I Remember Mom (And Her Recipes)
By Sylvia Carter, about Ann Cooper’s book, In Mother’s Kitchen

Newsday

May 4, 2005

Online at: http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-sylvia4243168may04,0,7505472.column

My mother baked light yeast breads and airy, moist cakes. My grandmother made flaky lard pie crusts, potatoes fried in bacon grease with plenty of onions, and homemade noodles yellow with egg, simmered in chicken broth.

In spring and summer, my grandmother stirred up a memorable sour cream salad dressing for leaf lettuce from the garden. In winter, she made huge white popcorn balls.

These are fine memories, and they are about much more than the taste of remembered pleasure.

When I think of my mother, Frances Smith Carter, and my grandmother, Girtha Johnson Smith, I remember to take the time to do a job right. When I think of them, I remember to cook freely, never being stingy with butter or with the gift of my time. I share what I have. If I find myself short of eggs, I would make do with toast and give a guest the last egg. That’s what they would have done.

What I learned from them will sustain me, as surely as food, until the end of my days.

But to be honest, it is not just their finest dishes that stick in my mind like taffy to the bottom of a kettle.

It is also the times when they made something out of practically nothing.

I thought about all this when two new books came my way: “La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain” by Penelope Casas (Broadway Books, $29.95) and “In Mother’s Kitchen: Celebrated Women Chefs Share Beloved Family Recipes” by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes (Rizzoli, $29.95).

Among the chefs featured in Cooper and Holmes’ book are Lidia Bastianich, who lives in Douglaston; Sara Moulton of Food Network fame; Amy Scherber of Amy’s Bread in Manhattan; Anita Lo of Annisa, and Katy Keck, chef at New World Grill, both in Manhattan. (Cooper, who used to be in charge of the lunch program at the Ross School in East Hampton, is now a consultant to Alice Waters for the Edible Schoolyard Project.)

Casas, in her acknowledgment, thanks cooks “humble and grand” who provided inspiration for the book of recipes that owes a lot to moms. Often, it is one woman who cooks both grandly and humbly.

The books have this in common: Even cooks who are accomplished and daring sometimes have to punt. They invent out of thin air, using the ingredients at hand.

How else to explain the migas recipe Casas got from a bus driver? In Mexico and southern Texas, migas (bread bits) are made using tortillas and little, if any, meat. The Spanish version is a bit more sumptuous, but there is no getting around the fact that it is still a way to use up some extra, slightly stale bread. That’s something a mom would do.

Daughters and granddaughters sometimes insist on improving upon handed-down recipes. “In Mother’s Kitchen,” contributor Anne Quatrano, an Atlanta chef, gives an adaptation of her grandmother’s recipe for what she calls potatoes boulangere. Her grandmother just called them potatoes with ham, but Quatrano has taken away the ham. Never mind. It is the technique that is important: baking the potatoes, layered with onions, in hot chicken stock for several hours.

Amy Scherber’s mom embraced convenience products, because her father worked for the Pillsbury company, but she also loved to experiment with new recipes. There is no dishonor in that.

At my house, Mama and Grandma often came in at the end of a long afternoon of hoeing the garden, with “chores” - milking the cows and shooing the hens into their house for the night - yet to do. The big meal - dinner - would have been at noon, so they would offer an array of leftovers for supper, or eggs baked in leftover gravy, or tuna salad sandwiches.

But those were the best-ever tuna sandwiches, always with bits of chopped sweet gherkins in them, on my mother’s bread.

The late Julia Child, mom to the cook in us all, used to give guests tuna salad for lunch. She considered that a treat, and it was.

There is a lesson here: The truly secure cook enjoys the humble to the hilt.

RECIPES

Amy’s Mom’s Whole Lemon Pie

Amy Scherber is the woman behind Amy’s Bread in Manhattan. Since all the rind is used in this pie, you might want to consider using organic lemons. If you can’t get the sweeter Meyer lemons, regular ones will do. For grinding, a blender does a better job than a food processor.

1 large or 2 small Meyer lemons

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 (9-inch) unbaked piecrust

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash lemon, trim off ends, and cut into eighths lengthwise. Remove seeds and trim off any thick pith.

2. Place lemons in blender. Puree on high until finely pulverized.

3. Add eggs and sugar and blend again.

4. Add soft butter and vanilla and blend again until fully combined and smooth.

5. Pour filling into prepared piecrust. Bake for 40 minutes, or until center is set but still slightly soft. Cool completely before serving. Makes 1 pie.