EL EXEGENTE

You remember the commercial for coffee, that Ricardo Montalban’s brother did, coming down from the mountains with his donkey, sipping a cup of coffee and giving his approval? You know, where the villagers get all excited because he didn’t spill it on his donkey? Well Dad was like that with a few items. Dad was the taste tester, the man who gave his stamp of approval whether you liked it or not.

Take wine, Dad grew up in a winemaking family. Grandpa Ralph grew his own grapes on a vine in his back yard: they overgrew the concrete backyard up to the fence where his garden was. When the grapes were purple, he transported them down into his basement and put them into a vat and squeezed them into the miracle of wine. He couldn’t do it with water though. But Dad would put a little more into his drinking of the wine, to compensate for not making his own like Grandpa. Dad was like a priest, had to have his wine everyday, so to give it variety, put in either peaches or orange slices. I on the other hand as a kid, lined up for the orange slices, as frequently as Dad would allow it.

Then there was corn. Here he was very rigid about taste, when to eat it and even how to eat it. He would pick up his cob, napkins on each end and bite, and a kernel hanging on the edge of is chin, as we all breathlessly awaited his verdict. If he said: “Sweet!” it meant we were allowed to enjoy it, but if the verdict went the other way, we had to eat it like we were doing the world a favor, shaking are heads no in protest, but it always tasted the same to me. He would then stand the cob on its end and slice the kernels off to eat it easier.

Pizza became the triumph of the spirit when approved by Dad. Like the wine, he grew up in a pizza-making environment, as Grandma Frances owned a restaurant. An education on what constituted good pizza accompanied dad’s appraisal of a slice of pizza. He would take a slice, no fancy toppings, fold it length-wise and bite, once again his chin attesting to his endeavor, as the oil ran down one side of the chin.

“The trick to good pizza is the sauce. If the sauce taste acidy, it’s no good. You need good olive oil too. And when you cook a pie, make sure you check underneath the dough that it is brown enough, but don’t overcook!”

And there you have it, the complete guide to DelBloggolo culinary experience as it was made!