I collect cookbooks. Don’t tell my husband, but I have more than 500 in my collection.
I have always loved cookbooks and owned quite a few but became more serious
about my hobby when my Aunt Faye gave me 100 books from her collection. The books she gave me were very unique, most
she had collected at estate sales when she was in her eighties and nineties. A
couple of the titles include “The Beautiful Wives Cookbook”, “Working Wives (Salaried or
Otherwise) Cookbook” and some of my favorites were written by past White House Chefs and one by First Ladies of the White House. I decided a
fun way for me to enjoy my cookbooks (there are many I have never read) would
be to challenge myself to cook a recipe from a different cookbook every week. I
would select a random number from my list, locate the book either from our
boat, our office or my sister’s garage, read the book and select one
recipe to cook and blog.
The first book that came up was Leone’s Italian
Cookbook written in 1967 by Gene Leone with a foreword by Dwight Eisenhower. This
happened to have been one of the books I received from Aunt Faye and this was
the first time I opened it. I love
cookbooks with stories and this book has some great ones. Mother Leone opened her twenty-seat restaurant
in 1906 at the encouragement of Enrico Caruso. Her son, Gene Leone, eventually
took over and grew the restaurant to 1,500 seats! It was a very popular
restaurant in New York with a famous clientele.
I think this book was ahead of its time by suggesting wine pairings
for many of the recipes. There were over
300 recipes to choose from, mostly traditional
Italian-American that you would expect but also Veal Tongue and a Whale Steak
Stew! I was pleased to see a recipe for Pumpkin Flowers. I’ve cooked Zucchini
Flowers many times and often wondered when I passed by the nearby pumpkin fields
if anyone cooked the flowers. The recipe
was for battered and fried flowers and I think I’ll give it a try this pumpkin
season. I eventually decided on the
restaurant’s most popular dish - Veal Cutlet Parmigiana. It was the typical old-school version,
breaded, saucy, cheesy and delicious! However, I must admit that as much as we
enjoyed the veal we do prefer the more modern and lighter versions. The accompanying recipe for Marinara Sauce
was very good and I will be making it again.
Here is the recipe: (I only used 1/2 pound of veal and sauteed for about a minute, not six, and only baked until the cheese was melted)
Prep for my Marinara Sauce:
The finished dish:
John's wine choice:
