February 2011 Archives

I wasn't surprised to hear that she took a holiday to Italy before returning to start the south chapel murals, because the virgins all have Botticelli coifs!

Notice how bright and joyous it all is? The Catholic Apostolic Church, founded in 1835, basically cherry-picked their favorite bits from the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions, so at a Catholic Apostolic service you would find vividly colored vestments and incense, but but no crucifixes (why dwell on Christ's suffering when you can celebrate his resurrection?) or last judgment scenes with demons dragging damned souls down into hell (they believed everyone could be saved). Sounds like my kind of church apart from that whole imminent-second-coming business; too bad it doesn't exist anymore! (If I remember correctly, the New Apostolic church, founded after a schism in the 1860s, is still in existence.)

 

The great west wall was completed in 1901.

Now, Cheryl has some pretty sophisticated tastebuds (as evidenced by her popular blog), but she's no 'food snob.' Recently a reader commented that her grandmother's recipe for pineapple tart was 'run of the mill', which of course annoyed anybody who ever had a grandmother. My grandmom Kass' cooking is unabashedly 'run of the mill'--simple, no-fuss recipes for good old-fashioned comfort food. So what if the zucchini soufflé recipe calls for Bisquick? I'll take my grandmother's cooking over haute cuisine any day. (Besideswhich, those pineapple tarts look pretty extraordinary to me! Bewitching bite-sized marvels, indeed.)

Ever hear that saying, 'every time an old person dies a library burns'? So far as I've observed, my grandparents' generation were and are a humble bunch, and they don't think too much about posterity or how valuable their life experiences are. Family recipes are a huge part of this trove of knowledge. Grandmom Kass learned how to cook from her aunt, because her own mother wasn't exactly Betty Crocker (we heard stories of how she used to dump sugar on the salad, and her jello always came served with a nice thick skin on top). Pumpkin soup, onion pie, creamy horseradish carrots, broccoli baked with cheese and breadcrumbs, rice pudding, depression cake...for me, my grandmother's culinary repertoire typifies mid-century blue-collar Philadelphia--nothing fancy, just good, wholesome food. (Though by 'wholesome,' I don't necessarily mean healthy. Philly is best known for cheesesteaks, pizzas, and spaghetti-meatball dinners, after all.) None of those recipes are original, but to me they are hers. She could have made up her own, of course, but I don't think it's ever occurred to her. Every cook makes her own modifications as she works, and given that she probably added a dash of this and a pinch of that without ever making a note of it, I doubt my versions of her signature dishes will ever taste as good as hers; but at least we have the recipes, and every time we make one we'll think of her.

So to celebrate the publication of A Tiger in the Kitchen, I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe for zucchini soufflé.* This one is, hands down, my favorite of everything she has ever made. It's light and delicately flavorful and I always try to snag a nice golden-crusty corner piece.

Combine in mixing bowl:

--3 cups grated zucchini
--1/2 cup vegetable oil
--1 cup Bisquick mix
--4 eggs
--1/2 cup grated parmesan
--1 small onion, grated

Mix well, spoon into greased two-quart casserole dish. Bake at 325º for 50-60 minutes. Serves 6-8.

*From The Best of the Zucchini Recipes Cookbook, compiled by Helen and Emil Dandar and published locally in 1988; this recipe was submitted by Antonette Biasotto of Newark, Delaware.