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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1977)
tussday, march 1, 1977 third dimension "itt An n At By .E.IK. . . Every Sunday after Mass my parents rounded up the five kids, packed us into the station wagon and drove to my Sicilian grandparents home in the Little Italy section of Omaha. It was there that my sister, brother and I learned the art of Italian eating. For us, even today the emphasis is on the eating, not the cooking of the meal. The act of cooking is merely the means to the pleasurable end of eating a good filling meal with family and friends. Italian cooking in my family is an act of love. Refusal of food is an insult, or will cause a call to the doctor be cause, "You must be sick." As a result, we are champion spaghetti eaters and life time members of Weight Watchers. After eating spicy Italian foods weekly for twenty years, I not only love it-I'm hooked. I'm convinced tomato sauce, not blood, is pulsing through my veins. A week of abstinence from Italian food will send me to the cupboard sniffing for minced garlic and bay leaves. Prepackaged spaghetti sauce like Ragu, eaten at this time or any other time could be fatal. If the desire for true Italian food sends you into a spin, eat regularly at a favorite Italian restaurant or make your own Italian foods at home. Pasta Cu Succo (spaghetti with meat sauce) 1 lb. beef 1 lb. pork (country rib cut) oil 14 medium onion 1 bay leaf 12 oz. can of tomato paste 1 tsp. sweet basil Brown the beef and pork in oil with chopped onions and bay leaf. Add tomato paste, 3 cans of water and sweet basil. Sprinkle on salt, pepper and garlic salt to taste. Let sauce boil over medium heat to medium low heat for 1 hours or until meat is done. Italian sausage or meatballs may be added or used in place of the meats above. Remember there are only two kinds of food, Italian and Italian So Manja! (eat) By QJci Early each morning, when the air is still damp and cool, a man wheels a small wooden cart down the cobble stone walk. He stops before a door, turns toward his cart and draws out a long, thin loaf of golden French bread, a baguette. Then, propping this against the side of the door or in the projecting window sill, he continues to repeat the process at yet another house. Soon, a head will peak ar&and the door or through the shutters, the bread will be drawn in, and one of the important ceremonies of daily French life, the meal, will begin. Breakfast is perhaps the only light meal in France. Classified as "continental," it typically consists of a large cup or bowl of cafe au lait (half coffee, half hot milk) or chocolate (hot chocolate) and break of some sort. The baguette, or "baton," named for its long, thin appearance, is perhaps the most common bread, costing less than 25 cents a loaf. Broken into thick pieces and spread with butter and jam, this crusty bread makes a delicious accompaniment to a hot drink. You can buy French bread in bakeries, and in some grocery stores in the United States, although it usually lacks the hard curst of truly fresh bread. A good sub- stitute are the round, crusty loaves of white bread some times available in bakeries. Simply cut thick slabs of the bread, and serve them with butter and jam. A more refined French breakfast, however, might in clude croissants or flaky crescent rolls. Croissants are said to have originated in Budapest, in 1686, the year attacking Turks dug underground passages into the city. According to the story, Austrian bakers working during the night heard the noise, and alerted the city. Their reward: the privilege of making a special pastry shaped in a crescent, like the emblem decorating the Ottoman flag. Today, croissants are a French staple, available each morniHg in any bakery or cafe'. - They can be bought in the States in the refrigerator section of grocery stores and take only a few minutes to bake. Try mem with jam in the morning, rather than eating them at night as most American families do. The Cafe' au lait, too, is easily prepared. Make very strong black coffee. When it is nearly ready, heat milk in a saucepan. Just before it begins to boil, remove it from the heat. Pour the coffee to fill one-third to one-half of your cup. Add the milk to fill. . A richer alternative to the basic preparation is to whip the hot milk half a minute in a blender before adding it to the coffee. The result is a frothy, rich-tasting drink. At about noon, nearly all shops close in France. Every one takes off for a two-hour-long lunchbreak. Lunch in provincial towns and in the country is the main meal of the day. The French eat in courses, often with a clean plate for each one, separating salty foods from sweet ' The meal usually begins with an hors d'oeuvre, any- 5 thing from smoked salmon for those with rich taste, to a place of erudite's (raw vegetables, such &s grated carrots, marinated cucumber, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs served with mayonnaise), is a simple pate (usually a liver paste eated with bread). Wine accompanies any meal. Table wines in France may cost under a dollar a bottle. You may find my family's variation of this recipe a tastier version. Cheat, Ham and Onion Pie Crush about cup saltine crackers with a rolling pin. Tost them lightly in a small bowl with 4 tbspt. melted butter. Spread along a pie plate bottom and tides, patting a fairly solid, but not thick layer with the palm of your hand. Cook 2 cups sliced onions in 2 tbsps. butter over medium heat until tender, but not brown. Spread them over the bottom of the pie crust. Chop cup left-over ham .HO small chunks, and spread them over the onions, Then grate X cup medium sharp chedder cheese, and spread it over the ham layer. Beat 3 eggs, VA tsp. salt, V tsp. pepper, and 1 cup milk to gether. Pour over the pie. Sprinkle parsley lightly over the top. Bake at about 325-350 degrees for 35-45 minutes, until edges are golden, and the pie looks firm. Let set one minute before eating. In France, a guest often brings dessert from the neigh borhood patisserie, or pastry shop. The various fruit tarts and cakes are meant to please the eye and the palage. . Fresh fruit, too, makes a fine dessert. In large cities, however, the "quicky" lunch a l'ame'r icaine replaces this drawn-out meal for many. Venders and cafe's serve hoagie-type sandwiches on French bread, and open-faced sandwiches of broiled ham and cheese, called croque monsieurs. Dinner, then is the maiii courts of the day. A lighter dinner, Breton Crepes, comes from Brittany, in northwest France. The meal may include the Breton dinner crepes, salad, hard cider, and dessert crepes. The Bretons, a distinctive group in France, have their own Celtic-sounding language, customs, and a music k which often resembles that of Scotch Bagpipes. Their food, while not particularly renowned among gastronomes (gourmets), often appeals to the English or American taste. To fully appreciate your Breton meal, get out the checkered tablecloth, a candle, and put some instrumental music record on the stereo, and you're ready for a culinary adventure. The salad, this time, can precede or accompany the meal. For a tastier variation on the plain lettuce salad, . try: Salade-pommes de terregruyers Separate leaves of Boston lettuce, leaving each leaf whole, wash, and place in individual wooden bowls. Boil a potato, drain, let cool, and cut in chunks over lettuce. Grate Swiss cheese over the top of each salad, and add dressing. To prepare the dinner crepes, you need a shallow, iron frying pan, preferably one on which you have not done a lot of cooking, because crepes tend to be tempermental. It is best to keep the pan solely for crepes to keep the surface smooth because crepes are thin and tear easily. The pan should be oiled with bacon fat or cooking oil. There are several basic crepe recipes. Most are with regular flour. However, Breton dinner crepes, sometimes called galetous or crepes au ble' noir, are made with buck wheat flour. Buckwheat Crepes (Crepes au bie' noir) Put 2 tbsps. olive oil in a bowl with two small glasses of brandy, 2 pinches of salt, 2 cups sour milk, 3 cups buckwheat flour. Mix. Add eight whole eggs individually and mix well to avoid lumps. Cook as directed for regular crepes. Crepes can be stacked between sheets of waxed paper and stored,. They can be oven-heated or set back over heat in the pan for a minute. Crepes can be filled, and rolled, or simply spread flat with a filling on top. Fold up the four edges. Suggested Crepe Filings: -Put a thin slice of ham over the flat crepe in the pan, and top with grated Swiss cheese. Heat through, and slide onto a plate. Fold up four corners, and place a pat of butter in the middle. For variation break an egg in the middle, and let it cook lightly for a minute. -Spread flat crepe with cooked, chopped spinach and grated Swiss cheese. -Roll up with hot seafood inside. -Slice flat, warm crepe onto plate, top with cooked chunks of sausage apple and raisins. Add a second flat crepe on ton. Breto.t repes are served best on earthenware plates, with hard cider served in pottery cups. Dessert crepes or ice cream finish the meal off well. 2D
