Recipe News: From our readers...favorite Lenten recipes

My family got to have this sauce roughly twice a year, Christmas Eve and Easter. Each holiday had a different twist to the basic sauce and for Easter, it was the addition of Ceci beans (chickpeas). My grandfather could eat macaroni every day, if my grandmother would have made it for him. She would purchase dried baccala (codfish) for Christmas and many times would buy extra and keep it in the cold cellar.
My grandfather would eat what my grandmother put in front of him, except he wasn't big on vegetables, unless they were from his garden. Even so, he lived to be 94!

When Lent rolled around, many times I'd stop by for a visit and my grandfather would come up from the cellar after smoking a stogy. He was not allowed to smoke them in the house because they are a very nasty-smelling cigar and Gran would not tolerate that.

He would look at me and wink, as he walked to my grandmother with the dried salted cod and said, "Hey momma, how about some homemade macaroni and baccala sauce with ceci beans?"

She would yell at him in Italian and then turn to me and say, “You want to stay for lunch?”

My reply was always, “Yes! “

We would proceed to make the sauce and a batch of homemade fettuccini. I have very fond memories of my grandparents and all the traditions we have for holidays, which stem from our Roman Catholic upbringing, which I am so proud of.

Includes recipes for:

Baccala and Ceci Beans with fresh Pasta

Tortellini and seafood

Full article here.

March 2, 2008

Recipe News: From our readers...favorite Lenten recipes