Lee's Veal Parmigiana

Memories of the Casa Bianca can be euorphic

Fond memories of growing up at the Casa Bianca are ever present in my mind. Sure the great food was a part of what made it special but the guests who came through our doors both the front and the kitchen were just that, guests to my mother and more like family than customers. Being in our living room manifested this euphoria and sense of belonging. For years our guests would beg us not to advertize as to keep the Casa thier little secret.This is why those who remember the Casa and share the loving memory of Mama Lee maintain an indelible lasting experience, one that I have never felt in any other restaurant but only there in the living room of my home.

Over and over I hear our former guests talk about Lee and Mary and the effect they had on them and in many cases the children of so many who grew up finding a special place at the Casa's tables. Today as I travel and dine all over the country I suppose I judge all comers against that  experience that was the Casa Bianca. There is plenty of great food out there and a plethora of talented chefs. However, it is almost impossible to find that something that existed at the Casa. The thing that set it apart and made it home to so many. Unless you were there I'm sorry you won't get it. Those of you who were are now the Casa's fraternity knowing that we will never add another member.

I hope that we are building that same legacy here at Proctor Gas the propane people where you feel like a guest in our showroom and part of the Proctor Gas fraternity.

Here is the Casa' biggest seller over those 40 years. And just for fun the menu from August 12th 1984...were you there?

Appetizers
My black bean soup w/ spicy tomato salsa                                                              

Baked stuffed clams                                                                                                          

Chilled Idaho trout sun dried tomatoes, olives and basil                                           

Mussels w/scallions, garlic tomatoes and extra virgin live oil                                 

Tortolini w/ snails in a light tomato pesto sauce                                                                   

 

Entrées

Veal Cutlet Parmigiana                                                                                                 

Veal Piccata , lemon white wine and capers                                                                  
Veal cutlet Maria, w/ proscuitto,  eggplant and fresh mozzarella                             
Jumbo shrimp scampi, Genoa style on pasta                                                                
Grilled chicken breast w homemade  lobster artichoke ravioli red pepper aioli           

Braciole                                                                                                                                

Jambalya, Naples style, shrimp chicken and Italian sausage                                     
Double Cut Pork chops, braised red cabbage and warm house-made applesauce   
Roasted rack of lamb Italian style                                                                                               
Grilled or blackened Mahi Mahi w/ pesto hollandaise                                               

Fresh pasta pescatore, shrimp , mussels, calamari                                                       

 

Desserts

Frozen honey vanilla Mousse, w blackberry sauce                                                       

Peaches in hot wine strawberries and cream                                                                

Lee's famous hot fudge on ice cream                                                                              

Homemade Italian cheesecake                                                                                        
assorted Italian ice creams                                                                                                           

 

For those who really want a walk down memory lane check this out!

The Casa 1958 the year I was born, The original sign read Italian Restaurant Steaks and Chops! But there was not a chop on the menu and only one steak!

Phone # ...Prospect 3-8068 as listed on the menus

Price of entree included a Complete dinner:

antipasto
soup
spaghetti
green salad
entree of your choice
dessert
coffee or espresso

The most expensive entree, with 7 courses STUFFING MENU was the  veal cutlet Parm dinner for $3.50... but! if you wanted extra sauce you had to get up another..extra sauce .25 cents...if the 6 extra courses was too expensive for $1.50, you could get the veal parm for:

veal cutlet ala carte $1.90

or

Linguini and clams $1.25

 

Undesrstand this was not a 7 course tasting menu as you might see today instead all were full portions. You wewre not allowed to leave the table unless you were stuffed and having trouble moving.

Here is Lee's Veal Parmigiana you can sub chicken or pork

Veal Parm

Have your butcher cut your cutlets from the top with the cap removed.  Just tell him that and he will know. Pound them thin but not too thin about a 4 to 5 ounce piece being careful not to tear the meat.

Serves six

6 5 oz pieces of veal pounded

bread crumbs
8 eggs beaten in a flat bottom pan large enough to dredge the cutlet in
3 cloves garlic chopped small
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
black pepper
6 large or 12 small slices of fresh mozzarella cheese
pinch of salt as the cheese will make it salty

oil for pan frying

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

 

In the flat bottom pan with the eggs add the ingredients...garlic, parsley cheese and pepper beat together until well incorporated. Have the bread crumbs on a dish where you can dredge in the crumbs then into the egg mixture.

Have the cooking oil on the stove in a heavy skillet large enough to hold two of the cutlets at once. About a 1/2 inch of oil in the pan. Make sure the oil is hot before you put the cutlet in or it will not stay together. Test your oil by dropping a touch of the egg mixture in the oil. If it fry's up immediately then you are ready otherwise wait for this temperature to occur.

Dredge the cutlet in the bread crumbs pressing them to the meat, you can bread the cutlets all at once and set aside. Test your oil to make sure it is hot enough. Then one at a time put the cutlets in the egg mixture and get well coated then go right to the hot oil with one smooth quick motion. Just don't splash the oil. Use a pair of tongs for this. The egg should sear quickly and leave for about 2 minutes on each side.

Remove to a plate with a paper towel under the cutlet and let them rest for 3 minutes, letting the paper towel extract any extra oil. Then transfer to a flat 1/2 size sheet pan or something like that and place cheese on top, put in the hot oven. When the cheese is melted they are done. Serve with pasta and sauce.

Of course there are many options to how to do a cutlet and you would never find it done this way in Italy but my mother did it this way. In Italy it would most likely be crispy (bread crumbs on the outside) with a slice of lemon no sauce no cheese.

A Mrs. Tom side note:

My  mother fried all the veal parms  in a iron skillet that is in my kitchen today. She used a fork that cost about .99 cents and was duck taped together. One of those designed for cooking on the outdoor grill. It was about 18 inches long and was in the kitchen for more years than I could remember. After Anna passed away the fork stayed and was still in use when my mother passed some 12 years later. We should have framed it! Anna was my mother's cook for 25 years and had a special hand roll down to a science that got the cutlet from the egg batter to the hot oil in one smooth back of the hand roll. Those of you who entered the Casa through the kitchen and had to slide past Pauline Anna's sister (on the dish station for 15 years) will remember this.

 

Casa Bianca's Hot Fudge

I never meet my Grandmother

The Battle of the Philippines

I SAW THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES.

By Colonel Carlos P. Romulo.
New York: Doubleday, Dor an
& Company, Inc. 1942. 323 pp. $3.
Reviewed by HENRY C. WOLFE

Some excerpts from the stories

" In this little history of his native land Carlos P. Romulo dramatizes the national

philosophy behind the fall of the Philippines.

Colonel Romulo was General Mac-Arthur's personal aide and chief press

relations officer for the troops on Corregidor and Bataan, a Pulitzer Prize winner
in journalism. A brave soldier and an inspiring officer, he was the last man out of Bataan.

During his escape" He had to leave his wife and children behind him, and he does not yet know their fate. His seventeen-year-old son fought on with the doomed defenders.

Through its stark and beautiful chapters runs the question of the starving men of Bataan: "When is help coming from America?" No American can read this book without p r i d e . The gangrene-eaten, bomb-rocked soldiers of the Philippine foxholes stand with the noblest heroes of all time.

The Battle of the Philippines is the story of seven thousand American soldiers and seventy-five thousand Filipinos against two hundred and fifty thousand Japanese. It is the story of men and women who stayed "civilized and kind in the face of unspeakable horror."

Colonel Romulo played a heroic part in the cruelly unequal combat. After the removal to Corregidor he wrote a little news pamphlet for the soldiers and made his perilous way to the fox-holes at the front to bring news and encouragement to the fighters. He did his share of the fighting, too.

Colonel Romulo is a Pulitzer Prize winner, but his book has a beauty that arises from no conscious literary art. It lies rather in the dignity of his spirit, in the sporting generosity of his admiration for the courage and ability of his fellows, in the nobility of his emotions

The author pays tribute to General MacArthur and President Quezon. It is ironical to recall that when the reviewer returned to the United States from the Far East shortly before Pearl Harbor he met many Americans, especially in New York, who doubted the Filipino President's loyalty and belittled Filipino devotion to democracy and the United States. This was exactly the propaganda that the Japanese had imed to spread.

These Americans should read Colonel Romulo. There is no finer exponent of democracy anywhere in the world today. Tie heroic Filipino defense of freedom at Lingayan and Manila, on Bataan and Corregidor has made history. Let us hope that we shall soon redeem General MacArthur's pledge to the President of the valiant Filipinos: "We'll go back to the Philippines, Mr. President, and if necessary I'll put you back in Malacanan on the points of my bayonets."

—From the book

Death and destruction left in the wake of Japanese bombing of the Cavite Navy Yard on Dec. 10, 1941.

JANUARY 16. 1941.'^

General Romulo and Mrs. Bove

 Brigadier General Carlos P Romulo who made an unforgettable impression on the people of Montpelier when he spoke here, has written another book. "My brother Americans" in which he tell of his experiences while touring 466 cities of the United States.

Romulo made the trip at the request of General Mc Arthur in an attempt to tell America the truth about  the story of Bataan. To make the US understand what prompted 75,000 Philippines and 10,000 Americans to take up arms against a quarter of a million Japanese in a hopeless defense of the peninsula. Everywhere Romulo spoke including our little Montpelier , there was not a dry eye. The tears were for the suffering,  heroism and courage which was displayed by the Americans and their Filipino brothers at Bataan and Corregidor.

Although Romulo was received as a hero in Montpelier, he didn't speak of the visit in his book instead there was an excerpt about My Grandmother. Instead he speaks of Rutland Attorney Peter Bove and his mother.

"I arrived in Rutland around noon and was meet by a committee  headed by Peter A Bove. an Italian American lawyer and chairman of the group in charge of meeting me. He invited me to have lunch. (of course he is a Bove it is what we do best). I explained that I was very tired and asked if I could just rest in my room.

"The engagements were coming too fast and the distances too long. It had been a scorching day and I had fainted twice previously. I was learning that I had to relax if I was to keep up this pace of lecturing."

"I was trying to rest when Bove came back to my room". ' I have my car outside and you have to eat something sooner or later. Why not come out to my house for a quick little bite with my mother asked Bove" ( right quick little bite like we understood what that meant in the Bove Family).

He goes onto say in his book! "Never have I spent more peaceful hours. His mother was an elderly Italian woman who could speak little English, but we talked like old friends as she fluttered about the kitchen in the complicated and exciting business of Italian cookery while I tilted on a chair against the wall feeling I had known her all my life. It would have given a linguist horrors to have heard our conversation about Italy, the war and the United States, she speaking in Italian mixed with a little English and I in Spanish and English and a little Italian aided by a spattering of Tagalog. No matter we made Grand conversation."

"Then before luncheon, this delightful woman looked over her bounteous table (just a little bite) and we waited the words of grace".I have heard the prayers of preachers and prelates all over this earth but never a prayer more sincerely spoken." " Let us thank God we are here, she said " " in this blessed America."

I never meet my grandmother but today she is in my heart. It was here that my mother learned her incredible passion for great food and the quintessential hospitality of the Italian Table. In honor of my Grandmother and for all the Casa Bianca Junkies out there, here is something you would have never pried out of Mama Lee. I'm a bit concerned about the repercussions still!

The Casa Bianca's Hot Fudge

Makes about two quarts

16 squares Bakers Chocolate Naps

3 cups of half and half
2 1/4 lbs sugar
8 oz of unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon of Vanilla

Combine chocolate and H&H in a heavy saucepan. Cook and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth and blended.

Add the sugar, butter and salt continue cooking until mixture is slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and the vanilla. Serve at room temperature, store in the refrigerator and reheat slowly over a double boiler.

Sorry Mom it was time!

Enjoy

Mrs. Tom

Coffee -Crusted Cowboy Porterhouse with Tobacco Fried Onions

Growing up Restaurant

Growing up with a restaurant in the living room of your home was unusual enough. By the time I was twelve my brother was gone off to college and my mother  had one of the most celebrated restaurant addresses in Central Vermont. Most all of my friends were arriving home after school to a much more tranquil setting.

It was probably very close to the same program each night at dinner for most of my friends and their families. Not I however, the living room of our home was filled nightly with the hustle and bustle of the movers and shakers of our small town and a queue of diners from all over New England who traveled to Vermont to ski. So while most of my friends were home watching Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best and Bonanza we were inundated with characters from all walks of life.

The dining room was filled with business men, politicians, clergy and of course an occasional wise guy. At an early age I meet all sorts of characters all bound together by a common desire, my mother's food, the camaraderie of the Italian Table and the ultimate, a visit to their table from Mama Lee or a special treat she might send out from the kitchen. It was fun and exciting to meet all these people, many became lifelong friendships for our family that otherwise would have never existed. I try to keep that flame burning today at Proctor Gas providing the same quintessential hospitality my mother extended to her guests.

I would give anything for just one more visit from her to our table.

Coffee -Crusted Cowboy Porterhouse with Tobacco Fried Onions

This steak is probably enough for the ladies to share - not the case for Mr. Tom!

Serves 4-6

4- 22 OZ choice porterhouse steaks or your favorite steak

The Rub

tablespoon of fresh ground dark roast coffee

teaspoon of light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

2 teaspoons sea salt

teaspoon of fine chopped rosemary

teaspoon of course ground black pepper

virgin olive oil

Heat the grill on high heat and turn it back to a medium high for cooking with the lid closed. To add a smoky flavor you can soak some wood chips wrap in foil and poke holes in the foil. Put the chips on when you start the grill up on a direct heat.

Place all the rub mixture in a bowl and mix well. Rub the virgin olive oil on the steaks and then coat well with the rub. Let the steaks sit at room temperature for about an hour.

Make sure your grates are clean and grill the steaks on the medium high heat with the lid closed. About 4 minutes on each side for medium steaks a little less for medium rare. Once you remove the steaks let them rest for at least 5 minutes before you cut them.

For the onions

1 large or two small yellow onions sliced very thin

1 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cayenne chili pepper

Frying oil

Mix the flour and the spices and dredge the onions in the flour and fry them to golden. You can do these ahead and just serve them as a garnish on the top of the steak warm.

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Kahlua Mousse Parfait

It was all a secret.

I was watching the Food Network this week and there was the new programming with Bobby Flay. Three days to opening. It seems as though they have a show for everything as the public is hungry for anything on the Food Network. Now much of the stuff is made for TV as it is not possible or does it make any sense to put yourself in a three day box to open a restaurant in three days. The first impressions are too important, mostly restaurants can make or break it in the first ninety days. You pen when you're ready period.

I was watching just such a show this week, it was an Italian Pizza place with SECRET family recipes. It cracked me up, Bobby couldn't believe it as the family matriarch was not going to let anybody on the staff have the recipes. This was the fabric of the show Mama was not going to give it up. Secrets are good in a time of war but have no place in a restaurant. Not only was he going to have to open the restaurant in three days but he had to pry the recipes from the stubborn closed fingers of Mama.

Well the whole thing hit home because my mother was the same way. She didn't believe in giving anybody a recipe for anything for any reason. Her brother Vic brought donuts every morning he was standing there at Bush's Bakery when they came from the fryer to the front case, he rushed them to her warm. A dozen every morning and there were never any left.

Even her brother Vic, if she was doing something in the kitchen she would hide the ingredients, such as the meat sauce. I have no idea what she thought he would do with the secret knowledge. This applied especially to her desserts. Over the forty years she ran the restaurant and before the internet where you can get a recipe anytime for anything, people always wanted Lee's recipes...they had value in our town.

In most cases if she was pushed into the corner by a good friend relative or customer she would give a recipe, however she always left something out. She was a bit evil like that! In the case of her Kahlua Mousse she would never mention the marshmallow's and without them, forgetaboutit!

 

Kahlua Mousse Parfait

Serves 8-10

48 marshmallow large jet puff from Kraft 1 bag

1 ¾ cups hot coffee

¼ cup kahlua

2 pints heavy cream whipped until it peaks

2 pints strawberries washed, hulled, sliced

Pour hot coffee and kahlua over marshmallows in a double boiler until melted. Stirring them gently until they melt down and are a brown liquid. Put into the refrigerator and let it jell. Do not let it get too hard just firm. Fold in the whipped cream and whip with a  fine whip, do not leave lumps! Pour them into glasses and they are ready in a couple of hours, best to sit over night though.

With a spatula get them into a parfait glass. Garnish with walnuts and shaved chocolate on the top.

In a parfait glass, wine glass or alike. Layer the mousse and berries, top it with shaved chocolate, walnuts and a garnish with a berry on top.