I (wish I didn’t) Remember Mama: Cooking Mama

 

Until middle age, Fleas was a great cook. 100% Italian, she made sauces that were thick, fragrant, and flavorful. She even canned her own tomatoes. Dishes that were handed down from her mother were staples on our table. Every Thursday we had spaghetti; Sundays there was something more elaborate like lasagna or ravioli. On Friday, lentil soup was often the main course. The rest of the week featured American dishes—chops, steaks, burgers, chicken soup, and the like.

I don’t know enough about dialects to explain how Fleas and her family spoke. Their pronunciation of common Italian words was often different than other Italians (and certainly different than non-Italians). For example, cannoli was pronounced “gah-nool.” Lasagna was “lah-zyne.”  Prosciutto, “prah-jhoot.” Mozzarella, “mootzarell.” This, in itself, is not a big deal. As a child, I believed these were the correct pronunciations, and as an adult found that most workers in Italian delis knew what I was ordering.

There are certain dishes that children of good cooks remember and crave. They replicate these dishes with the recipes their mothers gave them or by learning to cook at their mothers’ sides. Three Fleas made, that were to die for (as opposed to her later cooking which was to die from), were stuffed peppers (meatless, riceless), “beetza-gain,” and a concoction called something like “gock-yole,” which is sort of a bread (I’m stretching the definition of bread here ever-so) made with coarse corn meal, eggs, and milk (I think). “Gock-yole” is made in an olive-oil coated cast iron frying pan (be sure to have extras in case you have to break one over your kid’s head); the corn meal mixture is poured in and fills the pan, and a hole is poked in the middle to let the steam escape. It’s fried until it’s shiny and hard, and then turned (I have no idea how you would turn this with just a spatula), and cook until the other side is shiny and hard.

I would be better able to recite this recipe if Fleas had shared it, but Fleas didn’t share recipes. It’s been over 40 years since I’ve had “gock-yole” (best served with thick soups like lentil or pasta e fagioli [pronounced bast-ah vah-zhool]), and haven’t a clue what it’s really called or how to make it (although I seem to remember that the olive oil was flavored with garlic—but isn’t everything Italian?—and it took a while). Someone once suggested “Polenta,” but polenta and “gock-yole” have little in common. Besides, Fleas’ dialect would make polenta sound more like “bo-lent.”

“Beetza-gain,” I learned about 20 years ago, is actually “pizzagaina,” an Italian Easter pie, cake-like in stature, and filled with eggs, ricotta cheese (pronounced “rih-ghaut”), pepperoni, mozzarella, ham, and other delicious things. The filling varies from cook to cook, and I’ve only had an identical version once, in an Italian deli in Palisades Park, NJ. I am nearly ready to kill for this recipe.

As for the stuffed peppers…I’m totally at sea. The peppers  were either roasted or boiled first, then stuffed with bread crumbs, seasonings (including basil and oregano), parmesan cheese, egg, and possibly anchovies (probably a very small amount or very finely chopped). They were then oven-baked. A lifetime ago, I found a recipe on a Progresso calendar for these stuffed peppers, but it was lost in a move.

By the time Fleas was in her mid-fifties she began to lose her cooking talent. Her sauces had become runny, better than thin tomato soup, but not much, and since she cooked for herself and my father only she had stopped making more elaborate dishes. I’ve often wondered if this was an early symptom of Alzheimer’s.