2024 #52Ancestors, Week 14: Least Favorite Recipe

My grandmother was Sicilian, so she had plenty of delicious recipes.  Her Sunday sauce was, of course, top notch.  Honestly, I'm not sure anyone could pick a favorite recipe from her repertoire, but I can tell you that my father's least favorite recipe was/is something called escarole and beans.  As a kid, I didn't know what it was.  I just knew it must be awful because it was the only food my dad admitted he hated eating as a kid.  Even the mention of it had my dad putting a hand to either side of his head and groaning dramatically, "Ack!  Escarole and beans!"

Escarole is a bitter leafy green which Dad claims is inoffensive enough when it is served raw as part of a salad, but something sinister happens when it is cooked...or maybe the sinister part is when the white beans are added.  I'm not sure.  Everything I've read says that cooking escarole minimizes the bitter taste, and the rest of the recipe consists of broth, garlic, onion, olive oil, salt and red pepper. Those are usually safe ingredients to add to most any dish.

Anyway, as my father tells it, any time Grandma Rose prepared steak and fries for dinner, Dad and Aunt Chris knew the dreaded escarole and beans was also on the menu. This unpalatable item was served first and had to be consumed before the much more desirable steak and fries could be eaten.  Alas, Dad couldn't even sneak the unpleasant slop to the dog under the table.  It wouldn't eat the escarole and beans either, and even if it were so inclined, the dog was only the size of a teacup.  Not much help when it comes to getting rid of food.  I asked Dad if he ever managed to make it to the steak and fries.  He said he did eventually, but by that time, it was already cold.  He also pointed out that there weren't any microwaves back then, though I doubt microwaving a steak would improve it any.  😞

Here's the funniest part of the story, though.  When I graduated from college (at least, I think that's what we were celebrating), we all went out to a great little chain Italian restaurant called Buca di Beppo in the suburbs of Chicago.  They had escarole and bean on the menu.  My dad, in a fit of optimism, decided to order it, thinking that maybe his palate would have changed since he was a kid.  Sadly, it had not. 😆