Winter Visits
Our family’s Christmases were always at home. It was one of the few times of the year when the swinging kitchen door was closed, as my mother would start preparing days before. The buffet would open up and the good china would make its guest appearance on the table. On Christmas Day, the kitchen door would finally swing open and the feast was on.
Then there was the odd year. Two days before, one day before, nothing was going on in the kitchen. A week prior, my sister and I heard a regular cadence of strong words passing between my parents.
On Christmas Day, after we opened our presents my mother told us to get dressed; we were going to my grandparents’ house for dinner. Now the arguing made sense, as my mother and my dad’s father never had a love connection. And even though us kids spent a lot of time visiting and eating at their house while we worked at the family grocery store, beyond a sporadic holiday “drive-by” we didn’t spend many mother-included family gatherings at their place.
As we sat down to dinner, it became apparent that this was a different Christmas: nary a turkey, mashed potato or candied yam in sight. I snuck into the kitchen to view the roasting bird or hindquarter of cured pork only to be shocked that there was nothing in the oven. There was a rolling rack next to the stove that held the coveted Nesco, Milwaukee’s own cult portable roaster, and it was hot.
This wasn’t as bad as I first thought, as my grandfather’s Nesco customarily translated to spiedini, those small Sicilian beef roll-ups skewered with onion and bay leaf that were hands down, my favorite dish. My grandfather walked over and removed the lid. He had an out of character smile on his face. I looked in and saw what looked like the mother of all spiedini slowly bobbing in a sea of tomato bliss. I blurted out, “Giant spiedini!” and my grandfather shook his head side to side and proudly said, “Braciola.”
This meant nothing to me until he carefully lifted the mini roast out of the sauce and started to carve it for the table. He nestled the braciola into its silken tomato blanket as lovingly as a first-time mother cradles her newborn. It was a passion he reserved solely for food. The braciola looked like a spiedini but it had an interior mosaic of salami, eggs, sausage, breadcrumbs and herbs.
And when you took that first bite, it had that melting rich texture you can only achieve by slow cooking in its tomato-rich bath. Other Italian “cousins”: sautéed fennel, olive schiacciate (Sicilian cracked olive salad) and a heaping casserole of Mostaccioli Rigati (pasta a bit larger than penne with furrows to capture the sauce), surrounded the braciola.
I know it drove my mother crazy that we were all gathered around his table eating an extraordinary dinner, but as much as she disdained her father-in-law, she loved his cooking and that is how she got through the meal.
Before the dinner plates were back on the shelves, my sister and I found ourselves back in the car with a napkin full of Italian cookies. As my father drove the car across the bridge up Holton Street and west along Capitol Drive toward home, nary a syllable was uttered in the front seat between my parents, and in back, with full bellies, we both fell asleep.
