My neighborhood looked like a wintry wonderland this weekend after a storm left a few inches of snow on the ground, with more flakes forecast to fall.
The Bartistamobile's doors were frozen shut (thankfully, I finally got them open) and the snow plow made it only half-way up my street. So, it was a good weekend to just stay indoors, keep warm and nosh on comfort food. I whipped up a big pot of chili on Saturday afternoon and made a pork roast on Sunday evening.
Speaking of cooking: I've written about Jack Kelly's culinary skills before, and here's a wonderful 1960 newspaper story about "The Kook-Krazy Kellys":
But cooking for the Kellys is actually more than a hobby. Jack and his wife qualify as 'gourmets' in the absolute definition of the word. 'We don't cook for just ourselves,' says Donna, 'we practically run a small restaurant'.
The More The Merrier
Hardly a weekend passes at the Kelly home that they don't serve dinner for ten, or more often, twenty people. Friends, calling on the phone, who ask Jack 'what's cooking?' mean it literally.
'Although we're both Irish,' says Jack, 'we love Italian food. Donna called me one Friday at the studio and said she was in the mood to start cooking up an Italian dinner for Sunday and asked if I would call my mother and ask her to come. We had planned for just three people but every time somebody called and found out that we were cooking our 'Italian-special' they somehow got an invitation. It started a chain reaction and at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, sixteen people sat down to a meal it had taken us three days to prepare.'
The twelve-course feast took almost eight hours to eat. At eight that evening everyone was full and there were still two courses to go.
'We don't eat like this all the time,' Jack told his friends when they had finished. 'We go on a health-food kick about once a month. If we didn't, I would get so fat I couldn't fit into any of my Maverick clothes.
On the other hand, Donna, known professionally as May Wynn, tips the scale at a delicate 105 and doesn't worry about gaining weight. 'I grew up in an Italian-Irish section of New York. I was the most famous kid in the neighborhood because I could eat more than anyone else in my family. To my Italian friends that was the best compliment one could give them.'
Culinary Courtship
Jack and Donna are currently writing a cook book which will be published in the near future. All of the recipes are original and since cooking for each other was, and has been, an important part of their courtship and marriage, they are writing their own love story around the different dishes. Appropriately, they have titled the book, 'Love 'N' Oven'.
'When I was dating Jack,' recalls Donna, 'we didn't like to go out for dinner very much. It was more fun to cook for each other and when he would call I'd tell him to bring a steak and we would have a bar-b-que.'
'This was great', retorts Jack, 'but more often than not she would call me back and tell me to bring enough steak for eight people. She was always having friends drop by unexpectedly. It got so expensive I finally had to marry her. Now I'm lucky if we get away with serving only eight.'
According to Jack there is only one drawback to their three-day Italian cooking sprees. Being Catholics, they don't eat meat on Friday so they can't taste the sauces while they are being prepared. The aroma really tortures them.
'But you should see us on Saturday morning,' says Donna. Kelly and I race for the cooking pot to be the first to taste our concoction.'
The Kelly kitchen, which is very large considering the smallness of their one-bedroom cottage, is well-equipped for their cooking artistry. But in the space meant for a large modern range, there stands a small stove. 'There are only four burners on top,' explained Jack, 'but take a look at that 30-inch oven. We used to have a seven-hundred dollar range but we gave it away to charity because it had a normal-sized oven. We picked up this 30-inch job on sale for a hundred and fifty bucks.' This little-big oven, which is their pride and joy, has seen the lion's share of use. Last year, Donna cooked a 30-pound roast beef in it.
'It was a monster,' Donna remembers. 'I could hardly lift it and it was bigger around than I am. We took a picture of it.'
So, in the evenings after a day on the golf course together, when Jack isn't working, Jack and Donna are usually busy before their huge fireplace compiling recipes, checking ingredients or experimenting in the kitchen with new ideas.
All of their recipes include one thing, says Jack: 'Taste frequently and season with lots of love.'" :)
It's a shame that Jack and Donna's cookbook was never published. Oh well, there's always something cookin' in TDS--please stay tuned! :)
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