Cookin’ the Books

I sometimes wonder what my grandmother would think of my kitchen full of cookware and the multiple shelves of cookbooks.

My father’s mother—my babička—was a wonderful cook and baker. I remember each of the three apartments she lived in after my grandfather’s death. She spent her entire adult life in Cicero, a Bohemian enclave on the western edge of Chicago that we came to call the “old country” after our joining the diaspora to the western suburbs.

She was a model of thrift, and her apartments were tidy, the sofa and over-stuffed chair covered in soft vinyl. She scrubbed the linoleum floors on Sunday, covering them with newspapers until the following Sunday.

Each of her places had tiny kitchens equipped with only the basics—a frying pan or two, a couple of sauce pans, some baking sheets and bread pans, a casserole dish, and a stock pot. I have taken more than that on weekend camping trips. She had no measuring cups or measuring spoons that I recall, and her mixing bowls doubled as service ware (or perhaps it was the other way around).

There was not a cookbook in sight; nor were there any notebooks or index cards to remind her of what might be needed to create a meal.

I can’t believe that any two of her plates matched, but she had beautiful Bohemian crystal glassware and a set of six, blown-glass short-stemmed glasses that were kept in a satin-lined, fabric-covered box—I still have and cherish them—that were used exclusively for slivovitz, a vile fruit brandy that my grandfather distilled from damson plums.

Babi’s repertoire was no-doubt learned at her mother’s side. It was simple fare. She made wonderful soups, breads and pastries; she canned her own sauerkraut, beets and pickles, cooked marinated beef roast (svíčková), rabbit with prune gravy, and she roasted chicken and duck to something approaching perfection.

Her bread dumplings were served at lunch and dinner. I remember her slicing them with a length of sewing thread.

Growing up, I enjoyed helping my grandmother in the kitchen—not that she really let me help much. She was not a patient woman and she had little time for my questions, waving me off and shaking her head as if she was trying to get rid of a migraine. As she deftly tossed handfuls or pinches of “somma dis, somma dat” (she learned English in Chicago, where the actual “th” sound has yet to be recognized) into bowls, she’d remind me that love was the only ingredient that mattered.

Then she’d hit me upside the head, as if to prove the point.

Babi would not understand why I have so many cookbooks, let alone thirteen frying pans. Frankly, I’m not sure I do either.

When my father was able to convince babi to go out to dinner with us, she insisted we go to one of the many Bohemian or Hungarian restaurants that lined Cermak Road, none of which served food as good as hers. She wasn’t interested in Italian food and she couldn’t see her son spending money on a steak when the cheaper cuts were more flavorful—provided, of course, that you had a day or two to cook them. She turned her nose up at filet mignon. French, Thai, Indian, Sri Lankan, Moroccan, Mexican and Korean cuisines were not yet options. Seafood wasn’t considered because we didn’t live near the sea, and Chinese food…wait for it…was for Chinese people, which clearly we were not.

My culinary horizons extend considerably past my grandmother’s, although I’ve only read about Sri Lankan food. I love Bohemian food and prepare it often, relying on childhood memories augmented with information gleaned from a 60-page pamphlet I picked up somewhere in Iowa cleverly titled The Czech Book, a 1965 Crown Publishers edition called The Czechoslovak Cookbook, by Joza Břizová, from its International Cookbook Series, and The “Bakery” Restaurant Cookbook by Louis Szathmáry (CBI Publishing, Boston).

The Bakery Restaurant opened on Lincoln Avenue on Chicago’s North Side in 1963 and I remember first going there during that year. The restaurant, which featured French-Hungarian cuisine, was in an old bakery. The bakery fixtures and display cases had been left in place and tables, draped in white linen and set elegantly with bone china, crystal and silver, had been placed willy-nilly in any number of rooms in the maze-like space. Off in a corner of one of the dining rooms, a lady stood at a thick chopping block making salads.

The Bakery is where I first had pâté. At age 12, my French was less-than-basic and I had yet to hear of pâté, let alone of the pâté maison served that night. I announced to our table that this pâté stuff tasted “just like babi’s chopped liver.” My father kicked me under the table. Hard.

Chef Louis was a gregarious man of great girth whose appearances in his dining rooms were frequent and welcome. I last dined there in 1976 and he, with his dramatically swooping handlebar mustache and the dance-like moves of Zero Mostel, made his perfunctory dash through the room. My date was impressed that Chef stopped to say hello, shake my hand and kiss hers.

Szathmáry, whose surname I only occasionally can pronounce successfully, was something of a celebrity in Chicago. He won lots of awards, appeared as a guest on local television and radio programs, and was frequently featured in magazine and newspaper stories. He owned one restaurant and from 1963 until 1989 he was on the line at 2218 N. Lincoln Avenue nearly every night. His wife Sada managed the front of the house.

His book, published in 1981, is one of two cookbooks I have ever purchased by celebrity chefs who owned restaurants. The other is The Lutèce Cookbook by André Soltner (Knopf). I will forever regret that I never took the opportunity to eat at Lutèce, the famed French restaurant on East 50th Street in Manhattan that opened in 1961 with a $6 prix fixe lunch that sent shockwaves through the city. I love hearing stories from friends who had dined there before the chef’s departure in 1994.

Like his Chicago counterpart—I wonder if they ever met?—Soltner was a celebrity chef before there were celebrity chefs. But he had no television program(s), and he worked fifteen-hour days as the chef at his only restaurant, and gained his fame by actually cooking for his customers. His wife Simone managed the front of the house.

Chefs Louis and André both retired to teaching positions after their years of arduous work on the lines of their restaurants. Their books (Soltner wrote only one, published after he had sold Lutèce) reflect that. They seem to have wanted to teach. They had stories to tell, menus to discuss, recipes to share. There was a little bit of history, some reflection, and lots of love—the only ingredient that mattered according to my babi.

Their books were not written to promote and support far-flung business ventures in Las Vegas and other foreign lands, television programs, or lines of over-priced kitchenware, signature towels and cute aprons.

I have several volumes of cookbooks that might seem more at home on a coffee table than in the kitchen and I love spending time with them, mostly looking at the pictures and illustrations. Most of them were gifts and most of them are about culinary styles I enjoy eating but have no desire to learn how to cook. The books I treasure and continue to reference are by Marcella Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, Julia Child, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Patricia Wells, Pierre Franey and Richard Olney. They are a fine faculty.

Wherever I travel I look for cookbooks that might reflect an area’s culinary history and traditions. To that end I have acquired several books about Midwestern farm cooking, New England church suppers, Southern cooking, Creole and Cajun foods, Nebraska pioneer cooking, et cetera. My favorite in the regional genre is Ernest Matthew Mickler’s 1986 masterpiece, White Trash Cooking (Jargon Society).

I have a delightful book that features favorite recipes from jazz musicians, including one for canned salmon and hominy from Dizzy Gillespie that makes me laugh because I have trouble envisioning Diz, who I knew, standing in front of a stove stirring a pan of sputtering hot grits.

I have a handful of cookbooks devoted to single ingredients: olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, cheese. There are also some PTA fund-raising cookbooks, as well as some by women’s service groups (Junior League, PEO, AAUW) that are fun and offer great insight into the American food culture.

I have a single volume of authentic Greek cookery by Diane Kochilas, a remarkably thin volume on Irish cooking, and a delightfully humorous book about Jewish food by Mitchell Davis, The Mensch Chef (Clarkson Potter, 2002). In sharp contrast to the Ashkenazi approach, I have a Yemenite cookbook that offers recipes for both roasted locusts and boiled bull’s penis.

I’ve often wondered where one might get two kilograms of fresh locusts.

Babi’s Bread Dumplings
As told to my mother

1 package active dry yeast (2-1/4 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon sugar
½ cup milk, scalded and cooled
1 cup milk, warm
1 egg
½ tsp. salt
3 ½ cups flour
3 slices white bread, crumbled

Mix yeast & sugar in the ½ cup milk. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Mix warm milk, egg, salt, yeast mixture and flour. Add bread. Knead on a floured board for five minutes or so, and let rise, covered, for ½ hour. Divide and shape into three loaves. Cook in boiling water, about seven minutes per side. Drain, let rest for a few minutes and slice. Serve with butter or topped with gravy.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska