Catherine Nicoletta Cerrato Pasculli didn't have much money, but you would never know from the food she served - it was made rich with flavor and made richer with love.

"Everything our mother made tasted so good," Lawrence said. "We rarely had meat because we couldn't afford it, but we didn't know we were poor until we got older."

The affection Pasculli had for her family by way of food was captured in part in Lawrence's cookbook "Cooking For My Family." She self-published the ode to her mother and family this summer.

It is a tribute of recollections and recipes inspired by and created by Pasculli.

"This cookbook helps keep the traditions and family memories alive," Lawrence said.

She was in her kitchen with aromas of steak pizzaiola flooding the space of her kitchen, also overrun with cranberry and almond biscotti, pumpkin pie topped with candied pecans and shortbread Italian goodies called tarrade cookies.

The dish, made with chuck steak, Italian plum tomatoes, garlic and other ingredients, was served atop orzo and garnished with red and yellow peppers.

It was a dish that her sister Lucille Eichmann relished with the first bite. "This is good," said Eichmann, as she ate a forkful during dinner Thursday at Lawrence's home in Burgess. Eichmann is visiting from Flemington, N.J. "It brings back memories. This is the first time I've tasted this since Mom made it."

While growing up in Hoboken, Pasculli delighted herself in making her family's meals from scratch. She would make homemade pasta and let it dry on white linen on a bed right next to the kitchen because space was limited elsewhere. The simple but flavorful pasta was made with semolina wheat, Pecorino Romano cheese and eggs. "Whenever I woke up smelling cheese, I knew our mother was making that wonderful pasta," said Annie Arnesen, a Murrells Inlet resident, as she joined her sisters for dinner. "I would be tucked in on the other of the bed where the pasta was drying."

It was commonplace for kitchen aromas to serve as alarm clocks or dinner bells for Pasculli's children.

Every Saturday night was steak night, and the family had meat in the sauce. On Sundays mornings, the smell of their mom's marinara compiled with fresh tomatoes and seasonings, called gravy, was good enough to wake them from their slumber.

After their mother died in 1989, it was their brother, Anthony Pasculli, who was most dedicated to continuing the family's customs, Lawrence said.

"Mom was the inspiration for the cookbook, but my brother Tony carried on the Italian traditions more than my sisters," Lawrence said of her brother who died about six years ago. "When my sisters married Americans, instead of Italians, they forgot about some of our cooking traditions. Tony was the heart of the cooking in our family."

During Christmas and New Year's Eve, their brother made the traditional Italian dishes for dinner, such as Calzone de Pesch (fish pie) and Bacala (salted cod).

The recipes are among the 240 recipes contained in Lawrence's book.

"It's important to keep your family traditions alive," Lawrence said. "When we eat with our families, we connect at the table. We tell what we did that day. Time together around the table is always a good thing to do."

"Cooking For My Family" is available at target.com, Barnes & Noble and amazon.com.  The suggested price for the retail paperback is $23.95. You can get the hardcover book from Lawrence for $25. Send a money order to Loretta Pasculli Lawrence, 6878 King Arthur Drive, Myrtle Beach, SC 29588, or e-mail her at kenret@sc.rr.com

Contact JOHANNA D. WILSON at 626-0324.

The insider's guide to Hoboken news, real estate, bars and restaurants

"Cooking for My Family:" Secrets from a Hoboken kitchen

by Carly - Tuesday July 01, 2008, 1:20 PM

Mangia, mangia! Loretta's family on New Year's Eve, 1949 in Hoboken.

How can you get your hands on some real "old-time" Hoboken recipes? Gravy, meatballs, steak pizzaiola and the like? A former Hoboken resident decided to honor her mother with a cookbook -- filled with classic Italian home cooking.

Loretta Pasculli Lawrence is the author of Cooking for My Family: From Catherine Pasculli's Hoboken Kitchen. "Cooking for My Family" was published in 1999, but this new second edition was released in May of this year -- "completely updated with more recipes and even more memories," says Loretta.

"I decided to write the book after my Mom (Catherine Pasculli) died," said Loretta. "She was the glue in our family with a gentle heart and a great sense of humor. She was also a great cook. She is my inspiration and I wanted to write the book so she would be remembered not only by my family but by anyone who will read my book."

"About 85% of the recipes are all from my Mother's kitchen table from Hoboken in the 1940's," she says.

Loretta was born and raised in Hoboken -- in a a 5-room apartment on Willow Avenue -- but she has since moved to Myrtle Beach, SC, where she works as a chef at a private Italian American Club.

"Cooking for My Family: From Catherine Pasculli's Hoboken Kitchen"

But she remembers well the "old" days of Hoboken.

"Everyone we knew lived in town. We had lots of uncles, aunts and cousins between Mom and Dad, and I'm pretty sure we had an Italian representative on every block," recalls Loretta. "I am very proud of my Italian heritage and it is my wish that you enjoy 'Cooking For My Family' as much as my Mom loved cooking for her family."

When Loretta lived in Hoboken, she said she enjoyed "the wonderful bakeries, fish markets, local vegetable markets, and delicious pastries." "I do miss Hoboken," she says. "Its quaint neighborhoods, the Italian Feast, the quality of the delis, bakeries, local market, etc."

Loretta's mother, Catherine Pasculli, at age 16 standing in front of 216 Grand Street, where she lived with her grandparents.

What's one of her favorite Hoboken food memories?

"I remember Sunday mornings the most when Mom would start the 'gravy' as we called it," writes Loretta. "Sunday was a day of rest for everyone but Mom. I could smell that gravy from my bedroom. It was like an alarm clock. I was out of bed in two minutes flat and by the third minute, I'd already had a meatball and was looking for a chunk of bread to dunk in the gravy."

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010
FROM THE HOBOKEN REPORTER

Hoboken Comfort Food Cookbook documents one family’s Mile Square roots... 

by Sean Allocca
Reporter correspondent

Sep 12, 2010 | 0  | 0  | 

The pictures that former Hoboken resident Loretta Pasculli Lawrence has of her family from the 1940s and ‘50s are mostly fading, black-and-white photographs. But the faces in those tattered images are almost always gathered around one thing: a dinner table.

Like many Italian-American families, food was an integral part of Lawrence’s upbringing in the Mile Square. So when her mother, Catherine Pasculli, passed away in 1989, she preserved her mother’s recipes in a cookbook called “Cooking for my Family: From Catherine Pasculli’s Hoboken Kitchen.”

“It’s so important for a family to be around a dinner table, even just for a little while,” Lawrence said. “In my family there were seven screaming Italians fighting to be the first to tell everyone about their day.”

The 2008 release is gaining traction in Lawrence’s adopted city, Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the book is sold at local Italian-American grocery stores.
_____________

“There was every culture you could image.” – Loretta Pasculli Lawrence
________

“Cooking for my Family” is half cookbook, half memoir, featuring touching family stories combined with dozens of recipes literally covering everything from soup to nuts. One of Lawrence’s personal favorites is colloquially known as “pasta fazul,” or pasta e fagioli, meaning pasta and beans, a hearty soup made with pasta and Cannellini beans.

“It’s a dish that I grew up on,” said the 67-year-old author. “But I’ve always loved eggplant and chicken Parmesan too.”

Lawrence first learned to cook when she was married in 1965. Her mother was her best teacher. “I called my mom up almost every night,” she said. “She gave me so many different recipes. I had quite a repertoire.”

The cookbook is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. For more information on “Cooking for my Family,” visit: www.cookingformyfamily.net.

The chicken shack

Lawrence said that Hoboken was a much different place 50 years ago than it is today. The author lived in town through the 1970s.

“When I lived in Hoboken as a kid, it wasn’t the same as you see today. This was well before the renaissance, before Hoboken became really beautiful.”

The 200 block of Willow Avenue, where Lawrence lived, was filled with different ethnicities, she said. “There was every culture you could image. People came right off the boat and landed right in Hoboken.”

Instead of centralized supermarkets, Lawrence remembers Johnny’s Butcher Shop, Tedesco’s Fish Store, Ginger’s Produce & Grocery, Marie’s Bakery (still in business today) and Nick’s Chicken Store, where her mother would send her to pick out a “fat one.”

“I can’t believe I actually picked out a live chicken, the poor things,” she said. “It was nothing like today. Vendors would come down the street selling vegetables and fresh fruit – singing out the specials of the day.”

Lawrence said that the rent for her family’s five-bedroom railroad at 207 Willow Ave. back in the 1950s was $23 a month.

‘On the Waterfront’

Lawrence’s father was a longshoreman and met Marlon Brando on the set of “On the Waterfront.” While researching the part, Brando had lunch with a few of the dockworkers to gain insight into the people he would later portray on screen.

“My father said he was a really nice guy,” Lawrence said. “He ended up being an extra in the movie, but every time we tried to look for him [in the film] we could never find him.”

After “shaping” – or waiting by the docks everyday looking for work – Lawrence’s father finally became a regular longshoreman.

“In the wintertime, it was really tough for him,” she said. “But mom always had a hot plate on the table for him when he got home.”

According to the author, many families are missing the importance of dinnertime with family.

“I don’t think a lot of children today have that. I know families are busy with class and other things. But to stop once a day is so important, to sit around and connect with your family – to celebrate life,” she said.

For more information on Lawrence, visit her website: www.cookingformyfamily.net.

 

July 14, 2010
Sun News

Author dedicated recipe collection to mother

By Johanna D. Wilson, Sun News, July 14, 2010
New recipe book

Author dedicated recipe collection to mother

I smiled. I laughed. And I nearly cried.

Summer book ideas for moms

Summer is here ... great opportunity to squeeze in some extra reading time. As you know, I'm a huge proponent of "continuing education" for moms, and reading great parenting books is a great thing to add to your list. Here are some of my favorites that I discovered in recent months.

"Honey I Wrecked the Kids" - I met this author, Alyson Schafer, and heard her speak I was holding my stomach from laughing so hard. She writes about parenting in a systematic, easy to implement way, with TONS of humor along the way. She identifies the "4 C's" basically, the key things a kid needs and will get even if it means getting your attention in a bad way. She really helps you get into your kids' heads and communicate in a way that gets results while you're understand their perspective as well.

"My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus" - Expand your kid's menu the cover title will crack you up even if you can't read the book, you've got to look at the cover! Exotic repertoires in the eating department are rare among kids

Loretta Pasculli Lawrence was the reason behind my array of emotions in the minutes it took me to read the introduction of her new book.

Entitled "Cooking For My Family," the book tells wonderful short stories and shares the recipes produced and inspired by her late mother, Catherine Nicoletta Cerrato Pasculli.

"I remember Sunday mornings the most when Mom would start the 'gravy' as we called it. Sunday was a day of rest for everyone but Mom. I could smell that gravy from my bedroom. It was like an alarm clock. I was out of bed in 2 minutes flat and by the third minute, I'd already eaten a meatball and was looking for Italian bread to dunk the gravy in," Pasculli wrote in the introduction.

The gravy she wrote about in the aforementioned paragraph isn't the brown gravy we Southerners are accustomed to, but homemade marinara made with fresh tomatoes, spices and other good stuff.

"When my mother died, she died just before I was getting remarried, in 1987," said Lawrence, a Myrtle Beach-area resident whose family has roots in Hoboken, N.J., and Molfetta, Italy. "I just needed to do something for her."

There are about 240 recipes in the book. I have yet to try a recipe, but I already adore the book because you get the dish and the recipe for the dishes.

Like a great movie and life in general, it's filled with triumph, tragedy, trying times and enough joy to make the journey worthwhile.

The book is available at target.com, Barnes & Noble and amazon.com. The suggested retail paperback is $23.95. However, you can get the hardcover book from Lawrence for $25. Send a money order to: Loretta Pasculli Lawrence, 6878 King Arthur Drive, Myrtle Beach 29588 or e-mail kenret@sc.rr.com.

Comments

•  beachgal25 wrote on 07/14/2010 08:20:12 AM:

I have this book and it's "Wonderful"....because it was inspired by a wonderful lady...that lady being my Mom...! When my sister completed this book it was a great way to preserve memories surrounded by recipes and family. Anyone who loves family and cooking can relate to the stories and the journey that shapes their own loving memories.