cooking
Sicilian, her mother's way
I cook everything
my mother's way. She cooks her mother's way. And we both learned from
our mothers-in-law. Our recipes are family recipes and they carry history
with them.
The smell of food
surrounded us when we were growing up. In the afternoon I'd be in my family's
bakery. All the cooking is done on the premises, so I was surrounded by
baking smells. We lived over the store, so I'd go upstairs at the end
of the day to the smell of dinner cooking. The table was always
loaded with food, stuffed squid in
tomato sauce, my favorite cauliflower
with bucatini and on
the side baked roasted peppers,
and stuffed artichokes. But my mother looked like she hadn't done anything.
She had a great deal of pride and dignity and always looked like she had
just put on new clothes. In
the Italian tradition, we always serve fish on Christmas Eve. I love fish,
so it was one of my favorite meals. Mom would make lobster
in red sauce to serve with linguine. Oh, was that good! She'd
serve that with cuttlefish. Cuttlefish is like squid, but it's bigger
and plumper, so it's tastier than squid and a little more tender. And
cardoon. I insist on cooking
cardoon, because I'm afraid the recipes will get lost.
ABOUT
ANNIE:
You can meet Annie if you stop by De Robertis. In addition to inheriting
her mother's recipes, she also inherited her dignity.
DE ROBERTIS:
The store remains as it was when it first opened in 1904,and has been
used in movies of Woody Allen, Spike Lee and others.176 First Ave. (between
10th & 11th streets) New York, NY 10009 212-674-7137 1-800-EST-1904
www.derobertiscaffe.com
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