BELOW STAIRS: Recipes for Readers and WritersReaders and writers do not live by intellectual sustenance alone—sometimes they need the real thing! I was fortunate in having an Italian mother who came from a very large family of talented cooks. My nana was the best of them, and never used a recipe in all the years she turned out fantastic pastas, roasts, Italian pastries, and pizza. My mother, Flora, was a great cook too, often developing her own special dishes or expanding on family recipes.
Here are some of the best recipes from my childhood. I’ll be updating them frequently, so be sure to check back. And, if the mood strikes me, I might even throw in a Regency recipe, or two! And don’t forget to check my News page to find out the latest news about my Books.
This month, I’m featuring two of my mother’s most reliable stand-by recipes for summer eating. Both are incredibly easy to prepare, and both taste great. Whip them up, throw a few burgers and hot dogs on the grill, slice up some fresh Jersey tomatoes, and enjoy the lazy days of summer! FLORA’S MACARONI SALADThis salad has a secret ingredient – juice from the olive jar! Don’t skip this step. The salad won’t taste right without it.
Mix together the olives, the mayo, the onion, and the vinegar. Carefully pour juice from the olive jar into the mayo mixture, enough to thin it into a dressing that will coat the macaroni – without being too thick (not too precise, but that’s how Flora did it). If the dressing is too thin, add a little more mayo. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour the dressing over the macaroni and mix carefully. Refrigerate for several hours before serving. After several hours, the macaroni will have absorbed a lot of the dressing. You can thin a bit more mayo with olive juice, and mix it in the salad to moisten it up before serving. BURNT ALMOND PARFAITI have no idea where my mom got this recipe, but I thought it was incredibly sophisticated when I was a kid. Simple but delicious. Spread one cup of shelled almonds, unskinned, on a baking sheet and roast in a 300F oven until dark brown. Check frequently to make sure they don’t get scorched. Remove from oven and let them cool, then put through the fine blade of a food processor or blender. They should be ground fine without being pulverized into dust. Mix the almonds with enough good maple syrup to make a thick sauce. Arrange alternate layers of vanilla ice cream with the almond sauce in parfait glasses. Put in freezer until ready to serve, and then garnish with whipped cream and a cherry. click here for other previous entries
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