Recipe Notes (Alexia Moyer)

Welcome to Toronto. This week we’re cooking from Italian Canadians at Table: A Narrative Feast in Five Courses.

Editors Lorretta Gatto-White and Delia De Santis have gathered the food-related writings and recollections from Italian Canadians cross country. The result is a literary cookbook. You can cook from it, as it includes recipes and/or detailed descriptions of food preparation.

Pride of place belongs to narrative here. This book isn’t just about cooking, in other words. It’s about writing cooking.

Many of its contributors live and work and eat in Toronto, including Elizabeth Cinello.

“Food Companion Wanted” is both title and premise of Cinello’s short story. Widower, Alberto Di Rota places an ad in the local Italian Canadian paper. He’s looking for a live-in cook and he wants traditional Italian meals. Widow, Nina Crocetti, weary of her daughter and granddaughter’s no-carbohydrate and vegetarian, gluten-free diets, agrees to meet Alberto at a park on Caledonia road.
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