This recipe for Mozzarella Brioche came via a somewhat circuitous route. With the recent publication of the Craig Claiborne bio The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance, I’ve been itching to tell the story of retrieving a set of massive antique Edwardian dining chairs for a friend when Craig’s estate was being settled.
Regular readers of SpecD have heard tales of dear Eugenia Bone (née Giobbi). Gena’s family was very close friends with Craig and his crowd. Indeed, her parents Ed and Ellie (both artists) could arguably be likened to the Sara and Gerald Murphy of the 1960s-70s NYC food world if you will.
Two years or so after Craig passed away, his house on Clam Shell Drive finally — yet somewhat suddenly — was sold and everything had to be cleared out toot sweet. Craig had left the chairs to Ed. Our house is just down the road and my pal Tom Fernandez, out for the weekend, and I were happy to oblige.
It took three trips to haul the lordly, honeyed oak with black leather and nail-head trim thrones back home. One of Craig’s lady friends was overseeing the disbursements. Although the most significant vestiges of Craig’s life had been bequeathed to loved ones, there were still more wonders orphaned with Craig’s passing. Tom and I pitched in with the clean-up, clear-out, get-it-done-that-day deadline.
Three trips turned into five trips which then turned into eight or possibly more. The first foray up the tree-lined drive was around 10 in the morning. By dusk, exhausted and somewhat awed by this window into Craig Claiborne’s life, we were deep in delusional reminiscences.
“I’ll never forget how marvelous it was every time we drove over to Craig’s, the dappled light coming through the leaves, you never knew what to expect…”
“Didn’t you just adore his Peking Duck oven? And that enormous, gleaming Italian espresso machine!”
“If I close my eyes I can still see that hot tub and listen to those tales of pot smoking under the summer stars…”
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Just to be clear, Craig had gone to his reward two years before we ever stepped foot in the house. The abandoned housewares we observed; the wistful memories were supplied by the loquaciously melancholy executoress we were assisting.
Down a lonely hallway a particularly fetching bronze bas-relief was securely affixed to a closet door. Lesser attempts to liberate it had failed but with the blessing of our overseer I took this gem home.
The next time Gena came over the bronze caught her eye; she caught her breath. Turns out when the Giobbi kids were young, their dad taught them to sculpt these plaques as presents. Sure enough, in the corner of the tableau of carafe, wine glass and fruit bowl is Gena’s tiny signature, age 9.
In 2005 Gena and Ed co-authored Italian Family Dining: Recipes, Menus, and Memories of Meals with a Great American Food Family, which continues the heritage of Ed’s revolutionary 1970 Italian Family Cooking. As Craig Claiborne wrote in the introduction to the latter, “Ed Giobbi is, without question, the finest and most enthusiastic non-professional cook I’ve ever met…some of the the most memorable meals of my life have been taken in his kitchen.”
Steve and I can say the same about Gena and her family. So who better to turn to when the tomatoes are bursting and the mozzarella man is in overdrive?
Click here for the recipe for Mozzarella Brioche from Italian Family Dining.
P.S. Any earnest attempt to recount Giobbiworld’s impact on my culinary development risks echoing Auntie Mame’s endurance of the breathless account of the time that Bunny Bixler stepped on the ping-pong ball during the absolute semi-finals of the ping-pong tournament at the country club. So we’ll tackle that another day.