Bonus: Bruce Bozzi On The Magic Of Lasagna

0:01Spring into deals for seasonal savings. Shop select one pint annuals for just$1. Plus, get a free additional cobalt 40-volt 2-amp hour battery when you buy a select cobalt 40-volt trimmer and blower combo kit. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Lowe's. We help, you save. Ballot at 5-6. Annuals offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii.

0:24Bruce Bozzi:Visit your nearby Lowe's on South Holland Road in Chicago. Ruthie's Table 4, presented by Sky.

0:38So because we started out by talking, we'll come back to talk about your mother's lasagna. And I'm really interested in that because I think, again, lasagna to every Italian is probably not even town to town, but basically house to house. House to house. And the pride of so many times when I've asked somebody from how do you make your limoncello to living in Tuscany and going and wanting to make a porchetta and being told, I said, oh, I know how to make this. You don't have to teach me. And then I tell them, they go, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't do it that way. That's how we cook it, you know, in another town literally two miles away.

1:16So that kind of personalization of talking about your mother's cooking. So her lasagna. What were meals like in your household? It was the three of you, your sister and your mother and you. And would she spend – did she work? Did she have another job? My mother did not work. So my mother came – Well, she worked. She just worked at home. She worked, exactly. And I often say that too. I do too. Because my mother has three brothers and came from – lived in Whitestone. Her father was a bricklayer and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. And the boy – her two older brothers went to college. she was really kind of expected to be a secretary get married that was like you know of the time and her younger brother Uncle Tony to your point started in 1963 as a dishwasher at the Palm and eventually became the head chef of the whole company and he would work at like at the Palm washing dishes at night and work at Giordano's Italian restaurant in Manhattan so he was he was teaching himself yeah um so food was very important but food for us like and and to your point too they both cook lasagna and they're very and and it's different yeah i mean i haven't actually had a lasagna with sausage meat that's you know you can think of the bolognese which might you know and then the ones who don't put any meat in at all and different kinds of cheeses i have a daughter-in-law who is really you know really makes a great lasagna and so she was sick and I thought you know I said to the kids and everybody just being me I said oh I'll make a lasagna and bring it up and was like maybe not you know maybe not Ruthie it was like and I thought okay I'll back off you know this is fine so people are very very special about their lasagna I didn't know that they fight about it do you remember the this was two sisters no my mother and her younger brother and her younger brother okay so I'd love to hear more about the lasagna Can you tell me my phone?

3:18Yeah. Because I can tell you the difference. If you want to, we don't have to go to the restaurant. I think it's just somewhat interesting because, you know, my mother, they're all, so my mother has said, and we lived and breathed her Italian. So her Italian was Neapolitan. It was fresh pasta, plum tomatoes, garlic and onions chopped fresh, sauteed in olive oil in the base of the sauce. the Italian American version sautés tomato paste in drippings from meatballs and sausage she browned it with a little sugar browns paste and adds to the tomato sauce her brother Anthony we're like Uncle Tony Anthony you should get them in here for lasagna bake off completely hers makes a very thick sauce I do not use bechamel as my brother Anthony does I use ricotta, mozzarella, and lots of Parmesan cheese throughout the layers of lasagna.

4:21So it takes, so her cooking that, like when she would cook a lasagna, it meant that something very special was happening. It was Christmas. It was a celebration. Because it took her a lot of work and she was solo. Like we were not in there with her. She really, it was like her thing. And we kind of bowed to it and we were all so excited. Did you have a preference? Do you have one? Oh, and do you make lasagna yourself? No, I don't. Yeah. You know, I should. I don't. Yeah, I think I had my mom's. Yeah, of course. She heard this and she was like, what? Though recently I had my uncle, he was visiting us and I said, Uncle Tony, can you please?

5:02Yeah. And I cooked it with him. So we were in the kitchen and I cooked it, you know, with the sausage and stuff like that. and that what was super special about that was I asked him and it was just he and I in the kitchen cooking lasagna this is maybe four or five summers ago and again having spent so much time in kitchens with people that I work with yeah um that connection of food and cooking and then enjoying it and tasting it along the way as we did that night at Brooklawn it was incredible

6:02Yeah.