Capon and risotto and mush

I am reading a book about Abruzzo and the food of the region (Food and Memories of Abruzzo: Italy's Pastoral Land by Anna Teresa Callen). It's a long book with Anna's memories of her childhood and the food that she enjoyed. She is a cook, had a stint on PBS as a chef back in the 60s and early 70sm and returns to Italy and Abruzzo every year to get more recipes.

I'm reading about capon. A capon is a rooster that is raised specifically for eating, as opposed to helping the hens make eggs. And I recall as a small child that my mom always wanted a capon at Christmas time. She would ask Mr. Leap to get her one, and when I was younger than a teenager, we often had capon for Christmas dinner, and I must say, I rather enjoyed it.

I probably enjoyed it so much because it was a much bigger bird than the normal chickens we got, and parsing this bird between six people gave me a bigger portion.

I guess I never realized until I read this book that in Abruzzo the traditional bird for Christmas was a capon. In fact, the author avers that capon was rarely eaten except at this time of the year.

Now, my mom never made risotto; at least she didn't call it that. It was just rice. And until she started using that awful minute stuff we had good rice in our house. Mom would put some butter in a pan and then "brown" the rice for about two minutes, stirring all the time. Then she would add twice as much liquid -- usually chicken broth -- to the rice as she had put rice in the pot. She would lift the lid occasionally and stir the concoction, and then we would top it with parmesan cheese. It was very good. And I suppose this creamy well-cooked rice was risotto.

Another item in this book that harps back to my mom's cooking is the use of mush -- corn meal mush -- as a supplement to meals, to bulk them up so to speak. Mush...now called polenta. I hated that stuff, so I'm not in any hurry to try polenta at any restaurants and pay a big price for something I never could stomach as a child. I don't like grits either.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you have time and can get a copy of Food and Memories..., by all means do. It's a great read, and I've culled several recipes.

As a final note: I went to the butcher shop to pick up my ground lamb. Lamb is very difficult to get in this part of the country, so I asked my butcher to get me a few racks and about 10 pounds of ground lamb, mainly because both Alan and I like lamb-burgers. So, what did he get me? Ground veal. I figure somewhere in this book there has to be some recipes for ground veal.

Without the benefit of any specific recipes, I am thinking I can make some veal patties and bread them and fry them in EVOO, then make veal Parmesan out of them, or something similar.

I'll let you all know how it turns out.

ttfn