When I was in college, in the dark days before email and Facebook, my roommates and I passed our time with more mundane matters. Like food. From Juli, I learned about Japanese-style curry. Rie taught me how to blanche green beans perfectly, while Ed opened my palate to an entire pantheon of slow-simmered soups. Pierrette's trick with tuna and egg salad--grating onion into the mayonnaise--still perks up my sandwiches.

From Maria, though, I learned the most important lessons: cooking with my senses.

While I watched, Maria made tortillas with handfuls of flour and finger-lengths of shortening. Growing up in Texas, she had to wake up early every morning to make the family's tortillas, forty on an average day and maybe a hundred or so for special Sundays. She grabbed an empty wine bottle whenever she needed to roll out dough, and from only two pans she made incredible feasts for our house. None of us would admit to being homesick, but listening to Maria talk about her food and then eating her meals made all of us feel like we actually belonged in that drafty, tumble-down, New England house.

I don't have any of her recipes, because she never wrote them down, but like stories and memories, I can recite them just as she did.


"In San Antonio, where my family lives, you can find bags of masa dough in the markets. My mother doesn't need to make her own anymore. We use Crisco now, but if you want, you can use lard or butter. Even oil. But I would never use oil. Why make tamales with oil? If you don't have chicken stock, some water from the tap is good. Just remember to add salt then."


"Be sure to open the middle of the husks when you soak them and put a plate on top, so they can get wet equally. Save the biggest ones for wrapping. The smaller ones, just tear like this into ribbons for tying."


"Mix together a six handfuls of masa, two handfuls of Crisco, the same amount of stock and some salt. Blend them together really well. We use a mixer at home. You can tell when you have the right combination when a little ball of the dough floats in water."


"You can fill them with anything really. We use pork that my mother cooks, but here at school I put all kinds of things in them. Today, I took some of the sweet potatoes from the cafeteria." [In the photo, you can see a dollop of chipotle sauce that I now like to add to my sweet potato tamales, plus a sprinkling of kosher salt. After sweet potatoes or yams are roasted whole, their peels slip right off; mash with a fork.]


"Spread a little bit of the dough on the corn leaf, enough to cover a third of it. When you put the filling on, be sure to leave a little of the dough peeking around the edges, so that it will close up well." [In this recent version, I topped the sweet potatoes with some grated pepper jack cheese tossed with sliced scallions.]


"Fold the leaf in thirds, like a letter, then bend up the end. Tie it, if you want. Or, if you are making a lot, you can just put them down close together and they will keep each other closed. You need to steam them for a long time, longer than you really want. Open one and try it to see if it's done. They like it if you put a towel over them while they steam. [Chinese bamboo or metal stackable steamers are perfect for steaming tamales in single layers. Small tamales require 40 minutes and larger ones up to 1 1/2 or 2 hours to cook through.]

Labels: family recipes, mexican, recipe, tamales, thy tran

Cassie Clemmons, 1942

I've always loved celebrity cooking stories. Maybe it's because they're proof that the starlets actually eat, or maybe it's because it tickles me to think of them puttering around a kitchen with knives and saucepans just like us. Not that long ago, I hit a gold mine when I discovered Frank DeCaro's library of celebrity recipes and I've spent hours paging through recipe contributions by Debbie Reynolds, Ida Lupino, and J. Edgar Hoover. (I'm sure Rock Hudson's cannoli is quite tasty.)

Growing up, I heard celebrity cooking stories from my Grandma and Grandpa Clemmons. Both of them worked and played in Hollywood and both of them loved to cook. Grandma, who once won a Charleston dance contest with William Bendix and was presented a string of pearls by judge Bette Davis, was a fashion sequence model at MGM, appearing briefly in The Women, The Great Ziegfield, and Dracula. Grandpa had studied architecture at University of Michigan but made his real career out of being a "funny man." He was a gag writer for Bing Crosby's radio show and later a script writer and storyman for Walt Disney, listing The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound among his credits.

My mother still recalls the annual holiday dinner parties thrown at their house in Glendale, where the Clemmons family hosted friends and neighbors who didn't have anywhere to go for the holidays. (Unlike today, when we have to deal with "busiest travel day" of the year, people back then just didn't hop on a plane to visit family every time a holiday popped up.) Some of the regulars at these raucous parties included Bill Morrow (Bing Crosby and Jack Benny's head writer) and his various girlfriends, including actress Pat Dane, a boxer named "Society Kid" Hogan, and Bing Crosby himself.

The food was a potluck affair with the guests bringing their favorite dishes and my grandmother taking care of the main course. A few Christmases ago, my mother put together a family cookbook for my two sisters and me and the three of us now have a sampling of some of these recipes as well as the stories. The recipes are, of course, very retro with lots of sour cream and mayonnaise. Clogged arteries aside, however, the recipes are absolute gems.

My favorite story in The Family Moveable Feast is Grandma experiencing a Julia Child moment. While my 80-year-old Great Grandma Mimi entertained the guests by doing the Cakewalk with her daughter Anita at the piano, Grandma was in the kitchen taking care of that year's roast turkey and Bill Morrow was in the kitchen keeping her company and feeding her cocktails. Ready to serve, the big bird was nestled on a platter when it slipped off and plummeted to the floor with a rather juicy smack. Grandma looked at Bill and Bill looked at Grandma. Grandma picked up the bird, brushed it off, and served it and Bill kept his mouth shut.

No one but wedding buffets seem to use chafing dishes any more. I have a lovely chafing dish that was a wedding present, but I'm afraid to take it out and see how tarnished it's become. However, if you do have a chafing dish you're not afraid to use or polish this Thanksgiving, here is one of the more decadent recipes in my family's cookbook.

Chafing Dish Mushrooms

3 pounds fresh mushrooms
1 1/2 cup Amontillado sherry
1/2 cup water
1/2 pound butter
1 fresh bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon dried dill seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pint sour cream

1. Using a damp paper towel, brush off the mushrooms and trim the ends. Put the mushrooms in a large pot and add all the ingredients, except the sour cream.

2. Cook over medium heat for thirty minutes and until most of the liquid has reduced. Fold in the sour cream and serve in a polished, elegant chafing dish.

Labels: chafing dish, family recipes, Frank DeCaro, mushrooms, thanksgiving