This page is dedicated to the memory of Florence DeFina Bonica. Mom dictated these recipes on Christmas Day, 1990.

Calamari

Buy half a dozen squid. Clean them. Take the black skin off of them. Pull their head off. Take the backbone out so that the squid is all white and empty on the inside. Wash them out. Push the mouth and eyes out of the head and wash the tentacles and put them with the white part. Put them aside.

Make the stuffing as follows: 1/2 cup of cracker meal; 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese; salt and pepper and parsley and three eggs. Mix good. O.K. Get the squid and put the stuffing in the squid loosely, you don't want it to burst. Put a toothpick in the open end of the squid so that the stuffing doesn't fall out.

Now get a small onion with some olive oil and sauté it and tomato and salt and pepper and parsley. Add about two cups of water after it is sautéed and make it come to a boil. Gently drop your squid in there and let it cook gently for about half an hour.

Now you have a nice soup. Then you get a little pane calliato and dunk in in your soup and eat it.

Fassuledu ca sassa

Put like a quarter of a cup of olive oil in the pot. Chop and sauté a nice big onion. Cut about two or three cloves of garlic in half and sauté them. Then get two or three ripe tomatoes or a small can of tomatoes, whichever you have handy. Get the tomatoes and add them to the onions and heat. Then get a couple of pounds of string beans that have been broken in half and throw them in there. Sprinkle in a little oregano. Let them cook until the string beans are cooked. Delicious.

I Lentique

Wash 1/2 lb. of lentils. Drain them. Cover them with water three or four inches over the lentils.

Put a third of a cup of olive oil in a frying pan. Sauté one small onion and a clove of garlic (each finely chopped) in the frying pan. Add one tomato (chopped) and sauté it with the onion and garlic. Add a little parsley and salt and pepper.

The lentils are boiling. Throw the sauteed ingredients into the boiling lentils. Get a package of chopped spinach (frozen) and throw it into the boiling lentils. Let it all cook together until the lentils are cooked al dente. If you need to add a little water, do it. It should take 3/4of an hour, total. 

If you want, you can throw in some chopped carrots.

Manicotti

You need two light frying pans or skillets with a handle on them. They are not made of heavy iron. Light or medium weight metal. You have to grease them with olive oil. They should be 4 1/2 inches in diameter at the bottom and 6 inches in diameter at the top. 

The dough is made with 2 1/2 cups of flour, twelve eggs and a cup of water. You beat the twelve eggs. Throw in the flour. Beat it. Then when you have that together, it is kind of hard, you beat in the water and the dough will come kind of runny like a crepe. Now you get a cupino (a big flat spoon that holds three tablespoons). 

Get the frying pan medium hot on the front burners. Get the dough in the cupino and make the dough cover the bottom of the pan. The swirl it. You never turn them over. Cook it only on one side. It only takes a little while. When you see the disk dry up in the middle take it out. Just flip it on top of a plate. It is an art to be swirling one while the other is cooking. You go back and forth from one pan to the other until all of the dough is cooked.

Now you can do it before or after, but I usually have my filling made before the dough. To make the filling you get three pounds of ricotta, parsley a occhio (I don't measure the parsley; use about a tablespoon), four eggs, a cup of grated parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste (I usually put in 1/2 teaspoon of each... just shake a little bit over it). Beat the eggs and stir all the rest of that stuff together good. That's it.

Then get those little circles and put like a tablespoon and a half of filling in there. Roll them. Put them in a tray upside down (so the seam is down). It will open up if the seam is up. Then I put wax paper between each layer. They will stick together if they aren't separated by wax paper.

When you are ready to cook them you put a layer of sauce on the bottom of a big flat baking dish. Can be porcelain or whatever you got but don't use aluminum. I put a layer of sauce, a layer of manicotti, a layer of sauce, a layer of manicotti until you are finished. Cook for about three quarters of an hour at 350. Then you eat it.

U Bollito

Get a beef shin bone with meat on it. We used to eat this when we were poor. You get a big pot like the one that you make pasta in. The pot should be a foot high. Fill the pot about one quarter full, about two quarts of water. Throw the shin bone in. 

Let the shin bone boil. Quarter a large onion and throw it in. Quarter a tomato and throw that in. Put a bay leaf in. Put in some fresh parsley. Salt and pepper to taste. The water is boiling. Quarter a cabbage. Quarter a couple of potatoes and throw them in. Then take about 4 or 5 carrots and cut them in half and throw them in. It takes about an hour. That's it.

Florence &  Dorothy Bonica (1995)