Favorite foods?

[Rachel Perlow]

Ugo, was your mother a good cook? What was your favorite food she would make for you?

Peter, what’s your favorite Renaissance era food?

[Peter Elbling]

My mother, God bless her soul, died when I was very young. All I remember is that we ate polenta, thank God for polenta or we would have starved, and soup made of beans, and bread. Sometimes, my mother made pies from chestnut flour and put apples inside. If we were lucky, my father caught a rabbit or a bird but that was not very often. We kept our chickens for the eggs and by the time we ate them they were old and stringy. On a feast day we sometimes might share a pig with our neighbors.

My favorite recipe fom those days was stuffed goose cooked Lombardy style, that is with sliced almonds and served with cheese, sugar and cinammon. But I also liked kid cooked in garlic sauce and spit roasted quail.

Peter here. I like the chicken fried with diced lemon and also spiced scaloppine.