Recipe Roots: Chesterfield, CT > Brooklyn > Long Island
In her interfaith family â part Italian Catholic, part Ashkenazi Jewish â Mindy Martorana serves recipes from her husbandâs family like meatballs and âgravyâ that she learned from her mother-in-law Josephine. From her side of the family, she makes her grandmother Aliceâs rich dairy noodle kugel on Easter, the fourth of July, and says it may have even graced the familyâs Christmas table in years past. âI use food to remind my children about their culture and what my roots were like,â she says.Â
Her familyâs history can be traced through the layers of that kugel. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Mindyâs great grandmother Celia became ill with tuberculosis, forcing her to leave her family on the East Coast to seek treatment in a sanatorium in California. Her children went to live with their aunt, known affectionately in the family as Tonta Sonny, on a farm in Chesterfield, Connecticut. Tonta Sonny was part of the New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society, an agrarian community for Jewish immigrants, many of whom escaped religious persecution in Europe and were living in crowded urban centers.Â