Silverman Ellen - Delicious memories: recipes and stories from the Chef Boyardee family

DELICIOUS
MEMORIES

Published in 2011 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS

All Chef Boyardee trademarks, packaging, and photographs are reprinted with permission from
ConAgra Foods, Omaha, Nebraska.

Copyright 2011 Anna Boiardi and Stephanie Lyness
Photographs copyright 2011 Ellen Silverman

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boiardi, Anna.
Delicious Memories: recipes and stories from the
Chef Boyardee family / Anna Boiardi and Stephanie Lyness.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-58479-906-1 (alk. paper)
1. Cooking, Italian. 2. Brand name productsUnited States. I. Lyness,
Stephanie. II. Title.
TX723.B518 2011
641.5945dc22

2010031269

Editor: Jennifer Levesque
Designer: Alissa Faden
Production Manager: Tina Cameron

The text of this book was composed in Sabon, Whitney, Commerce Gothic,
Engravers, and Sackers Gothic.

Stewart, Tabori & Chang books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for
premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be
created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

www.abramsbooks.com

To my mother and father, for their endless
encouragement and support.

To my son, Jack IV.

And to my grandfather, Mario, and great uncles
Hector and Paul, who started the family traditions in
Piacenza and whose legacy continues to inspire me.

old and press. Then the other side: fold in toward the center, but this time, pinch. Back to the first side: fold to the center and pinch. And now its like braidingfolding and pinching, back and forth from one side to the other, until the ricotta-spinach filling is entirely enclosed in the pasta. It looks like a tiny, braided loaf of challah. Well, mine looks like a tiny, slightly messy, braided loaf of challah.

I look over at the tray of tortelli that my mother has completed in about half the time its taken me to put mine together. Each one neat and regular.

Nauseating.

To tell the truth, although I adore eating them, making tortelli is not really my thing. Im more of a roast-chicken-with-rosemary, penne-with-broccoli, and asparagus-Parmesan kind of girl, the kind who prefers the simple, tasty, no-fuss recipes that I teach in my New York cooking classes. I want to be able to cook something for dinner out of my kitchen, every night, whether Ive got five minutes or five hours. But these time-consuming little homemade stuffed pasta shapes my mother and I are making are a beloved specialty from my familys hometown in Italy. You wont find them anywhere outside of Piacenza (and here in my mothers New Jersey kitchen, of course). Even in Piacenza, where I ordered them in a restaurant last year, the chef had given up the traditional shape, cutting them into simple ravioli instead. They were a more contemporary interpretation, the waiter explained when I complained. Right. The it-takes-way-too-long-to-make-them-the-traditional-way meaning of contemporary.

Not that I dont sympathize. Smearing a tiny spoonful of green-flecked filling on another square of pasta, I really do. Tortelli-making definitely belongs to another age, when life moved a lot slower and tortelli makers like me werent distracted by telephones, computers, and BlackBerries. But since I got married and started cooking regularly for my husband, Jack, and myself, Ive begun to recognize how important my familys values and culinary traditions have always been to me.

I got a shock a few years ago when my dad was ill and lost his memory for a brief period of time. During those few months, I suddenly faced the possibility that his memories could be lost to me forever. I realized how much I still had to discover about my familys history and traditions, traditions that are easy to forgo in fast-paced contemporary life, but which I want badly to pass along to my own kids someday. Cooking from my familys repertoire of traditional dishes is one way to inherit the family memories. So I keep on with the folding and pinching, hoping that by the time my kids are old enough to stand next to me in my kitchen making tortelli, I wont embarrass myself. And besides, it just makes me happy to be in the kitchen.

Anna Maria! Are you watching the cake?

She has eyes in the back of her head, my mother.

Timers on, Momits under control.

Weve got another Italian specialty in the oven, pane degli angeli. Its something like an angel food cake (and literally translates to bread of angels), made with beaten eggs, olive oil, and potato starch, baked in a springform pan. Its very, very local to the area where my mother grew up, and the recipe has been in our family forever. Unlike tortelli, its a cinch to put together, and I make it all the time.

Another reason Im determined to get these tortelli perfect is that I have a pretty spectacular culinary inheritance to live up to. From a very young age, I knew that my family made magic in the kitchen. If youve ever walked down the pasta aisle in a supermarket, you know my dads family: The name is Boiardi as in Chef Boyardee. They were restaurant people. Mario, my dads father, and his brother, Hector, were chefs (as was their father). Hector and Mario founded the Chef Boyardee Company in 1928 with their elder brother, Paul. The three brothers pooled their resources to start the business (my dad likes to tell me how proud they were not to have to borrow any money at all). But Hector was really the driving force behind the brand. His is the cheerful face on the can, with mustache and chefs toque. You can see him in action on YouTube, selling one of his spaghetti dinners in a 1953 television commercial. Give me fifteen minutes, and Ill give you a real Italian dinner!

You cant write this story without historical context, my dad says. Europe was old, social places were fixed. In those days, you had to leave home to find a job. America was growing rapidly at the beginning of the twentieth century. New buildings were going upnew hotels, new restaurantsand they all required people to service them. The family wanted to find out what was over here.

The history of the brand is one of those only-in-America kinds of success stories. Paul came to New York in the early years of the century. He started out waiting tables at the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel and worked his way up to the position of matre d. Hollywood good looks, and the manners of an English butler my dad says of himapparently a winning combination because by the 1930s, Paul was by far the best known and most influential matre d in New York. At age seventeen, Hector followed Paul to New York. My grandfather came over a few years later; a resourceful fellow, he took a job as a waiter on the steamship and forgot to get back on when it left port. Anyway, Paul got both brothers work at the Plaza, Hector in the kitchen and my grandfather in the dining room. Mario, who was also a chef, could jump into the kitchen when they needed him.