.
I remember fall days in Big Stone Gap, when we would run home to be on time for dinner, and there was enough of a nip in the air that the kitchen window was fogged up from whatever Mom was cooking. Over dinner we would tell stories and strengthen our ties to one another. And this was possible because Mom’s kitchen was warm, inviting, creative, and reminiscent of all the kitchens in the family that came before ours.
p. 110 At home in Big Stone Gap, Mom always served a vegetable and a salad because she liked to make sure we got plenty of greens……Mom taught us how to make and toss the salad with oil and vinegar. (Remember, more oil than vinegar.) We never saw a bottled dressing in Ida’s kitchen. And, we ate the salad right on the big dinner plate.
Cooking With My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes, from Italy to Big Stone Gap (200 pages) is published by Harper Publishing, New York, etc. (Originally published by Random House in 2004. First Harper Paperback published in 2017.) ($19.99)
P.S. I love this cookbook, not only because the recipes I want to try are not complicated, but also because it demonstrates the link between cooking together and family ties. Thank you Adriana and Mary Yolanda Trigiani! es
