This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
This year, right before Thanksgiving, my mother will turn 87.
In our family, holiday gatherings are always potluck - picture three generations, each cooking in our own separate kitchens, creating special dishes that have become family favorites.
Although I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook, I find myself calling my mother, Celia, at least 20 times needing advice about how she keeps her turkey so moist, if she thinks I should cook the stuffing inside the bird or out, how she gets her yams to ooze out that special sugar, as if they are crying out, "I'm finished, put me on the table."
Truth is I already know the answer to all my questions, but I love that I can still call and ask her opinion. And as much as I like asking the questions, that's how much she loves answering them.
Somehow it restores the balance. It's hard when your daughter grows up and even harder when your mother grows old.
From stove to scrapbook: When I saw Pamela Hensley Vincent's The Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook (Overlook Press, $24.95), which she says she wrote to pay tribute to her parents, grandparents and husband, I loved the book and its intent - preserve family memories through recipes. The chapters have one-word titles - Yetta, Manny, Gail, Jack, and Duke - with photos, recipes and remembrances of her family.
As Hensley Vincent began gathering and trying to re-create her family's recipes - most of them were never written down - she realized that when she cooked their dishes it was as if they were there helping her in the kitchen.
"Dad could cook anything," she says, admiringly. "He was the most exotic cook of the family, but he was spontaneous and never measured anything. When he came home from work he didn't want to sit around and relax. He wanted to get in the kitchen and cook. When you grow up around that, you can't help but love cooking. I associate it with comfort."
Her Jewish grandmother, Yetta, "clearly influenced my decision, 40 years later, to write down some recipes," says Hensley Vincent, who recalls warm, loving memories from when she was a little girl, of the family gathered around her grandmother's immaculate white-clothed dining table, laughing, arguing, imploring Yetta to stop hovering and sit down.
The chapter about her Sicilian husband, producer s, is more than just a valentine. We are there in the kitchen with them on their "come hell or high water" Thursday and Sunday pasta nights, sipping chianti from fragile wine goblets, inhaling the garlic-laced red sauce simmering on the stove, waiting impatiently for the freshly washed greens to be tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic and red wine vinegars and the chunk of aged pecorino to be grated over all of it.
"When you sit down to write about people you love, it just flows out of you," Hensley Vincent says. "I visited haunts both magical and sorrowful, and as I went along I recognized the cookbook was, in fact, a scrapbook locked away all these years."
A recipe for cookbooking: As our family gets older and the thought of losing them looms large, especially around the holidays, it's important to spend time recording sweet moments of their life, including their favorite recipes.
Have a dedicated tape recorder and keep it with you always, as the best conversations are usually impromptu. Be sure to label each tape. Ask for photos throughout their life so you can have a pictorial chronology. It's a wonderful tribute to them to assemble a book of meaningful moments.
As a relative gets older, gather the ingredients for their signature dishes and get in the kitchen with them. They will be flattered to demonstrate how they make their beloved dishes. As they are throwing in a pinch of this and a bit of that, before the ingredient hits the bowl, carefully measure each item. Even if you have to redo the amounts later, you will have a basis. Write down every little thing!
Take, for example, the story of my mother's pecan pie.
At Thanksgiving, my mother could be counted on for her health-conscious - but delicious - salads made with a plethora of fresh vegetables, her perfectly baked yams, sans marshmallows, sugar or orange juice, an organic roasted turkey that had not been "previously frozen" and a variety of steamed vegetables. For dessert, "Well, let someone else bring that!"
So imagine our surprise a few years back when Mom casually announced she was bringing a decadent homemade pecan pie.
It seems that one day she and Dad had been perusing their favorite farmer's market and she couldn't resist buying a giant bag of fresh pecans. After they cracked nuts every day for weeks and the pile of pecans didn't seem to be getting smaller, she remembered a Pecan Pie recipe she had clipped from "Dear Abby" in the 1970s but never made.
"I'm not a dessert eater," Celia emphasizes. "But I didn't know what to do with all those nuts. I liked Abby's recipe because it didn't have a lot of fancy ingredients. Of course I cut down the sugar."
Recipe rescuing: If your beloved relative has died, re-creating their recipes is harder but, as food writer Lari Robling discovered, possible by trial and error.
Robling, also a contributor to "A Chef's Table," which airs in Utah on public radio stations KUER and KCPW, was moved to write Endangered Recipes (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $30) as a tribute to her grandmother.
The memory of the first Thanksgiving without her grandmother had a great effect on her. As the teenage Robling, who had been close with her grandma, looked around the room, she felt a giant hole at the table. As if to punctuate her loss - the rolls and baked beans grandma brought every year were missing.
"We looked at each other," Robling remembers. " 'Do you know how to make Grandma's rolls? Did you ever watch her?' Of course the answer was no. We assumed she'd always be there."
Thus Robling began her quest to re-create grandma's lost recipes, which moved her to rescue other period dishes that are no longer popular.
Her tips to being a recipe sleuth:
* Exhaust your family's collective memory - maybe the recipe was written down and somebody has it. If not, ask everyone what they remember about your relative's cooking and baking habits, which ingredients and brands were preferred, what kind of pans were used.
* Look for similar recipes, also known as "mother recipes." Consult cookbooks that were in vogue when your relative was coming of age, such as The Settlement Cookbook, the original Joy of Cooking or any of Betty Crocker's cookbooks. Old church and temple cookbooks contain wonderful recipes written by home cooks.
* Record family anecdotes and memories along with the recipes to make a culinary genealogy. Consider setting up a family Web site with a recipe section.
* If you live in the same city where your relative grew up, shop locally. Use products not mass produced and representative of the recipe's origin. You will more likely get similar results.
* If you run into recipes with directives such as "a small can" or a "large box" of a particular name-brand ingredient, try calling the company and ask if they have historical records to help you determine the specific volume.
* Don't be surprised if your attempts fail at first. There are so many nuances to old recipes it will probably take multiple testings before your baked beans taste remotely like hers. Persevere!
Jack's Roast Chicken with Liver and Oyster Stuffing
This recipe is from The Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook by Pamela Hensley Vincent. Vincent's father, Jack Herbert Hensley, made this luscious stuffing and, according to Pamela, "It's delicious steaming hot from the just-roasted bird; and also makes a remarkable sandwich the next day." The stuffing can be adapted for turkey, goose or duck.
1 (4- to 5-pound) chicken, with giblets and liver removed and set aside
Coarse salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for rubbing on bird
Paprika to taste
1 celery stalk, with leaves, coarsely chopped
1 to 2 cremini mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 medium-sized onion, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 (14-ounce) can of chicken broth
2 cups Pepperidge Farm Seasoned Bread Crumb Stuffing Mix
1 (5-ounce) can of whole oysters, drained
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove chicken liver and giblets; thoroughly clean inside of cavity under cold, running water. Pat inside and outside dry with a paper towel. Place bird on a rack in a shallow roasting pan. Lightly sprinkle cavity with salt and pepper. Rub outside with olive oil and paprika. Place bird in refrigerator until ready to stuff.
To make stuffing: In a saucepan, heat olive oil. Lightly brown giblets and liver for 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from saucepan and set aside. In same saucepan, sauté celery, mushrooms, onion and garlic. When they start to soften and clarify, return giblets to pan, but reserve the liver. Pour chicken broth over vegetables and giblets; bring to a simmer. Cover saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes. Add liver to pan for last 2 minutes. Remove liver and giblets from pan and allow them to cool. Chop coarsely.
Put 2 cups of stuffing mix into a bowl. Add chopped liver, giblets, vegetables; toss together. Fold in oysters. Remove chicken from the refrigerator; place stuffing loosely inside. Secure with 2 pins and string on each end. Place in oven. Immediately reduce heat to 350. Cook 20 minutes per pound. When finished, remove from oven. Let chicken cool for 5 minutes before carving.
Serves 4 to 6.
- The "Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook"
Dear Abby's Pecan Pie
This recipe appeared in Dear Abby's advice column every year at Thanksgiving. The original recipe called for 1 cup each of corn syrup and sugar. My mother, Celia Levitt, adapted the recipe to make it less sweet; sometimes she used far less sugar than this. Whatever she did, to me it always tasted wonderful.
3/4 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust
1 heaping cup pecan halves
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine corn syrup, sugar, eggs, butter, salt and vanilla; mix well. Pour filling into unbaked pie crust and sprinkle pecan halves over top. Bake 45-50 minutes or until center is set (toothpick inserted in center will come out clean when pie is done). If pie or crust appears to be getting too brown on top, cover with foil for the remaining baking time. Remove from oven and cool. You can top it with a bit of whipped cream.
- Adapted from Dear Abby