The Italian in Me

Memories of my childhood are like a series of movie trailers played on the movie screen between my eyes and the back of my skull.  I have several memorable trailers of my robust Italian family.

My papa doing his thing.  My aunt (left), my daddy (right) Ma and my cousin, Valerie

My family is sitting upon Ma's old hard wooden chairs around the ravioli table.  This is in the screened back porch of Ma's (that's what everybody called my grandmother) house.  The room smells of her steaming kitchen; sauteed garlic, onion and parsley .  My mouth waters just thinking about it!  This was the world of love and food.

Ma's house.

Papa just harvests lettuce and onions from our garden and drizzles our own pungent vinegar in the olive oil, salt and pepper coated greens.  I can see the 'mother', like floating placenta, in the the bottle as he tips the "Pigani Red Wine" jug, the label is written over in Papa's high pressured scrawl:  "Devincenzi Vinegar".

After the feast, we sleep!  Me and Papa.

Those were the days of our Italian/ American infused family, fun, and food.  My Uncle Dutch, born Atillio Caselini, had several dinner clubs in San Francisco (amongst other establishments, uh-hum) and when he and Lala Marie came to visit, they would have armloads of groceries from Molinari's  of North Beach.  There were white paper wrapped packages of salami, prosciutto, Fontina and large rounds of crusty sour-dough.  As Uncle Dutch took over the kitchen, the rest of us would tear crusts, fold on a thin slice of prosciutto and eat with pure pleasure.  The room like a bee-hive, Ummmmmmmmmm!  The sound almost deafening.

Uncle Dutch gets busy.

There weren't many fat Italians in our family.  I think it is because we were extremely choosy with what we put into our mouths.  Like French women don't get fat, neither did we.  We didn't own a cookbook with low-fat recipes and the concept of grabbing 'fast food' was, in our mind, idiotic, when we could go to Ma's and have her homemade lasagna with her Bolognese sauce and bechamel.  The product was rich yet light to the mouth as it went in.

My favorite cookbook.

On Monday morning, I read Fiona's blog about comfort food and she mentioned having used cottage cheese instead of bechamel in her pasta casserole.  I had an immediate flashback to Ma's kitchen and her whisking the beshamel then spooning it between layers of spinach pasta, sauce and fresh grated Parmesan.  In my opinion, there is no substitute for bechamel and commented that I would send the recipe today.

For two cups bechamel, melt three tablespoons of butter in a heavy medium saucepan 

over medium low heat.  

Whisk in four tablespoons flour for a minute and a half. Do not brown.  

Gradually add two cups of hot milk, whisking constantly until the sauce is thick as heavy cream. 

About fifteen minutes.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Consente' Mangia!