Nick Benotto

A food blog by Nick Benotto

I grew up in an Italian food-centric family which is probably reflected in the topics
I blog about. When I was in Italy, food was always a focus of our day. What
restaurants would we try, what was Nonna Benotto cooking for our midday meal and
noticing how diverse the foods of each region of Italy are. I enjoyed tasting
everything, including the wines produced by my Zio Benotto.

Cruising rounded out my food experimentation as there were such diverse cuisines
available to try in either the dining room, the buffet or the specialty restaurants.
I began cooking with my family at a young age. When I was around seven years
old, my dad trusted me with a knife to chop vegetables for his popular, traditional
Thanksgiving soup. We worked all day on this huge pot of soup stirring, tasting
and mashing.

With my mom I learned to make my great grandmother’s famous
one-egg cake. It was an old recipe that mom always enjoyed with her grandmother
on cold days with a hot cup of tea. I learned to measure ingredients and break that
famous one egg. It’s best eaten right out of the oven. Then there is mom’s Sunday
sauce made from the famous San Marzano tomatoes from south Italy. Mom always
told me that the secret ingredient in this sauce was love. My mom learned to make
it from her mom. Once the sauce is simmering, we add either our homemade
meatballs or browned veal chunks or my mom would make braciole.

Now you may ask what is braciole? Mom taught me that we use tender narrow, flat
cuts of flank steak or veal if you can find it or afford it! In the old days when my
grandmother and great grandmother prepared this dish, veal was much less
expensive than it is today. You then prepare a mix of bread crumbs, parsley, finely
chopped cloves of garlic, Locatelli Romano grated cheese and a dash of black
pepper. Add some olive oil and mix together and put aside. Then slice some
provolone cheese and lay it on the flat pieces of meat. On top of that you add some
prosciutto or salami or speck. At that point you spread the bread crumb mixture
coating the meat. When that is done, gently roll up the meat and secure with a
toothpick or a skewer so the stuffing stays inside.

Add some oil to a skillet and brown the rolls of steak or veal on all sides and then add to the sauce. Mom likes to deglaze the skillet and add that to the tomato sauce for additional flavor. This is something I love to eat so I always offer my help when mom makes it.

While I assist dad with his famous Thanksgiving soup, I also love to help my mom
with her Christmas calzone. This is another recipe passed down from my
grandmother to mom. Buy or make your dough. Roll it out as flat and large as
possible. Then you add the cheese, favorites are mozzarella, fontina, ricotta and
grated Locatelli. After the cheese we add sliced pepperoni and fresh basil leaves.
Roll the dough over a few times to make a large stuffed, flat bread. Beat an egg and
water together and brush the dough with this mixture before baking. We serve this
as an appetizer at Christmas.

Holidays are a time for special foods. I mentioned some above. At Easter we have
our “Easter bread” which is usually braided and embedded with a colored, hard-
boiled egg and decorated with crosses made from dough. The other special Easter
food is Pizza Rustica. This is an elaborate mixture of diced cheeses and meats
mixed with seasoning and beaten eggs and then poured into a pan lined with
dough. Some people cut thin strips of dough to place on top of the mixture in a
lattice design as the finishing touch before baking. This is a meal in itself, but we
indulge in small pieces as an appetizer to Easter dinner.

My mom descended from southern Italians and their cuisine is quite different than
my dad’s family who are from the northwest of Italy. My Nonna was a great cook.
She excelled with ravioli, tender pillows of pasta that she stuffed with seasoned
vegetables and finely shredded chicken. She would lay sheets of pasta out on the
table and portion out the stuffing and then cover with another sheet of pasta. She
would allow me to cut them into small squares that we would enjoy for special
meals on Sundays. Another delicious Piemontese dish Nonna often made was
Bagna Cauda. This translates into “hot bath”. She would roast peppers and peel the
outer skin off. Then she prepared the bath mixture of chopped garlic, olive oil and
anchovies. The anchovies would melt into the garlic and oil once heated on the
stove. Can I tell you how delicious the aromas were? To finish up the garlic and oil
bath, Nonna would add a dash of cream and mix well before spooning this mixture
over the roasted peppers she had laid out flat on a platter. This is a popular and
delicious appetizer often eaten in the Piemonte region of Italy.

Some of Nonna’s popular desserts were panna cotta (cooked cream), a custard like
pudding with the top lightly charred for additional flavor. She would also make
“buddino” which dad loves best. This is a creamy chocolate pudding-like
concoction. I never mastered this one dessert but it is something I plan to work on.
Now that I am in my own place, I cook different dinners every night after work. I
enjoy experimenting on my own using the basics that I learned from cooking with
my family. Cooking satisfies my creativity and I find it relaxing, while channeling
my ancestors. I take seriously the recipes that I learned from my family and will
continue to use them and pass them on to my own children. The culture of food
and family time lives on in another generation. And that is, indeed, a delicious
thought.

How many food memories do you have in common with the Benotto family? Tell me in the comments.

Here’s a link to my previous blog about my Caribbean cruises: Nick Benotto: The Best Things About Cruising – Nick Benotto