Traditions in the Kitchen

Everyone has a food memory. You know what I’m talking about - the smell or taste of something that transports you to another place in another time. Every year my mother makes the same Christmas cookies my grandmother always used to make. And even though my mother’s aren’t exactly the same, that comforting aroma floating out from the oven transports me to my grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx when I was just a little kid.
The scent brings me right back to her bedroom, where the cookies were laid out on clean white sheets on every available surface. My grandmother is in her housecoat, chuckling as everyone quibbles over how many cookies each sister or cousin could pack up and take home. Same with artichokes. I can’t see a stuffed artichoke without remembering my uncle sitting next to me every Sunday dinner ready to scoop up the artichoke heart I always left on plate. My favorite parts were the leaves and the stuffing!
Food is more than sustenance. It connects us to our families—to traditions passed from generation to generation. It brings us our memories with amazing clarity: the perfume of a baking pie, the sharp aroma of onions browning in butter—just close your eyes, and you’re lifted to a wonderful place.
I wonder, though, what will happen to these cherished traditions in a world of fast food and too-busy lives? What kitchen memories will our children’s children have if we live without those traditions now?
So many handed-down recipes may be lost forever unless we get into our kitchens and relive their wonders. Here’s my contribution now: a Crostata recipe that was passed to me from a wonderful Sammarinese lady who is no longer with us. Experience it in your own kitchen, enjoy it, and please pass it on.


4 cups Pastry or Cake Flour (14 oz)
10 Tablespoon Butter (5 oz)
1 Cup sugar (7oz)
2 Eggs
2 Egg Yolks
2 Teaspoons baking powder
2 Tablespoons sweet marsala
zest from one lemon
13 oz fruit jam or marmalade

Instructions: Put the flour into a mound on your counter. Cut up the butter into small pieces. With your hands rub the butter into the flour until the butter is the size of small pieces and is evenly distributed in the flour. Add the sugar and baking powder to the flour mixture. Make a well in the middle of your flour/butter/sugar mixture.
Put eggs, egg yolks, lemon zest and marsala in the well. Mix with a fork and gradually start to incorporate the flour mixture into the eggs. As the mixture comes together use your hands to form a dough. Do not overwork the dough or your crostata will be tough. Divide the dough in two - roughly 1/4 and 3/4. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge for about 1/2 hour.
Remove both pieces from the fridge and unwrap the plastic. Sprinkle some flour on your counter and roll out the larger piece to about 10 inches in diameter. Place it in a tart pan with a removable bottom, or alternatively on a sheet pan (you can make the crostata free form if you don't have a tart pan).
Cover the crostata dough with jam. Then roll out the second piece of dough a little thinner than the first, and cut it into strips. Layer the strips on top of the jam in a criss cross pattern. Brush the crostata all over with beaten egg.
Bake in a 350 degree oven until the crostata is lightly brown all over, about 25 minutes.