A half-century ago, we grew up in
Sonoma County, in Italian-American
culture that sprung from late 19th
century immigrants, primarily
Genovese, Toscani, Lombardi,
Piemontese, Marchegiani, and
Italian Swiss. While the recipes
found in these pages are mainly
those of our two grandmothers, Anna
Crinella, a native of the Province of
Le Marche, and Theresa Zurlo, from
the Province of Liguria, they also
reflect the influence of their many
Italian-American neighbors who
settled in Sonoma County.
The dishes we describe here can
be prepared by using commonplace
ingredients--those that were
typically found in most
Italian-American households. Our
grandmothers were not adventurous
when it came to new ingredients, nor
did they use fancy adjectives to
describe any of them. Red wine was
"vino rosso,", veal was "vitello," and
mushrooms ("funghi") came in two
forms--field mushrooms (always
used fresh), and porcini mushrooms
(dried and reconstituted for use in
sauces). Salad dressing was always
olive oil (no one ever mentioned that
it was "extra virgin"), red wine
vinegar from Volpi's ( the very idea
of sending to Italy for fancy vinegar
would have been laughed at in those
days) and sometimes a very slight
whisper of garlic which was never
meant to overpower the greens.
You will not find an exhaustive
listing of Italian dishes here. We
make no pretense that this is a
comprehensive Italian cookbook, but
rather a modest compendium of
recipes that we can recall being used
by our grandmothers, and we
continue to use. In fact, we don't
include many of the dishes that the
general public associates with
Italian cooking. We offer no
apologies for these omissions,
because in Sonoma County we did
not have a lot of Italians from Sicily,
Calabria, Naples, or other provinces
in the South of Italy. While we now
enjoy, in restaurants, the cuisine
characteristic of these regions, the
preparation of their traditional dishes
was as foreign to our grandmothers
as if the recipe had come from the
planet Mars. For example, we never
tasted pizza until we went away to
college.
The Italians in Sonoma County
were also a community of hunters
and fisherman, so you will find many
more fish and game recipes than you
might find in the typical Italian
cookbook. Pop and his brothers
Louie and Dom were the best shots
in four counties and we always had
an abundance of game. If you don't
have wild fish or game available, you
can substitute domestic fish and
meat (e.g., farm-raised pheasant),
but we cannot guarantee that the
flavor will be very representative.
The tales of the Crinella and Zurlo
families are probably not much
different than those of most other
immigrant families in
America--Italians and others--but
these stories are special to us.
Perhaps readers other than those in
our family will find the both the
recipes and our family history in
America of interest.
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