Читать книгу Baked Italian - Yzabetta Sativa - Страница 6

Introduction

Growing up in the Italian section of Montréal, I developed an affinity for Italian food at a young age. Pasta always made a great main dish for my brothers with their insatiable appetites, and the agreeable starch made for a healthy athletic diet. For me it was always the sauces that could magically turn an insipid dish of dough into a magnificent meal.

I grew up with two biological brothers and five foster brothers and they all played hockey. Athletes benefit the most from the amount of carbohydrates they have stored in their body, and the fact that pasta is so easy to cook in large amounts meant that it was perfect for our family. For this reason we had some form of pasta at least three times a week. All the boys loved Italian food and it was the first food my mom learned to cook, so the other four days a week we often had other Italian dishes, too.

We all grew up together in the ’70s and early ’80s. We all smoked pot with one apparatus or another, and I know for a fact that when it came to stoner food my brothers always preferred Italian, hands down. It was a very communal event when we’d all crowd in the kitchen at night after smoking ourselves silly, some of us working on the sauce, some making the other courses and some on guard, keeping us all quiet so we didn’t wake up our parents. Other times, the parents were out coaching hockey teams that none of my brothers played on so it was relatively easy to get away with these meals.

In the kitchen we’d laugh a lot, as one is prone to doing after getting high. We’d cook, we’d eat together and then we’d all hang out in the basement while one played a beat up old acoustic and a few others would screech out Rush tunes. These half-assed jam sessions make up some of my fondest memories of my wasted adolescence.

Recently, I gathered all my brothers together over a big Italian meal (what else?) and we reminisced about these times. We all agreed that while it was textbook dysfunction in many regards, we all remember those fabulous Italian meals with high regard. For me, they are much fonder memories than the ones I have of spending ten months of the year in a cold, rusty ice rink drinking the most god-awful cups of what should not be called hot chocolate out of vending machines.

This collection of all my brothers’ favorite recipes is a celebration of my misspent youth and all the wonderful dishes we shared together. Many of the recipes are classics straight out of my mom’s grease-stained recipe box. Some of these recipes she cooked over and over, some of them come from the brothers’ kitchens, and some of them have my own personal flourishes on them. Buon appetito!