Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

This is a Greek dish that’s a great start to your dinner, or a satisfying lunch dish. Some time ago I did a column on a Greek dish that I liked, Garides a la Plaka. A Greek recipe for the preparing of shrimp as another great entrée. My Companion Audrey and I had moved to [...]

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John and Elvira Vatuone were good friends of mine and Audrey’s, when we were still living in New York. John had been a radical young Italian seaman who had grown up on the island of Sardegna, off the coast of Italy. When he was young he became a merchant seaman, traveling all over the world. [...]

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Pesach, Passover, Is April 3rd this year I decided to list a traditional Jewish dish. When I was a young boy, growing up in Brooklyn, Brownville, it was during the great depression. My family was not religious; we still enjoyed our communities’ quiet transformation during the Jewish Holidays. Latka, were the typical treat, that everyone [...]

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I had never eaten Mexican cooking until 1947, when my companion Audrey and I decided to return to New York from San Francisco. We still had our round trip tickets on the Greyhound bus line that we had bought when we left New York early in January 1947. We decided to go back the long [...]

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This column is the 70th I’ve written since I began over a year ago. So, I thought that I’d tell you something about how I began cooking. Back in the middle 1930’s, during the heart of The Great Depression, I was living with my mother, grandmother and maiden aunt in a Brooklyn slum. I had [...]

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I think that I’ve mentioned before that for over 20 years I identified myself as a vegequarian. i ate mostly fish and vegetables. This had evolved with me after I realized that I couldn’t kill animals. I knew I could kill fish because when I was a kid during the time of the Great Depression [...]

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When my dear friend Johnny Vatuone was in his early 90?s, a couple years after his beloved companion Elvira died, my companion Marilyn and I decided to take a trip to Italy. It occurred to me that we should take John with us so that he could visit with his large family that was still [...]

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The Armenian people have a long, mostly tragic history. They?re a people who inhabit, and inhabited that part of the world that was/is, known as Asia Minor, an area that today includes North East Turkey, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and parts of IRan. The original Armenian Kingdom was conquered by Alexander the Great and [...]

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Many years ago, in the early 1980?s when my companion Marilyn and I were wandering around the United States, we went down to New Orleans to visit an old friend, John Clark, who was teaching philosophy at the University of Louisiana. We had a great visit with John and his family. The other things we [...]

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[tag]Fougasse [/tag]is an Italian ?Flat Bread?. Many years ago, I learned how to make it from one of my Italian friends. You can eat it as a lunch knosh. Cheese or whatever can be an addition to your meal. It?s great as an accompaniment to anti-pasti. Worth all the work it takes! Rising the Yeast [...]

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I don?t know what it is about eggplant that turns people off. I?ve known people that have turned white if you offer them a bite of eggplant that I have prepared, or as an antipasto. The people of Asia and Europe treasure and consume eggplant. I?ve always liked eggplant. My Grandmother Yetta, served eggplant to [...]

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How lucky we are to live so close to the Pacific Ocean. I knew some people who grew up in the mid-west, who would run the other way if you suggested that they join us for a fish dinner. Countries that have easy access to a nearby ocean tend to have better health, adventuresome in [...]

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[tag]Pilaf [/tag]is the name given to a wide variety of rice dishes from the Middle East to India. The variety of dishes that are called pilaf is astounding. Everything from entrees, main dishes, to deserts. Having eaten at a variety of near eastern restaurants over the years, especially my travel years, and finding myself now [...]

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Today, Sunday, December 17, was one of those days when I managed to get myself swamped by work around the house and writing to friends etc. Finally, about 6:30, I realized that it was time for me to get some supper together. So I went into my fridge to see what I had on hand. [...]

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Last night, I came down from my writing studio about 5:30, hungry and a bit tired. Somehow, I had gotten so involved in a letter that I was writing to an old friend, that I hadn’t come down for lunch. I opened the fridge to see what I had in the house, and finally decided [...]

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