“A sandwich,” my poor neighbor admitted. “And…an apple.”
“And a savory?” I pushed further. “What is it? Doritos? Funyuns? Fritos?”
“The…the…sandwich is the savory,” she barely whispered.
“THE SANDWICH IS NOT THE SAVORY!” I exploded. “The sandwich is the sandwich. She needs a sweet and a savory to round out her meal. How else do you hide your love for her?”
“I made cookies once,” Gemesa tried to recover. “I went to Sur la Table in Portland to get the right scoop so they’d be the same size. I drove up there and back in the same night!”
“Take this for your lunch tomorrow, sweetheart,” I said as I handed Morgan the fake Twinkie. “For one day, you’ll know that someone loves you. And that someone is the lady with the spray cheese and marshmallow fluff in her hair who lives in the dirty house next door.”
“It’s not that dirty,” Morgan replied.
“Your scope of vision is barely thirty inches off the ground, honey, barely beagle height,” I said, patting her on the head. “If that’s all I saw of my house, I’d think I was a better person, too.”
I went back to work in my Twinkie chamber. While I felt that I had come very, very close to the magic I had experienced at the bakery in Manhattan, my quest was not complete. If the last recipe I tried was the closest I got, then that was fine. But I had to try one more time, and without thermometers, sifters, and the folding. Fine if I wanted to make a soufflé, but I didn’t need that in my day-to-day survival.
I also posted my attempt on Facebook, eager to let people know that I was going to do my part to make the world a better place. While I was met with lots of encouragement, I also found some naysayers.
“You know they sell them at the store,” the movie critic from the newspaper I used to work at commented.
It took all my restraint to not unfriend and block him and then report his comment as harassment or obscenity.
“Yes, Bill,” I typed furiously, “I do know that they SELL THEM AT THE STORE. Do you not recall the Great Twinkie Famine of 2012? Do you not? It was a time of desperation and debasement. I shall never return to the creature I was then a-gain.”
I complained to my husband that people didn’t comprehend my venture and were under the false assumption that history could never repeat itself.
“I can never go back to that,” I said simply. “It was a horrible, dark time that I’d really rather forget. The things I did. The things!”
“I am with you,” he agreed. “I only heard what you were doing to that Little Debbie and that was enough for me.”
“That’s right!” I snapped. “Bring me back to my lowest point when I was nothing but an animal. Do not ever mention that name in this house again. I have my pride back now, you know.”
“Please go make some more shitty Twinkies,” he said with a sigh and then turned away.
This time, I made a list of all of the pros and cons of each attempt: what worked, what didn’t. Did it really need the cream of tartar? (What is cream of tartar?) Did the mass egg immersion of the third batch taste too—dare I say it—eggy? Did I want texture more than I wanted flavor? Could I have them both? What I discovered was that I wanted something easy and Twinkie-like, with minimal ingredients.
The fourth attempt was nothing short of a shot in the dark. I got a yellow cake mix, used two eggs to increase density, and then added a half a cup of oil for a softer texture, and a half a cup of water. And voilà. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was pretty close. Closer than I had been before, at least. For the filling I simply mixed together one jar of marshmallow fluff, one cup of powdered sugar, four tablespoons of butter, a pinch of salt, and two tablespoons of heavy cream. AND IT WAS PERFECT. As I marched them over across the street to my neighbor Ed’s house, I was anticipating a favorable review.
And boy, did I get one. He jumped right onto the plate, popped one in his mouth, then another.
“Oh my god,” he said, almost closing his eyes. “Those are so good. Oh my god!”
“I know I barged in, but I’m so happy you like them!” I said with joy.
“No worries,” he said. “I harvested my pot plant last week and now I’m separating all the buds. It’s the dirty work of being a drug lord.”
“You’re high right now, huh?” I asked, to which he nodded as he chewed. “I hope that doesn’t somehow magically confuse the taste of my Twinkie and a real Twinkie.”
“Oh, no. No, no,” he assured me. “No way. These are incredible. These are so good. And I’ve never had a Twinkie before, so no problem!”
I nodded behind my grimace.
“Are these all for me?” he asked as I handed him the whole plate.
“Yep,” I replied. “And expect to see me tomorrow. If you think those are good, I’m going to blow your mind when you see me write your name in bacon-flavored cheese.”
And then it struck me: With a little bit of work and some experimentation, that would make the perfect savory Twinkie filling. I raced back to the house and got my hand mixer out.
“Nicholas just called me,” my sister said the moment after I picked up the phone. “You won’t believe what he said!”
“I already told him that syphilis was making a huge comeback, so don’t blame me,” I shot quickly.
“What? No, he was making a frozen pizza in his apartment,” she continued. “And he called me with a question, because he said the directions on the box said to preheat the oven to four hundred degrees, but then told him to cook it for fifteen minutes. And he didn’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He was stuck. He said, ‘I don’t know how to make this thing. The directions say “cook for fifteen minutes,” but the knob only says “bake” or “broil.” Not “cook.” ’ ”
“This would have never happened if you had girls,” I said, shaking my head. “Never.”
Now, honestly, I don’t care if that’s a sexist thing to say; I don’t care if it’s too gender-specific or stereotypic; it’s true. Had my sister had girlfolk, she wouldn’t have been laughing at my niece at the same level we were laughing at my nephew now. He’s a smart kid. A National Honors student, got a full scholarship to the honors college at his chosen university, and has claimed business and finance as his double major. Still has over a 4.0 GPA. Kid’s no dummy.
Except when it comes to survival. And, when I thought about that, it hit me: My two sisters had three sons, three boys none of us had prepared for life outside the womb, who were breathing and speaking and existing due to sheer luck. It wasn’t Nick’s fault that he didn’t know that “cook” and “bake” were the same things, according to Whirlpool and Kenmore.
Had I ever once dragged Nick or my other nephews into the kitchen and said, “Today is the day you learn about our family. Today is the day I pass on to you the legacy that I learned as a child, which you will pass on to your children. Today we are going to make a meatball”?
While my nephews were very interested in eating, they never once showed any interest or curiosity when it came to the regular rotation of meals that were placed before them. And, as a matter of fact, neither had their mother. She will still call me and ask me how to make a chicken cutlet, which in an Italian family is like saying, “How do you open a box of Pop-Tarts?” I don’t remember ever learning; I just knew.
Cooking is an important part of an Italian family. We like to feed people, and if you don’t leave my house at least five pounds heavier than when you walked in, that means you did not have a good time and the food sucked as bad as the buffet at a Mormon picnic. There’s only one thing you can call an Italian girl who can’t cook, and that’s a nun. “Go marry Jesus,” her family will say. “He doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore.”
Nana learned to cook at the side of her grandmother, who she went to live with after Nana’s mother died of the flu in 1918—“got a fever at ten A.M. and was dead by nightfall,” the story goes. She left behind three lit
tle girls under the age of three, and my great-grandfather, faced with the reality of placing his three daughters in an orphanage, married his wife’s younger sister instead to keep his family intact, and Nana, the baby, went to her mother’s mother. She was a little old Italian lady straight off the boat and was most likely no older than I am now, living in a tenement on Avenue C and Second Street in Manhattan. She cooked for the whole family—my great-grandfather lived upstairs—and Nana grew up watching, then helping, and then cooking, mimicking everything her grandmother did, re-creating a little bit of her homeland in her tiny, sweaty kitchen. By the time Nana was married, she was a phenomenal cook, and after she met and married my grandfather, they opened a deli and grocery store in Throgs Neck in the Bronx. She made trays of lasagna and eggplant Parmesan every day, and rolled meatballs into a perfect sphere that I will never conquer. Then World War II came, and the small town they lived in needed to fill the quota of draftees, so my thirty-two-year-old grandfather was called up and told to report within a month. When he responded that there was not enough time to sell his store, the government replied, “If Hitler dropped a bomb on it, you’d lose it then, too.” So they gave the store away, and Nana moved closer to her father and went back to cooking for him every day.
Just as Nana’s grandmother took care of her, my grandparents watched my sisters and me every day after school. I would talk to Nana while she cooked, and though she never went step-by-step and told me how to do things, I just picked them up. I watched her dredge eggplant. I watched her assemble lasagna. I helped her roll meatballs. I rarely remember an instance when she or my mother was not cooking; it went on all day at our house, every day. We never ate out in restaurants except for maybe once or twice a year. That meant a lot of time behind the stove for both of them. By the time I moved out of the house, I could make almost anything my mother or Nana made, although I had almost never made any of it. I was not allowed near the controls of my mother’s kitchen; in fact, I am still not allowed to cook in my mother’s kitchen today. On one of my last trips home, I offered to make the Sunday dinner because she wasn’t feeling well, and she looked at me as if I had just said, “Can I use your Le Creuset pots to make some crystal meth? I’ve only blown up two other kitchens, so I’m really good.” The kitchen is my mother’s domain, and it goes without saying that I should just consider myself lucky to heat coffee in the microwave in it.
Nana was wary of my cooking skills, too. Sure, I could turn a cutlet over or set a raw meatball in bubbling oil, but when it came to the true magic, I was not even an apprentice. I couldn’t even wave the wand. I could watch and observe, but not interfere.
It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I dared present them with food I had made myself. It was eggplant rollatini, and after it was served, my mother watched everyone else take a bite and then sat back, as if she were waiting for the rest of the family to drop dead of sudden-onset salmonella poisoning.
When they didn’t, she poked at the eggplant with a tine of her fork, taking about as much as you would give to an infant. I watched her, waiting. Waiting for that face, the face of disappointment, of disgust, of complete failure.
I know that face. The downward curl of her mouth, the scrunching of the nose, the furrowing of the brow. I even have my own version. Instead, she went in for a bigger bite, one you would feed a toddler, and by the end of dinner, not only had she eaten a whole eggplant rollatini, but she was still alive.
My Nana died in 2008, and my mother retired from cooking not long after, and now she pretty much eats out every night with my dad. I can’t blame her. She spent every day for about forty years in front of that stove, and now their relationship is over. She still collects Le Creuset pots that I am still not allowed to touch, and the kitchen is still her domain, even if she abandoned it for a booth with fancy napkins and waiters she knows by name.
My two sisters were never particularly interested in being the captain of the kitchen; the younger one, Nick’s mom, barely knows where to find milk in a supermarket. My other sister, also the mother of a son, cooks often, but sticks to a Whole30 type of menu that basically means she feeds her family broccoli every night. To Italians, Whole30 is sacrilege; it means that you don’t believe in macaroni, bread, and cheese. Basically, she’s going to hell.
So that leaves me.
I’m the end of the line.
Now, I’ve taught my nieces on my husband’s side the magic of meatballs, gravy, and pink sauce, and I’m required to make it every time I visit. Again, the boys aren’t interested in learning, just eating.
But I think that’s going to change.
I’ve decided that these recipes can’t die with me. The next time my nephews ask for penne in pink sauce, they’re going to have to roll out a meatball first.
Nana’s Sunday Gravy
* * *
YIELD: Feeds four Italians, or seven Protestants.
Growing up, we had macaroni and gravy every Sunday for dinner. (For you non–New York Italians, gravy means sauce, and macaroni can mean any pasta. Spaghetti will always be spaghetti. And pasta is actually a word we laugh at and never say. Because it’s really called macaroni. I can’t prove it, but I do believe the word “pasta” was invented by Olive Garden.) It’s an hours-long process, but well worth the wait. To get that deep, rich gravy flavor, the sauce and meat have to simmer together for hours. And hours. And hours. This is the base sauce for all things Italian: macaroni, chicken, eggplant Parmesan, lasagna, and manicotti. This recipe is enough for two pounds of macaroni. You cannot get the same richness from a jar, and it’s why there are no Italian vegetarians. It’s against our law. Check your DNA like I did. You’re not Italian. You might as well become Protestant.
MEATBALLS
2 slices white bread
1 pound nice ground beef
⅓ pound ground pork
½ cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon salt and a couple shakes of pepper
¼ cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 cup olive oil or canola oil
SUPPLEMENTAL MEAT
1 pound country-style boneless pork ribs
3 to 5 Italian sausage links, sweet, spicy, or a combination
GRAVY
3 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced or minced
One 6-ounce can tomato paste
One 15-ounce can tomato sauce
Two 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
5 to 6 basil leaves, torn
½ cup red wine
½ teaspoon garlic salt
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
1. To make the meatballs, run water over the slices of bread; squeeze it out and place the bread in a large bowl. Add the ground beef, pork, breadcrumbs, egg, minced garlic, salt and pepper, and cheese and mix until well combined.
2. Using your hands, roll out the meatballs; I prefer them to be the size of golf balls, but I have cousins that make them as big as plums. The smaller they are, I’ve found, the easier they are to manage and have less potential to fall apart while in the gravy.
3. Add the oil to a large skillet and heat over medium heat. Add the meatballs and brown, turning each way until they are browned on all sides. When the meatballs are done (I fry mine pretty dark), remove them from the pan and set them aside. SAVE THOSE PAN DRIPPINGS!!
4. If you are using supplemental meat, cook the pork ribs and/or sausage links in the same pan over medium heat, until browned on both sides, about 5 to 7 minutes per side. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside. Scrape the bottom of the pan so all of the meaty little goodies at the bottom are up and floating. Think of them as flavor nuggets. Using a slotted spoon to keep most of the flavor nuggets in the pan, drain off some excess oil until you have half remaining.
5. To make the gravy, pour the remaining oil and little flavor nuggets from the meatballs and supplemental meats into a large stockpot. Add the sliced garlic to the oil and cook on me
dium-low heat for about a minute, until the garlic becomes a little bit transparent and just brown around the edges. Add the tomato paste, stirring for about a minute, then add the can of tomato sauce. After the can is empty, fill it halfway with water and add to the pot, then add the crushed tomatoes, basil, wine, garlic salt, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Stir well and add the meatballs. Toss in the sausage and pork, if using, but make sure to stab the sausage with a fork once on both sides; otherwise they will explode in the sauce.
6. Cook the sauce over medium heat for an hour or so, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for the next 2 to 3 hours. I usually simmer for at least 3 hours, until the pork begins to fall apart. Then you have gravy. Never make gravy in a crockpot. NEVER. That is how you make the Virgin Mary cry.
Sunday Gravy Variations
EASY GRAVY
There are times when I want a lighter, easier gravy, and may not have hours to wait for Sunday gravy to come full circle. This version is completely vegetarian, and has more of a tomato taste to it than a meaty flavor. My mother would kill me if she knew I made this and called it gravy.
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
One 32-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 onion, whole, peeled
6 tablespoons butter
¼ cup red wine
3 basil leaves, torn into small pieces
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat the olive oil and garlic in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When the garlic is just turning translucent, after about a minute, add the crushed tomatoes, whole onion (no, not chopped or minced; leave it whole), butter, wine, basil, bay leaf, and salt and pepper. Reduce to medium heat, cook for 20 minutes, and then reduce to low heat and cook for 40 minutes until the onion is softened. This recipe is also adaptable for Pink Sauce (see below) or for Vodka Sauce (also below).