Alan especially liked this new addition to her repertoire of salads that she made often during our junior and senior high school years. Serve it on a wedge of iceberg or crisp hearts of romaine lettuce. Leaf lettuce gets too soggy for this thick dressing.
Roquefort Dressing
1 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup bottled Kraft French Dressing
½ cup Roquefort cheese or blue cheese, if preferred
Lemon juice, to taste
Press the Roquefort cheese through a sieve. Add to other three ingredients and mix well.
Mom’s Note: The lemon juice is to make it snappy.
After Alan married into an Italian-American family, Mom became interested in the traditional Italian food his mother-in-law and her sisters prepared. Alan’s new extended family all lived in Connecticut, and he and his bride Judy settled there. After they bought their first house, Mom and Dad went to celebrate Christmas with them. I’ve wished I’d been there ever since my mother told me about the Christmas dinner they experienced. So much food was served that the guests went out for walks between courses to help digest the last offering and get ready for the next.
Judy’s mother, Armida Cancianni’s recipe for antipasto was a particular favorite of Ben’s. It makes a large amount and takes some work, two factors that never daunted either Armida or Ben. Dedicated cooks know the results will be well worth the effort.
Armida’s Antipasto
½ pint each of:
Cocktail-size onions
Carrots, sliced
Celery, sliced
Cauliflower, cut in bite-size pieces
String beans, cut in bite-size pieces
½ quart each of:
Spanish olives
Sweet pickles
Black olives
2 cans artichoke hearts, drained
4 six-ounce cans Italian tuna, packed in oil
1/8 pound capers, drained
2 fourteen-ounce bottles ketchup
1 ½ cups olive oil, or more according to taste
2 ¾ cups cider vinegar
1 ½ tablespoons corn starch
Cook each vegetable (first five ingredients) separately in three parts water to one part cider vinegar until crunchy. Drain and set aside.
Mix together the ketchup, olive oil and cider vinegar. Dissolve the corn starch in a little water and stir into the ketchup mixture. Put in a large pan and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add all of the parboiled vegetables and other ingredients, except for the tuna. Heat thoroughly.
Break the tuna into chunks and stir in; heat well but do not cook. Place the antipasto in sterilized jars. Put lids on tightly and steam for 2-3 minutes.
When Ben separated from his wife after eight years of marriage, the event saddened us all. He left his family and his job as an assistant district attorney in New York City and moved to Washington. Having political aspirations, he started working as legislative assistant for one of the congressmen from Iowa. He was living alone in a bare-bones attic apartment in DC when Alan and Judy and my then-husband and I, came to see him during the winter holiday season.
Judy brought along a couple of jars of her mother’s antipasto for Ben. He met us at our hotel before we were scheduled to go out for New Year’s Eve dinner. There was time before our dinner reservation so we gathered in one of our rooms. Ben immediately opened a jar of antipasto and started eating with a fork that was somehow conveniently provided. Then he passed the jar and fork around, urging us to have some. We polished off that pint jar, a welcome taste of home-cooked comfort in that unfamiliar hotel room.
Recipes are from the collection of Anna May Cullison.
Margaret Cullison has recently retired from public education and moved to southern Oregon. Now liberated from work, she's happy to be writing again. She can be reached at tekie@charter.net
