Like Father, Like Daughter ... Where It All Begins
“My father, though he was Irish, 100% Irish, and, we all know the Irish are not necessarily known for great cooking (although even that’s changing now), but you know, he was the exception to the rule. And he loved to cook. He would cut out recipes from the New York Times … I would come home from school and there he would be, making this fabulous dinner. He’d make Swiss steak or chicken thighs cooked with sherry and fresh mushrooms, and, you know, the whole house smelled like sherry … he used to make spaghetti aglio e olio (spaghetti with oil and garlic) … When he would cook flank steak, he would put newspapers down on the floor to catch—and he would cook it on a flat cast iron pancake griddle, and he understood, even though he was, again, self-taught, he knew he had to get this cast iron flat pan really hot in order to sear the skirt steak. And, you know, most of my friends, where I grew up in Coolidge Corner, my friends’ parents didn’t know how to cook that way. Even when I was really little, he didn’t have a French chef knife, but he had a cleaver, and he taught me how to chop garlic with a cleaver. So, here I was four years old with this big, massive cleaver in my hands and, you know, just smelling fresh garlic being chopped is just something to behold, and, you know, that’s why I ended up following the path I did. Because, the only thing that has ever made me happy is cooking.”
-Chef & Restaurateur Lydia Shire, interviewed at Scampo, Boston (http://www.scampoboston.com/), where spaghetti aglio e olio is on the menu
