My favorite Cookbooks...and Yours?

"Eat Thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart"

~ Ecclesiastes 

I was reading one of my favorite blogs yesterday--edited in 2014 to add that I am sorry that this blog no longer exists--where she gave a  humorous account of her Mom's Swiss Cheese Chicken recipe. It seems her Mom left out an important step when she gave the recipe to Rue, and Rue never could understand why her chicken dish did not taste as delicious as her Mom's until she found this out!
I told Rue in my comments to her post that, unfortunately for me, my in-laws were either not willing or unable to give me the recipes for dishes that my husband grew up with and loved, and I had to learn how to prepare my Italian recipes by searching through cookbooks and by using trial and error until I learned enough on my own to be able to replicate the recipes we loved.

For some background, my husband was born in Southern Italy in a region named Calabria, and his family emigrated to the USA when he was a young child. His mother was already in her late 40's when she came to this country and was unable to master much of the English language. She did not even know how to read or write in Italian, as she was not able to go to school as a child. As the eldest child, she had to help her widowed mother raise her siblings. Life in Southern Italy post World War 2 was very difficult, and many Italians were forced to emigrate in order to survive, and they would try to live in areas where other Italians congregated to make their new lives easier. Brooklyn, New York was one of those areas, and many of my mother in-law's neighbors were other Italians that came from Calabria, another factor that prevented her from learning English. All the delicious recipes they cooked were learned and memorized from watching their mother's cook. They didn't know measurements, or amounts or how to translate what they did into English. I tried to go over my mother-in-law's house when I was first married to learn how to do some of the dishes, but most of the time a few steps were already begun, and try as I could nothing I made ever tasted the same.

My sister-in-law, my husband's oldest sister, is also a wonderful cook, but I believe her lack of shareable recipes came more from an unwillingness to share her secrets! Her son is a professional chef and he still does not know how to make her very special stuffed baby eggplants! Again, there is always an ingredient or a step left out, or when I'd go over to watch how something was made the food was already half prepared. I truly believe that her recipes are her pride and joy, and she wants to feel that she is the only one who can prepare it the proper way.

Rue asked me what cookbooks did I use to learn how to cook Italian foods, and I thought it might be a fun post to share that here with everyone and to also ask you what your favorite cookbooks are, and why?

I was married in the early '70s and our first apartment at the time was near an Italian store that sold fresh dairy products such as fresh ricotta, mozzarella, etc. All ingredients needed to make authentic lasagna and manicotti and other delicious dishes. Luckily for me, it was also owned by a Pollio descendant. Over one hundred years ago, Giuseppe Pollio came to the United States through Ellis Island bringing his cheesemaking skills and set up his ricotta and mozzarella kettles on the beach at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY. Today, Pollio Italian Cheese Company is one of the country's largest producers of Italian cheeses, offering a full line of premium Italian cheeses and snacks, and is owned by Kraft Foods. You know it by the name Polly-O!

The store was giving away free paperback cookbooks called the “Polly-O Recipe Book – Cooking with Cheese” which was first published in 1968.



This cookbook became a treasure trove for me! Readable recipes! I was finally able to make manicotti that rivaled my in-laws! I was in heaven!
Unfortunately, this book is no longer in print but sometimes shows up on E-Bay. Mine is stained with tomato sauce inside, and some pages are tattered, but I will pass it on as a family heirloom someday.
The good news is that Kraft does have a wonderful recipe index and many of the same recipes can be found here, and my favorite manicotti recipe is here. I use the "skillet" method in the recipe for the shells--scroll through to the bottom of the online recipe and you will see it included, as that is the way my in-laws made the shells. Of course, I use authentic grated Parmesan or Romano cheese and freshly made tomato sauce too --no jarred sauce is allowed in my house!

The second invaluable cookbook that I found early in my marriage was 'The Art Of Italian Cooking" by Maria Lo Pinto and Milo Miloradovich. It was the most popular Italian cookbook in American at the time.

The author was from a town near Palermo, Sicily, and many of her recipes were close enough in taste and preparation to be the same as Calabrian. This cookbook was first published in 1948 and is presently out of print, but many copies are available in used editions. Through it I learned how to prepare most of the fish dishes I prepare for our annual Christmas Eve feast, as you can see in the pictures below from last Christmas:



Another favorite cookbook which is still available for purchase is "Italian Immigrant Cooking" by Elodia Rigante, published in 1995. Elodia Rigante is a second-generation Italian-American and was raised in New York's Little Italy.


Mrs. Rigante's cookbook is full of beautiful photos and charming anecdotes about her family. Her recipes are more familiar to second-generation Italians that learned how to use locally available produce and ingredients to prepare the favorite dishes from their homeland. Her parents had emigrated from Apulia, Italy, which is another region of Southern Italy, after the turn of the century. Read a very interesting background story about her here.

The next book I would recommend is Culinaria Italy, Pasta - Pesto -Passion by Claudia Piras and Eugenio Medagliani. It would be more for the photos and travelogue quality about it, in addition to the very authentic recipes it details from all the regions of Italy. It is an enormous book and could be considered a "coffee table" book for display. I was lucky enough to find it for a deep discount at Costco a few years ago, and I believe it is available through a few online used book stores. Reading it is like taking a tour of Italy!




Another recent find was Cucina Di Calabria: Treasured Recipes and Family Traditions from Southern Italy by Mary Amabile Palmer.




Mary Amabile Palmer, a first-generation Italian American, includes anecdotes about Calabrian culture, history, traditions, and festivals, as well as recollections from her childhood, and over 200 recipes in this cookbook.
I was so excited when this book was first published in 2004. Finally, I thought, I would be getting all the exact recipes my in-laws prepare! Unfortunately, this was not completely true, as many recipes were prepared differently or even had different names that were unlike the ones my in-laws pronounced in their dialect. I realized that Calabria is a very large area of Southern Italy, in fact, it's the "toe of the boot", the most southern part of the country, and each and every town and region in it has it's own particular blend of flavors and ingredients and they were influenced by the many different people who invaded it over the millennium including Rome, Greece, Spain, Normandy, the Middle East, and northern Africa. Zeppoli, for instance, in my in-laws family are not the sweet fried donuts covered with powdered sugar that many may be familiar with, but the savory long fried dough ones and made with a potato and semolina flour dough, with anchovies placed in the middle before frying! But the recipes in this cookbook are still invaluable to me, and I've found many that I've enjoyed cooking.
Obviously, I don't only cook Italian dishes, and my husband and I enjoy many different cuisines from many different ethnicities. The wonderful thing about living in Brooklyn, and in New York City, is the availability of all kinds of restaurants and cuisines and ingredients ...but that is a story for another blog someday!

My favorite American Cookbooks are Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, and The New Double Day CookBook by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna. I've had both since I was first married and they have helped me make countless roasts, fried chicken, and banana bread, etc.
And, luckily for us all, we have the Internet and blogs to search for recipes and The Food Network on TV! We can become gourmet cooks if we wish to these days!

I'd love to know what your favorite cookbooks are, and your favorite recipe websites and blogs. Please let me know if you blog about this topic soon. Thanks!  Buon Appetito!