In anticipation of our April 11th Edible World event, Sunday Supper and Family Lore, the First Person Blog will feature the stories and family recipes of Philly food personalities. This was going to an every-other-day happening, but we’ve had so many great foodies writing in with recipes, that you can find recipes every day till our event from the likes of chefs, writers and people who just love eating, making and talking about food and family. Click here to see our other foodie recipes.


I met Jessica Rossi, aka Burger Baroness of Fries with that Shake, at my first Philly Foodblogger Potluck. Philadelphia has a very strong food blogging scene and Jessica is one of our most visible members. You might have already seen her around town, running Burger Club Philly or talking on a food blogging panel. Her grandmother’s cooking was a huge influence on her own love of food and she shares an approximation of her grandmother’s meatballs below.


Want to be like our Philly Foodies? Share a family recipe at our Edible World event! Send your recipe, story and a photo to Karina by April 2nd! Reserve your seat at the event here.


So this is a recipe for meatballs and sauce that I believe is similar to how my adorable Italian grandmother makes them. It isn’t an exact science because my dad just told me what the ingredients were and I don’t have any exact measurements for anything. I especially love making this dish on Sundays because that’s when my family usually ate this with pasta. It always takes me back to my grandma’s kitchen. I grew up in an Italian-American home and it is where my love of food came from. Sundays consisted of going to my grandparent’s house and eating a lot of pasta and meatballs. There would sometimes be braciole or pork thrown in but there were always meatballs.


There was also a joke about the pecorino romano cheese we had on the table. I love cheese and it was well known at the family dinner table that I liked to use a lot of it. At the time my grandparents were having my Uncle Vinnie, who lived in the LA area, ship them big rounds of cheese because we lived in very rural Redding, California where no grocery stores supplied the cheese that we so desperately needed. When my grandfather would see me reaching for the cheese he would warn me, “five dollars a pound.” Now this was many years ago and of course the cheese in question is much more expensive but at the time it was a luxury for my grandparents who were retired and on a fixed income. The “five dollars a pound” became a family joke and one that we even use today. My family also liked to claim that I had a hollow leg because I was able to eat so much pasta and they didn’t know where I put all of it.


Meatballs Like My Grandmother Made


Sauce
3 (28oz) cans of San Marzano whole tomatoes
1 (6oz) can of tomato paste
1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsp of any combo of herbs: basil, parsley, oregano (I used dried this time around because I couldn’t find any fresh that looked good)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper


I suggest you actually get the sauce started before you make the meatballs and have it on the stove simmering for about two hours before you add in the meatballs.


In a large 6-8 quart pot, add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Turn the heat on to medium. When the oil is hot add onions and let them cook for about 5 minutes and then add garlic and tomato paste. Mix the paste in with the onions and garlic and let that cook for a couple of minutes. Add tomatoes, crushed by hand, with their juices to the pot. Bring it to a boil and then cover it and let it simmer on low for 2 hours.


Meatballs
1 1/2 lbs ground veal
1 1/2 lbs ground pork (you can use any variation of veal, beef and pork)
2 or 2 1/2cups of bread crumbs
1 or 1 1/2 cups of pecorino, grated
6 eggs, beaten
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large bunch of Italian parsley, chopped finely
Olive oil – enough to cover the bottom of your skillet


In a large bowl combine meat, bread crumbs, cheese, eggs, garlic and parsley and mix by hand. You can also season it with some salt and pepper though I find the cheese to add enough saltiness to the meatballs. Form into balls, about the size of a golf ball.


In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat the oil until almost smoking. Add the meatballs, working in batches if necessary to avoid overcrowding the pan, and cook until deep golden brown on all sides, about 10 minutes per batch. Once the meatballs are browned on the outside and cooked on the inside, add them to the sauce. I usually let them cook in the sauce on low for another hour or so.


- Jessica Rossi

In anticipation of our April 11th Edible World event, Sunday Supper and Family Lore, the First Person Blog will feature the stories and family recipes of Philly food personalities. This was going to an every-other-day happening, but we’ve had so many great foodies writing in with recipes, that you can find recipes every day till our event from the likes of chefs, writers and people who just love eating, making and talking about food and family.

Rick Nichols is a great friend to First Person Arts. As a food writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, he covers restaurants and food trends throughout the Philly area. He’s also hosted some of our most popular Edible World programs, leading likeminded culinary adventurers through East Passyunk’s (primarily) Italian landscape and Port Richmond’s Polish food treasures. Today, he recalls the traditions from his family’s Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen and reveals how he adopted the Eastern European ways of his wife’s family.


Want to be like our Philly Foodies? Share a family recipe at our Edible World event! Send your recipe, story and a photo to Karina by April 2nd! Reserve your seat at the event here.


My own family’s roots – those of the Esbenshades on my mother’s side, particularly – stretch more than 200 years into the Lancaster County loam. You’ll still see an Esbenshade Road in the farmlands outside Strasburg. And a turkey farm of the same name. And here and there a plant nursery. All of which is only to explain that, even though my mother had left that Mennonite culture behind, her home-cooking often and happily dipped into the Pennsylvania Dutch well.


We grew up on red-beet pickled eggs and flaky chicken pot pies (not the noodle dish; the crust dish), and on occasion shoo-fly pie with sour buttermilk, cornmeal mush and scrapple.


To my lasting regret, I never wrote down the recipes; I didn’t know they required recipes. So I work on approximations of my mother’s vinegary German potato salad, and the brothy sweetness – conferred by the cabbage, I think – of her beef-vegetable soup.


My wife is a different story. She is second-generation Slovak (well, half Slovak, and half Hungarian-Roumanian). Her parents’ ties to the old sod are far fresher, their cookery’s ethnic flavor undiluted. Two other things. First, I met them as an adult, my own inner-cook unleashed. Second, my wife, sensibly, had asked her mother, Helen Szokan, to write down her recipes on index cards.


So while her father rhapsodized about clam bakes and his manly skill with speck –- made in old Cleveland by patiently rotating a fatty piece of paprika –rubbed bacon over a fire and dripping the fat on rye bread layered with tomato, scallion, green pepper and radish — it is Helen Szokan’s dishes that I’ve learned to recreate; caraway soup and dumplings and stuffed cabbage (always “for 10”), potato pierogie (I’ve tackled that rarely even though I actually took lessons once in Fairmount), and chicken paprikash.


That soulful paprikash is the one we revert to, time and again, our comfort food of first resort, as I once wrote, “to blunt raw winter nights and feed sudden gusts of hungry friends.”


It requires only five main ingredients. And little else to make it a full meal. Just a simple cucumber salad and a knotty loaf of challah (for sopping up the gravy) that stands in for the braided egg bread that Nancy’s grandmother used to bake.


And here’s the thing: Because we had that recipe, we no longer need the recipe.


The training wheels have come off.
We know it by heart.
It is my family’s dish now.
Too.


Paprikash a la Szokan
4 servings


1 fryer (3 pounds or more), cut in serving pieces
4 tablespoons, unsalted butter
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1/2 pint sour cream
Pinch of flour, as needed
Salt and pepper to taste


Melt the butter and cook onions on medium heat in deep pot until clear.
Add paprika and stir.
Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides and add pieces skin side down, brown for about two minutes and turn over, coating with the sauce.
Keep the chicken sizzling, adding up to a half-cup of water at first. Cover and cook over low flame, turning the pieces every 15 minutes for an hour or more until the meat is almost falling off the bone. (After the first 45 minutes, take off the lid.)
Remove the chicken to a bowl, peel off most of the skin; keep warm. Turn off the heat.
Add sour cream to the juices, thicken with flour. Whisk.
Turn on the heat again, add the chicken and reheat for five minutes or so.


- Rick Nichols

The Philadelphia Film Society is showing a screening of the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty on Wednesday, March 31st. As a special treat, a moderated discussion with director Don Hahn will take place afterward. Plus, the First Person Arts community is getting a special discounted price. See details below!


Hahn was a key player at Walt Disney Studios Feature Animation department during the 1984-1994 revival of Disney magic through classics like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Waking Sleeping Beauty shows the vulnerable side of Disney after its series of box office flops. Through interviews, internal memos, and home movies, the documentary captures it all. Everything from the growing tensions because of ego battles, cost overruns and failed experiments to its improbable renaissance.

Here’s an interview with Don Hahn after a screening in Austin, Texas.



Check out the screening at 7:30pm on Wednesday, March 31st at the Prince Music Theater. Discounted tickets are $7.00 (regular ticket price is $10) and can be purchased one of two ways. You can click here, select the number of tickets you want, and enter promotion code fpa2010, or just mention First Person Arts at the door.


Don’t miss out on what The Los Angeles Times is calling “one of the best comeback stories in show business history.”


-Tiffany Thwaites

In anticipation of our April 11th Edible World event, Sunday Supper and Family Lore, the First Person Blog will feature the stories and family recipes of Philly food personalities. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, look out for recipes from the likes of chefs, writers and people who just love eating, making and talking about food and family. So far, we’ve tasted Helen Horstmann’s angel food cake, beach bean soup from Ed Tettemer and John Taus’ take on his grandmother’s pierogies.


I love Elizabeth Halen, also known as E. Writer of Foodaphilia and the woman behind those delicious Baker E’s whoopie pies, Elizabeth is one of Philly’s most beloved bloggers and bakers. First Person Festival attendees may have sampled those whoopie pies at our concession stand this past year. You can find her wares now at A Full Plate Cafe, Home Slice Pizzeria and Green Aisle Grocery (Stay tuned for a family recipe from the boys at Green Aisle!). She shares a favorite family recipe for Beef Stroganoff.


Want to be like our Philly Foodies? Share a family recipe at our Edible World event! Send your recipe, story and a photo to Karina by April 2nd! Reserve your seat at the event here.


Beef Stroganoff was one of my favorite family dinners growing up. I only get the occasion to visit my parent’s home once a year, but my mother makes sure at least one night we sit down to a dinner of this creamy comfort food. The version we ate all through my childhood was made with hamburger, but the most recent version was prepared using leftover filet of beef from Christmas dinner. Thinly sliced top round or sirloin would also make a tasty dish.


Beef Stroganoff


1 ½ lbs beef (your choice)
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
1 lb button mushrooms
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 can beef broth or homemade stock, if available
Salt
Black Pepper
1 cup sour cream
Cooked Egg Noodles


1. In a large skillet, brown the beef. Remove the meat from the pan.
2. Add the onions and mushrooms to the beef drippings left in the pan. Cook until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms browned. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Lower the heat to medium-low and sprinkle the flour over the onions and mushrooms.
4. Add the beef broth and use a wooden spoon to scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Let the broth reduce by half.
5. Add the beef back into the pan, along with the sour cream and heat through. About three minutes. Add salt and pepper again, if necessary.


Serve over hot egg noodles.


- Elizabeth Halen (E)

First Person Arts members and festival attendees are no stranger to The Painted Bride Art Center and we’re excited to direct you to a great event going on there this weekend. As part of the Spalding Gray celebration, Kathie Russo, Gray’s widow, and Lucy Sexton, a dance-performance artist, facilitated the Personal Portrait Performance Interactive Workshop. Ten participants attended the workshop in which they both sought to translate their narrative into a larger truth, as well as bring it to life through exercises in writing, movement and performance. The workshop pieces are being showcased tomorrow from 1-3 PM at no cost to the audience.


For further details, visit The Painted Bride here.


- J. Rudy Flesher

In anticipation of our April 11th Edible World event, Sunday Supper and Family Lore, the First Person Blog will feature the stories and family recipes of Philly food personalities. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, look out for recipes from the likes of chefs, writers and people who just love eating, making and talking about food and family.


John Taus is the celebrated chef at the helm of Rittenhouse Square favorite Snackbar. I wrote on some of Taus’ dishes for uwishunu last year and sampled his pierogies, based on his grandmother’s recipe. He shares his updated take with us and a tale of early culinary ingenuity (or maybe just childhood mischief!).


Want to be like our Philly Foodies? Share a family recipe at our Edible World event! Send your recipe, story and a photo to Karina by April 2nd! Reserve your seat at the event here.

One of my first memories of eating pierogies would be when I was about 5 years old. My grandmother would often babysit my 3 siblings and cousins. I feel like we ate pierogies and kielbasa almost daily, hence my love for both pierogies and sausages.


My grandmother had these cheap mustard and ketchup bottles with a long tip. As children, we all would insert the tip into our pierogies and fill them up with ketchup. This would often create a mess but my grandmother never scolded us. I always remember an enormous smile on her face as she watched her grandchildren make a complete mess.


Pierogie Dough
2 pints sour cream
12 cups flour
4 tbsp melted butter
8 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil


Put all ingredients into a mixer with the dough hook attachment. Mix until incorporated. When the dough comes together, wrap in plastic wrap and allow to rest for 1 hour.


Filling
5 lbs yukon gold potatoes
1/2 cup caramelized onions
6 tbsp chives
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste


Boil the potatoes in salted water. When thoroughly cooked through, strain and puree with food mill or ricer. Add the remaining ingredients while the potatoes are hot to help incorporate other ingredients. Make sure the filling is completely cool before attempting to form the pierogie. Both the dough and filling can be made a few days in advance. Dough can also be stored in a freezer.


Forming Pierogies
This is where my method differs from my grandmother’s method extremely. She uses a rolling pin and rolls her dough by hand while I use a pasta machine to speed up the process. Begin rolling your dough through the pasta machine to medium thickness. I usually take it to the number 6 but you can adjust your thickness as you like. After you have your dough rolled out, begin putting medium sized balls of filling in the middle of your dough sheet. Trace around your filling with an egg wash. Fold your dough over the ball of filling and line up with the other side of the dough. Using a ring mold, cut out your pierogie into a half moon shape. If you don’t have ring molds you can use a rocks glass. This will work best on a wooden surface. The pierogies need to be blanched in salted water then fried in vegetable oil. Enjoy!


- John Taus

Our audiences love Robin Wachsberger. First she won Audience Favorite at our January Slam at World Cafe Live and then she won AF at this week’s Slam at L’Etage. Thanks for coming back Robin!

My first introduction to Spalding Gray was not through his work, but second hand through his admirers. I never had the privilege of seeing him share his autobiographical stories with audiences, but in talking to fans, and watching videos of him, I see how much I missed. Vicki Solot, executive director of First Person Arts, once had the opportunity to see Gray perform and was moved by his work, “I still remember my surprise at how interesting it was to listen to him as he meandered down memory lane, only to circle back to what seemed to be the point to make some pithy observation about a moment in his life.” For someone so familiar with the best of memoir and documentary art to speak so highly of an artist says volumes to me.


I have enjoyed watching storytellers perform throughout my entire life, but I was only recently introduced to the art of autobiographical storytelling. Spalding Gray was one of the pioneers of this art form, and very early on in his career in 1976 Gray performed locally at Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center. Since that time Gray revisited audiences many times at The Painted Bride, his last visit in 1999 at their 30th anniversary celebration.


This year, the Painted Bride is celebrating their 40th anniversary by hosting a unique tribute to Spalding Gray entitled, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. The piece enacts Grays untold stories and was compiled by Kathie Russo, Gray’s widow, and Lucy Sexton, a dance-performance artist. A cast of five actors performs the piece, speaking directly to the audience as Spalding Gray did. These actors include the notable Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, Michael Cunningham as well as actress Jen Childs, who will be the host of our next StorySlam at World Cafe Live. This tribute may be one of my last opportunities to see a performance done in Gray’s unique style, and I look forward to hearing him meander down memory lane, if only second hand. It all starts tonight through Saturday.


And First Person members are getting 25% off tickets to Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. Just use the code “First Person” when purchasing tickets by calling the box office (215.925.9914) or in person at the Bride.


- Sarah Crawford

In anticipation of our April 11th Edible World event, Sunday Supper and Family Lore, the First Person Blog will feature the stories and family recipes of Philly food personalities. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, look out for recipes from the likes of chefs, writers and people who just love eating, making and talking about food and family.


Today we are featuring Ed Tettemer and his recipe for Beach Bean Soup. Ed is a writer and independent consultant but cooks for the Strathmere Volunteer Fire Company and caters private dinner parties, for which he was recently featured in the Inky. I dig his whimsical, folksy way of talking about food. Come back on Friday when we feature Snackbar chef John Taus’ update of his grandmother’s pierogies.


Want to be like our Philly Foodies? Share a family recipe at our Edible World event! Send your recipe, story and a photo to Karina by April 2nd! Reserve your seat at the event here.

I love to cook for friends, family, heck – anyone with taste buds and a happy hunger.


I learned the joy of cooking by motherly osmosis. Ours was a resourceful household, always with a large garden fertilized by some potent horse manure from Jigs Kentop’s farm up the street. Jigs had some big draft horses that sure knew how to poop. I can still smell the aroma of our freshly fertilized garden – what my mother called “Vitamin M.”


And out of that garden came a plenty. Big-boy, early-girl, beefsteak big Italian plum and bite-size cherry tomatoes. Pole beans and Swiss chard, red beets and Brussels sprouts and broccoli and okra, from plants with enormous tropical fronds. And in the spring, rhubarb.


My dad would put a sign at the end of the driveway: “Rhubarb 75¢ a bag.” Same price every year I remember. Why 75¢? Who knows, but the same folks would pull in that driveway and get themselves six bits worth of rhubarb every single year.


My dad believed if we were gonna have trees, they might as well be fruit trees. Apple dumplings and peach dumplings with fresh cream made dinner more like dessert. We’d go fishing a couple nights a week and fill the freezer with Neshaminy Creek sunnies and catfish. Every Friday a fish fry. And mom knew exactly how long after a good rain it took for the mushrooms to pop up. She’d hand us cotton sacks and lead us out to harvest while the meadow grass was still wet. A coffee can of bacon drippings stood ready by the stove, and nothing beats those wild mushrooms sauteed in bacon drippings, with garlic and onion and a mother’s love.


If she cooked a ham or a chicken or anything with a bone, I knew it wouldn’t be more than a day or two till we had soup. Noodle soup or bean soup or split pea on a cold day. No two soups were ever the same, as the stock depended on whatever tasty scraps were saved up during the week.


I had to start cooking when I left home in full ‘70s dropout mode. It was campfire cooking and then tiny-apartment cooking and lots of weird casseroles. I kept the drippings by the stove and a jar for table scraps in the fridge, so I could make my “garbage soup” every Sunday. It was my ritual of self-reliance for a few years until I learned to make soup with fresher ingredients: butternut squash with baked apples pureed with coconut milk, homemade chicken stock and Thai curry. Ask my wife; now that’s soup.


Sometimes I think my daughter visits just for the egg sandwich I can’t wait to make her in the same iron skillet my mother used to cook those mushrooms.


35 years along and I’d rather cook for a crowd than do anything else. I cook for our volunteer fire company and I’m proud to report attendance at drill night has doubled since I started in with the sweet potato gratin with bay leaf cream, steamed clam chowder and spicy Vietnamese noodle soups. Ben Franklin insisted his fire companies bond over good food. Men who eat together know who they can trust when the fire hits the fan.


Some paint, others work with clay. I create by scrounging the fridge and pantry and poking around Chinatown. Hmm, chicken backs, 69¢ a pound. Plantains, pitch black and just ripe for a hot pan with glistening peanut oil. And look at all this fennel and bok choy. Oddball food is my palette. The stockpot is my medium. I love knowing that someone may do something great in life with the caloric inspiration my art has provided.

Yeah, I do love to cook. So do me a favor, won’t you? Next time you’ve got 10 or 15 people coming over, ask me to put something on the table for ‘em. I’ll have a blast watching it disappear.


Beach Bean Soup
This is really, really good.


• A few strips of good bacon, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 good sweet onion, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
• A bunch of garlic chopped up
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 1/2 cups dried beans, such as baby limas, navy or pinto, (or any combo)
soaked overnight in water 2” higher than the beans
• 6 to 8 cups homemade chicken stock
• A good shake of red pepper flakes
• 2 bay leaves (fresh if you can find ‘em)
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar or molasses
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• A good meaty hambone from your leftover Sunday dinner
• 2 to 3 tablespoons chopped pungent fresh herbs: rosemary, thyme, savory or sage, in any combination


1. In a large Dutch oven, cook the bacon, covered, over low heat, stirring
occasionally until the fat has rendered out and the pancetta is fairly crisp, about 15 minutes; with a slotted spoon, remove the pancetta to a bowl. Add the onion, carrots and garlic to the pan, cover and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are soft but not browned, about 15 minutes.


2. Drain the soaked beans and add to the pan, along with 6 or 8 cups of good stock, the pepper flakes, bay leaves, sugar and the cooked bacon. Add your ham bone now. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and cook until the soup begins to thicken and the beans are soft, about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. Add more chicken stock as necessary to achieve the consistency you prefer. After 1 hour of cooking, stir in the salt. And skim off the fatty scum whenever you see it.


3. Add the herbs during the last half-hour of cooking. Cooked vegetables can be added now to let the flavors marry. (I like to sauté peppers and such, even a jalapeño. Cook ‘em till they’re really good and soft, even caramelized. Toss ‘em in the pot and give it a stir.)


4. Serve with a good crusty bread and good chewy red wine. Yum yum eat ‘em up.


5. Oh, make sure you make this soup at the beach, on a windy and chilly day.
Preferably with Charlie Parker playing real loud on the hi-fi. Otherwise, it’s just really good bean soup, not beach bean soup.


- Ed Tettemer

It’s clear from earlier blog posts that I adore Katonya Mosley and Victor Fiorillo is a man I finally get to meet after seeing him around town for years. (He tickles the ivories for Ms. Martha Graham Cracker when he’s not writing for Philly Mag. I also hear that he’s sassy.) So I am particularly excited to see them as guest storyteller and host, respectively, at tonight’s StorySlam. The theme is Gifts.


L’Etage, doors at 7:30, Slam starts at 8:30. $10, $8 for members.


Speaking of gifts, I’m listening to Miike Snow, a gift from my friend Mike (with one i). It’s totally made my day. Anyone else seeing them at TLA on Thursday?


- Karina