Cooking with My Sisters Part 1

Cooking with my sisters.

One hundred years of family recipes, from Bari to Big Stone Gap.

Adriana Trigiani and Mary Yolanda Trigiani with Lucia Anna.

For our family:.

Those who have come before us, Those who are with us now, And those who will follow, most especially.

Anna Christina, Matthew, Luca, Lucia, and Mary Alessandra.

Foreword.

How We Found the Recipes.

My four sisters and I love to read and we love to entertain. If you're like us, you can curl up as easily with a cookbook as you would the latest hot novel. In these pages we share the family treasure that inspires both pa.s.sions: the recipes that were handed down to us and the stories that have sustained and enriched us. In our family, food is history and legends are nourishment.

Like many other women of our generation, we learned to cook by watching our mother and our grandmothers. The women of our family, though, tapped the ancient roots of three Italian regions while they adapted their recipes with American innovation and ingredients. From the farm regions of Bari in Puglia to the mountains of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with winding journeys in between, their legacy reflects the diversity of our Italian experience through a prism of all-American family life.

It takes determination to hang on to old traditions in a new world, and our people had plenty of that. One model of fort.i.tude was Grandmom Yolanda "Viola" Trigiani, our paternal grandmother. She was a direct, bombastic personality (folks used to say, "Here comes the Venetian," when she walked down the street) who became reticent when someone asked for a recipe. She loved secrets and surprises, and both were the fruits of her kitchen.

Grandmom and Adri at a party; Gram borrowed my earrings, fabulous fakes.

After she died, we were cleaning out that kitchen. The oven broke and needed repairs. When my husband pulled it out of the wall, a flurry of small papers flew out from underneath. Caught between the bottom of the oven and the overstuffed drawer just under it were little sc.r.a.ps of paper that floated around like confetti. These sc.r.a.ps bore Grandmom's familiar script. At first, I wondered if Grandmom had been a secret poet like Emily d.i.c.kinson, or whether she had stashed love letters from a handsome suitor. No, she had tucked away something of even greater importance: recipes.

I called my sister Lucia Anna immediately to tell her about my discovery, and she was as surprised as I was. (She can be counted on to be precise and methodical; she's a lawyer and had cataloged many of Grandmom's recipes already, thinking we had Viola's complete oeuvre.) Not only had Viola hidden recipes in her own kitchen, she even had written some of them in code so they could not be stolen or copied! What kind of clandestine culinary operation was she running, anyway?

When we found the recipes, we also found poems and lyrics that Grandmom had written down to read and remember: Here's a sample.

Grandmom was no traditional "nonna with the cookie jar." She was a working woman who owned her own blouse mill with her husband. She grew up on a farm, so she knew how to hunt, plant, and pluck. We called her "Granny Get Your Gun" because she was a crack shot with a rifle. (She had an abiding irritation with the groundhogs that populated her lawn, and she let them know it. Right between the eyes. When the 1980s rolled around, we renamed her "Grambo," an homage to fellow Italian Sylvester Stallone of the Rambo movies.) Grandmom's cooking was hearty, and she entertained often. Growing up, we were her a.s.sistants in the kitchen. This collection includes recipes Grandmom learned as a young girl, plus notes she took down in her own hand from her in-laws. There are even recipes from friends, scrawled hurriedly on c.o.c.ktail napkins. In most of them Grandmom wrote down the ingredients but rarely specified the amounts or the techniques of how to make them. Whether this was designed to protect her secrets or because she was being creative, or both, I can't be sure. She worked in her kitchen with great gusto and unlimited energy. And since Grandmom loved a party, her cooking took on a special aura when she was preparing a meal for guests. Her enthusiasm and drive were contagious.

Typical Grandmom. Never one to heap too much salt or guilt, as either could ruin a meal.

When our mother, Ida Bonicelli, met our father, Anthony Trigiani, she discovered that her family was pretty much the opposite of Dad's in every way, including cooking. Mom's mother, Lucia, called Lucy at her request upon her arrival to America, was a gentle soul who never raised her voice. She believed that when there is angst at the dinner table, food turns to poison as soon as it's eaten. Grandma Lucy and Grandpa Carlo (we never knew him; he died when Mom was eight years old) were from the Lombardian province of Bergamo. Generally, Alpine Italians are dignified and steadfast in demeanor. This was an apt description of Lucy, in the kitchen and out. She cooked simply yet with great attention to taste; the Bonicelli appet.i.te was smaller but no less oriented to regional traditions and quality values. Cooking was not Lucy's only talent, as she was a renowned seamstress, but as in everything else she did, her attention to detail was eye-catching. I can remember the fresh pasta set out on towels and racks in her spare room, each piece uniform and s.p.a.ced evenly for drying. Feather-light gnocchi, hearty polenta, and fresh, well-seasoned vegetables were her specialties. Her use of spices and herbs in original ways was the hallmark of her style.

Lucy Bonicelli at her kitchen table in Chisholm, Minnesota. She always said, "A navy-and-white dress can go anywhere-it's a cla.s.sic."

In Lombardy, the dishes were built around starches, lightly b.u.t.tered or creamed, and roasted meats and vegetables, followed by fruit, when it was available, or light cookies. Grandma Lucy brought this style of cooking with her from Italy, and it shaped the meals prepared in the Bonicelli home when my mom was growing up. This was a significant contrast to the style of my father's family, where Pugliese traditions dominated. Even though she was Venetian, Grandmom Trigiani mastered many southern Italian dishes of the Puglia region, which she learned from her sisters-in-law. They taught her how to prepare pasta dishes in their style-bathed in a marinara sauce and served with pork, sausage, and meatb.a.l.l.s. And the main meal had to be followed by elaborate desserts made with heavy cream, sugar, fresh eggs, and b.u.t.ter.

The three regional Italian cuisines and family traditions intersected and merged after my parents married. Meals provided the time to connect after a day of hard work. Nutrition was as much a priority as variety. But there were the battleground dishes, like braciole, delicious beef bundles stuffed with basil, b.u.t.ter-soaked bread crumbs, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese: Dad liked pine nuts in the filling while Mom preferred none and spritzed fresh lemon on it instead. In this as well as other family standards, they compromised, ending up with inventive twists on authentic Italian recipes.

Bonicelli recipes were precise and clear. Trigiani recipes had to be deciphered or re-created from memory. In this environment, my four sisters, Mary Yolanda ("Mary"), Lucia Anna ("Pia"), Antonia ("Toni"), and Francesca ("Checka"), and I learned to value attention to detail and to be cooks who think on our feet. Not to mention territorial about owners.h.i.+p of the various legacies. Recipes and techniques were to be shared among us, but never outside the family, until now. Cooking with My Sisters brings you into our family kitchen, where the food we prepare is more than the center of our home-it means home. Here are our recipes and our stories. Buon appet.i.to!

Adriana Trigiani.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Pasta, or as We Called It, Maccheroni.

I am the third of seven children: five girls and two boys. Our kitchen was raucous, busy, and the center of our home. To say that we love good food and good conversation-and the occasional knock-down, drag-out "discussion"-is an understatement. It's in our DNA.

No one ever asks what it's like to be a middle child, whether my emotional needs were met in such a large group, or if I had my own room growing up. (The answers: everybody be happy, please; I hope so; and, of course not.) No, the first thing people ask me is, how on earth did your Italian family wind up in the coalfields of southwest Virginia? The short answer is that Dad established a blouse factory there. The long answer is the story we tell in this book.

Our forebears all hailed from hill towns-Roseto Valfortore in Puglia; Schilpario and Vilminore in Lombardy's Alps; Vittorio Veneto, just west of Venice-where the work ethic was fueled by hearty peasant food. The dishes we prepare today date back for centuries. And like the recipes that have been handed down for generations from mother to daughter, mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, and grandmother to granddaughter, our family's celebrations are anch.o.r.ed in the familiar stories and legends that are told and retold a tavola (at the table). As immigrants from the old country, the Trigianis and the Bonicellis were "vagabond-ohs," as my father used to say proudly. When they left Italy, they packed their native traditions with their needles and thread (making clothes was the family business on both sides) to come to the most exciting country on earth to make their way.

We tried very hard to be the Partridge Family in the early seventies.

It's no accident that we wound up in the mountains of Virginia. I believe our journey was fated centuries ago, when our ancestors made their decisions in rustic kitchens by old hearths with stews simmering slowly over the fire. We are country people, mountain dwellers. However, in culinary terms it was a leap as wide as the jump from macaroni and sauce to soup beans and cornbread. Making it even more complicated is the dynamic of a large family: Everyone in a big tribe has his or her own view of the events that form the family history.

True to her profession as a librarian, Mom will give you a perfectly honed set of directions. You can imagine the precision of her recipe file. Mom is also a master flower-show judge and a thirty-plus-year veteran of Big Stone Gap's Dogwood Garden Club, which means she can also set a lovely table with a blue-ribbon-quality flower arrangement in the center. Her perfectionism and attention to detail have been gifts to us. She was the first to record many of Grandmom Trigiani's recipes, so we were able to check Viola's Secret Files against Mom's copies.

* Mom says: "Grandma Lucy liked to follow her recipes. Grandmom Trigiani used a recipe only as a guideline or framework. If you watched her make something, it was slightly different every time. And if you asked her how much of something she was putting into a bowl, she would get impatient and ask, 'Why do you need the exact measurements?' "

Mary, my cowriter, likes to improvise from a recipe and be creative in a small dinner-party setting. She never quite got over the fact that six other people entered her s.p.a.ce in rapid, noisy progression.

* Mary says: "As the oldest, I'm still searching for peace, quiet, and reason. The chances of finding all are better in the intimate little meal (Bonicelli) versus the rococo extravaganza (Trigiani)."

Pia likes to share family dishes at big dinner parties. She enjoys entertaining and is the queen of warm hospitality.

* Pia says: "I love testing new recipes on my guests, but it's just as much fun for me to prepare the family favorites I've loved for so long."

Toni spent hours in the kitchen with Grandmom Trigiani, and she adores the family traditions. So she has the best perspective on the antics and anecdotes that color our family history. And she is pa.s.sing these along to our nieces and nephews on their level (at this writing, they're all four years old or under). It's no accident that Toni is their favorite auntie.

* Toni says: "After the kitchen, my favorite place in the house is wherever the kids are."

Francesca, who still answers to her childhood nickname, Checka, has invented brilliant shortcuts for many of our recipes, with delicious results. Like Mom (seven children, one right after the other) before her, Checka (three children, one right after the other, and at this writing, numero quattro on the way) has to get the food on the table fast, and it had better be tasty.

* Checka says: "Mom always reminds us that Italians know how to create dishes from whatever they have in their kitchens. It's certainly true in my house!"

From left to right: Grandmom, Pia, Mary, and Mom discuss how to cut the cake. We all remember that the storm blew over quickly.

And I like to create my own versions of the family favorites, studying the cla.s.sic recipes, reviewing mine, and then trying something new. I am proud to say that, while I'm a pretty good cook (after all, I was employed at the Mount Bethel Inn in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, one fateful summer in the early 1980s), my husband, Tim, learned the keystone dishes from Grandmom Trigiani (once she decided to accept him as my husband and started speaking to him directly).

Viola Trigiani: "But the Prince of Wales wouldn't be good enough for my granddaughters." And we all see what happened with the Prince of Wales. Lesson One: Never let a family member pick out your husband.

Grandmom Trigiani taught Mom to make tomato sauce. Now, this would seem a natural thing, mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, both wanting to please the man in the middle. But Grandmom wasn't big on in-laws; she was very clannish, suspicious of anybody "marrying in." Especially if she hadn't hand-selected the person. When Dad wrote to his parents from college and told them that he was going to marry Mom after graduation, Grandmom retained a detective (not a real one, a priest) to contact the Bonicellis' priest in Chisholm, Minnesota, and find out what kind of family Mom came from. When the priest reported back that Mom's people were of sterling character, Viola gave in and accepted the inevitable. (Later, I learned that Grandmom's own father had gone to their family priest to convince Viola not to marry a fellow she was seeing. The priest changed Grandmom's mind, which made the way for her to marry Michael A. Trigiani, our grandfather.) A family dynamic is born: Mary grins, Pia weeps, and Adri, in a high chair chews on a party horn and prays for better days.

* Mom says: "After Anthony was discharged from the army, after our first year of marriage, we moved to his hometown in Pennsylvania and lived our first year there in his parents' home. Grandmom taught me how to make maccheroni and meatb.a.l.l.s (in Italian, polpette) the way Anthony liked them; we hadn't eaten pasta that way in my home. This became a standard dish once a week for years to come, and as the family grew, so did the size of the pot."

When we moved to Big Stone Gap and encountered "spaghetti" in the Big Stone Gap Elementary School cafeteria for the first time, it was shocking. The noodles were boiled until you could see through them and then sloshed with sloppy joe mix, heavy on the ground hamburger. We did our best to swing the cafeteria staff toward authentic Eye-talian (as they put it), but we gave up when they insisted that all spaghetti sauce needs is a base of chopped meat, a cup of ketchup, and a shot of chili powder. Our credentials as the only Italians in the school held very little sway.

At home, we made our own pasta several times a year and it was always an event. First, the wooden kitchen table was scrubbed. Second, Mom did an inspection for cleanliness, presence of ingredients, and accuracy of measurements. Finally, Dad put on an ap.r.o.n and would "go ethnic." He did this at every opportunity anyway, like dressing up for Halloween parties (calling himself The G.o.dfather of Poplar Hill, our neighborhood), but he became more Italian with greater gusto when he could toss around some flour. The rest of us got to critique each other's style and rate of production. (Mary hid in her room; she couldn't take the performance pressure.) Anthony J. Trigiani, our dad, with his first set of wheels.

The Pasta Making Team consisted of Toni, Checka, and our brother Michael. Occasionally Pia and our brother Carlo would join in, but the core group was pretty solid. Mom observed, mostly as a buffer to Dad, and to make sure that nothing that wasn't in the recipe wound up in the dough.

* Toni says: "I prepped the kitchen and got the 'tools' for the day ready. Dad was an in-and-out overseer. He would check in at the start of the proceedings and watch the dough being made, and when the cranking started, he always got the first turn to monitor how the dough was working. Once he was satisfied with the proceedings, he would take a nap. When his nap was over, he would come in the kitchen and find the strands of spaghetti drying on the rack. He was as proud of those noodles as he was of a straight-A report card."

Dough for Homemade Pasta (Pasta Fatta in Casa) SERVES 4 TO 6.

8 ounces unbleached, all-purpose flour 1 level teaspoon salt 1 egg 1 tablespoon olive oil 4 tablespoons hot water Sift the flour and salt onto a large cutting board and make a well in the center. Break the egg into the well and add the oil and water. Using a fork, beat the egg, oil, and water, slowly adding flour from the edges of the crater. Continue to work in all the flour. When it becomes too difficult to use a fork, use your hands to finish mixing.

Flour the board and knead until the dough is fully mixed and does not stick to your fingers. If it sticks, just add a little flour to your hands and keep working it in. Make a ball and place in a bowl. Rub olive oil on the dough, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for at least 15 minutes.

When ready to cut, take a piece from the bowl, knead, and roll out flat.

Now you're ready to make any kind of pasta.

Instructions: Using a machine to make noodle shapes,

such as spaghetti, fettucine, and capellini

When using a machine, decide what style pasta you want to make. Sometimes the size of the noodle will determine the thickness of the sheet you need coming out of the roller end. (Sometimes it helps to give a sheet a quick press with the rolling pin before inserting it in the machine.) Once you roll a piece of dough to the desired thickness, you insert the resulting sheet into the farther end of the machine, which makes the uniform strips. You need to have someone cutting the strips horizontally as they come out of the machine, or they'll be a foot long. Lay them flat to dry or hang them on a towel rack to dry. Sprinkle with flour to help the drying and to keep them from sticking together.

Instructions: Making stuffed pasta forms, such as ravioli When making pasta by hand, you must keep the dough very soft and sticky. We rarely made a small stuffed pasta, and when we did, we used these little ravioli molds that look like ice cube trays. You lay a thin sheet of pasta over the entire mold, "lining" each indentation with the dough, then placing a small bit of filling in each indentation. Then you lay a top sheet of the dough over that and trim away all the excess around each indentation. Then you let them dry for about a day, turning them over so they dry uniformly and don't mold. After that, you can refrigerate or freeze them.

You can always do this without the pasta form by placing "stations" of your filling along a long, narrow sheet of dough, cutting them between each station and sealing them with a serrated pizza cutter.

A Tip from Toni: While you're rolling out one piece of dough, keep the rest covered, preferably in a deep bowl, so that it doesn't dry out. Immediately cut the dough you just flattened into the shape you want and sprinkle with flour. Lay it out to dry so it doesn't stick.

A Tip from Mary: If you're buying pasta, look for those produced from traditional molds. (It will tell you on the package; if it's not there, a.s.sume it's modern equipment.) You'll see a real difference-a rougher surface that can grab the sauce and, therefore, more flavor. Plus, they hold their shape longer. I like the Francis Ford Coppola pasta, because he bought the Morisi factory in Brooklyn, where the noodles are still made with the original machines used over a century ago. The pasta has a chewy consistency, which is what makes it alla rusticana. If you prefer a lighter, smoother texture, the De Cecco and Barilla pastas are the best.

We didn't start calling maccheroni pasta until the 1980s. Even though Mom grew up calling it pasta asciutta, we grew up calling it "the macs." Today, we prefer the heartier shapes of southern Italian pastas. They hold the sauce better and are easy to get to the al dente state.

Checka or Toni would feed the dough into the machine, and Michael would turn the crank. (Think Charlton Heston in the galley scenes from Ben Hur.) Typically, they would repeat this flattening process two more times, adjusting the machine's setting until the pasta reached the desired thickness. (In humid weather, it's more difficult because you have to use more flour.) All the while Michael had to keep the cranking motion constant. When the dough was finally ready to turn into the noodle of choice, they had to adjust the machine to the noodle-making mode. Then Michael or Toni had to be ready to cut the noodles to an appropriate length as the strings came out of the machine.

* Toni says: "Michael always turned the crank and I fed the dough through, because I knew that flattening the dough and forming the noodles required a gentle, consistent motion, not choppy like Checka's. Michael's technique was always smooth."

When the noodles were cut, we would dry them on a mini towel rack and on clean flour-sack towels in the dining room. At that point, Tiger, our cat, had to be quarantined upstairs, because if you had the towel rack on the floor, the noodles were in swatting range.

Around the time of Tiger's arrival, Dad had detected more infighting than usual among the troops, so in addition to a traditional blessing at the beginning of every meal, he had us all learn the Prayer of Saint Francis, which begins with "Lord make me an instrument of thy peace ... where there is hatred, let me sow love" and it goes on from there, pretty much covering the territory of good will, kindness, and sacrifice. We said it every night. In this way, Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals, became the patron saint of the Seven Samurai.

When we got Tiger as a kitten, it was in late fall, and she was supposed to sleep outside because Mom just wasn't an animal person. One night, it got really cold, and one by one, we went to Dad to beg him to get Mom to let Tiger sleep inside. Mom was standing her ground. Then Dad asked her, "Ida, what would Saint Francis do?" Mom replied, "Anthony, Saint Francis didn't have seven kids and you to cook and clean for." (Don't worry, Tiger came in from the cold that night and for the remainder of her days. But she never climbed up on a table or got near our food.) Back to The Making of the Pasta. Once the noodles were dry, we used old department-store dress boxes lined with wax paper to store them.

* Checka says: "I always got the job of cleaning the pasta machine-a tedious a.s.signment. This required the use of a paint brush, per Mom's standards for cleanliness, and always resulted in a final inspection to ensure that the machine was in a pristine state for storage."

Checka maintains that she always got what Dad called scullery jobs because she was the youngest. Not true. All the girls had to deal with the "scullery" moniker and the attendant duties. Which was an endless bone of contention and generated enough agita to fuel a union strike. Without fail, if we had company for dinner, Dad would find it amusing to announce that it was time for Scullery to leave the table and wash the dishes by hand. This little routine, generally embellished for guests, got to be particularly irritating after we all moved out, got jobs, and started supporting ourselves.

* Checka says: "When it was Adri's turn to do the dishes, she would begin a discussion about an extremely controversial topic-usually politics. An animated argument would ensue, then end with Adri standing up and making an eloquent statement, often involving tears, followed by a theatrical exit. Pia, Toni, or I-not Mary, because she stood her ground-ended up doing the dishes those nights."

* Toni says: " 'Nanny' Julia Isaac, our adopted southern grandmother, finally suggested to Dad that he get Mom an automatic dishwasher. Dad replied, 'What for? I have five right here.' "

Dad eventually gave in to the concept of an automatic dishwasher entering our kitchen (we think he performed the Scullery routine just to get a rise out of us), but the tradition of the women doing the cooking, serving themselves after the men had started eating, and doing all the cleaning prevailed at Grandmom Trigiani's house until she went to her final reward. Grandmom's sister, Aunt Lavinia Spadoni, says she was like this from the get-go. Grandmom was a s.e.xist from day one and had no shame when it came to her belief that men were superior beings whom women were born to serve and obey, at least until you snared one. Of course, you weren't supposed to look at one during your adolescence. But the minute a granddaughter turned eighteen, it was time to start fixing her up with a male of appropriate Italian lineage. Never mind his s.e.xual inclination or habits; if he was Italian and had a pulse, Viola felt he was fair game. A woman could win the n.o.bel Prize for peace, but she wasn't complete unless she made it to the altar for a full-blown marriage.

We thought the pressure was off after Grandmom pa.s.sed away, but we were wrong. One of Viola's friends came up to Mary at Dad's memorial service in 2003, six and a half years after Viola's death, and shared the following: "Ooh, your grandmother used to talk about you all the time. She wondered if you'd ever find a husband."

If you were making pasta at Grandmom Trigiani's house, you invariably got snagged into the making of cavatelli, or chickadays in the Roseto dialect. (A word about dialect: There are many words for some of these dishes that we have spent years trying to decipher. They sound like Italian words but cannot be found in the Italian dictionary. In this case, Mary thinks chickaday came from the verb ciccare, which means to boil to the point of anger. Which is what cavatelli do after a few minutes in the hot water.) Cavatelli is a small piece of dough, and the Roseto variation requires an intricate rolling technique that many Trigianis have tried but few have perfected-at least in Viola Trigiani's eyes.

Like the making of noodles with the machine, the making of chickadays required specific people for specific roles. Grandmom rolled the dough through the machine to flatten it, but she kept it thicker for this kind of pasta. (The same flattening could be done with a rolling pin.) Then she would cut the flattened dough into strips. A team of designated "flickers" would be at the ready; they would take a small piece of the dough and roll it back and forth once on the work surface, with the forefinger and middle finger, to create a tiny roll of pasta.

In the beginning, before fingers got tired, we competed to see who could make the most without s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. This was not for the weak of heart or those lacking dexterity. If your pieces weren't uniform, both in your own pile or as they compared to other piles, Grandmom went a little vertical and you had to start over. Checka usually lasted the longest because she refrained from complaining, although she was hyper-compet.i.tive. She always wanted to see if she could create the largest pile of uniform pieces, and she was willing to sit there for a couple of extra hours to do it.

* Checka says: "What my sisters have never understood about me is that I did as I was told. If someone wanted me to flick the pasta, I flicked the pasta, and for as long as it would take. I didn't complain-I kept the peace-but of course this has been interpreted as compet.i.tive."

Cavatelli (Chickadays) SERVES 10 TO 12.

Use the same ingredients as in the basic dough recipe.

From the finished, chilled dough, cut a piece about the size of your fist. On a floured surface, knead and roll until about inch thick. Cut rolled dough into strips about inch wide and cut into pieces about inch long.

Working on the same floured surface, place your index and middle fingers on a piece and roll toward yourself until it curls, then flip away from yourself, keeping it hollow in the center. Lightly flour the finished pieces and place in a dry area.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add salt to the boiling water. Drop in the pasta and keep stirring, to keep the pieces from sticking together, for about 8 minutes. Remove the pieces with a slotted spoon as they float to the surface, placing in a warm bowl.

Toss with the sauce of your choice and sprinkle with Parmigiano-Reggiano to taste.

Grandmom Trigiani's father, "Nonno" Davide Perin, was from a farming family in the Veneto region. By the time we arrived on the scene, Nonno had snowy white hair, a matching mustache, and twinkling blue eyes. When he came from Italy, he worked hard to buy a beautiful piece of land to farm in the foothills of the Poconos. As children, our dad, his brothers and sister, and the Perin cousins often went to help with the harvesting. It's hard to believe, but in his youth, Nonno Perin worked that farm at night and mined slate in the local quarries by day. To hear Grandmom tell it, they had nothing. Whether or not that was true, they respected their livestock, used every part of an animal, and prided themselves on frugality. They wasted nothing and had undying respect for the value of a dollar.

* Pia says: "Visiting Nonno Perin was like a trip to a different country. In the spring, there were ducklings and chicks pecking around the yard, all fluffy and sweet. Nonno always gave you a big kiss, something awe-inspiring due to the scratchy mustache. He loved to watch us with the animals. One time, he took me into the barn to see a baby bull, who promptly kicked me into a manure pile!"

Easter on Nonno's farm in Delabole, Pennsylvania. Front row, left to right: Adri, Mary, Toni (bending to pet the dog), and Pia; back row, Nonno, Michael, and Mom.

Dad had a lifelong devotion to good food, and Grandmom had only herself to hold accountable. Dad was the first son. Rumor has it that when he was born, none of his older cousins was allowed to enter the baby's room or touch him. The fact that her first child was a boy was an important accomplishment for Grandmom, who still stung from the comments her parents used to get because she, their first child, was a girl. So Dad got the royal treatment throughout his childhood. By day, when Grandmom was at the blouse factory, Dad stayed with a cousin. This lady made him a fresh zabaglione-a sort of an egg custard-every morning, "with an egg plucked fresh from the chicken." On the weekends, the pasta dishes reigned. Sometimes Grandmom made her own jumbo sh.e.l.ls or the manicotti tubes, but as she liked to remind us, the most important part was the filling. The ricotta filling our family uses works for the large stuffed sh.e.l.ls, manicotti, or homemade ravioli.

When we first moved to Big Stone Gap, Mom had to "import" ricotta from the north. There were a lot of things we couldn't find in southwestern Virginia in the 1970s. You could forget polenta meal, even though corn bread was a staple in the south, and you wouldn't find veal, prosciutto (air-cured Italian ham), fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, or dried cod (baccala). When Dad came back from a business trip up north with a stash of prosciutto he had a photographic memory of how much he had left in the wrapper before putting it back in the refrigerator. G.o.d save the child who had the courage to take a strip without asking first.

Grandmom Trigiani's Ricotta Filling for Stuffed Pastas MAKES 8 MANICOTTI OR 8 STUFFED Sh.e.l.lS.