When author Laura Schenone embarked on a journey to uncover her family’s ravioli recipes, she uncovered much more – she uncovered her past.
Award-winning writer Schenone’s latest book, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, is a sensory exploration of cooking that takes the reader from working-class Hoboken to Northern Italy.
The book, which was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in November, is a mesmerizing narrative that immerses one in a heady world of slow-stewing meat and hand-rolled pasta.
Part memoir, part cooking instruction, the book shows that some of the more rewarding aspects of life require time and patience.
Following her passion
While Schenone was lucky enough to know that she wanted to be a writer when she was 12 years old, it was years before she thought to combine writing with her passion for food.
Before writing books, Schenone worked for publishing companies and newspapers. She has written for many publications as a freelancer including The New York Times, The Star Ledger, and New Jersey Monthly.
Yet, according to Schenone, her initial foray into writing began with fiction. She said that the book was part of her desire to return to the narrative form.
For her first book, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances, she won the 2004 James Beard Foundation Book Award for food and reference writing. That book recounts the story of women and food from prehistory to present day.
Schenone said that after writing that first book about women and food it was time for her to recount her own life.
“It seemed kind of natural after doing this big book on women and food,” said Schenone. “It was time to tell my own story.”
She said that the other reason for writing the book stemmed from reaching midlife and her own struggles to keep and hold her family together and “this dream of wanting a dish to bring happiness.”
Throughout the book, Schenone describes her very personal journey to create this perfect dish of food for her two sons and her husbands, this desire to want to create a nourishing meal that would bind the family together.
Yet it often required sacrifices from her husband and boys, who would have to leave her alone for hours in the kitchen as she struggled to recreate recipes from the past.
“Food is just a very natural way to write about family,” said Schenone. “Wanting all this beauty [of a good meal.] You want it to come out beautifully and it almost never does.”
A quest for family ravioli
In the book, Schenone said that “ravioli would be my search, my grail,” to fix what was wrong with her busy life.
During her travels to uncover an authentic family recipe, she visits the Guigoni family in Genoa, Italy, where she received her first ravioli lesson.
Maria Carla takes her through the steps of making the filling and the pasta – using only the freshest ingredients.
“It is difficult to describe the taste. To say that the ravioli was wonderful, well, this certainly was not enough. To say that the pasta was soft, and the meat inside was rich and melting in the mouth, bitter and sweet with hints of nutmeg and marjoram perfume too, and that the sauce held the tang of tomatoes and also an earthy depth from being cooked long with porcini-scented meat – no, this was not enough either.”
Her love of fine food connects her to her family in ways that conversation can’t.
“Furthermore, my father is a famously reserved man, not prone to sharing memories about the Italian father he lost, not prone to sharing much of himself in any regard.”
Yet the author finds her father willing to connect her to cousins for the ravioli recipes.
In the book she describes a time when she cooked ravioli for her family one Christmas, they all exclaimed over the homemade goodness.
Her father compares the shape of Laura’s ravioli with the old family press saying, “Yes. Yes, congratulates my father. Just like this. You got it Laura. You got it.”
Hoboken roots
The author discovered that her different ancestor branches (Irish, German, Italian) all arrived and mingled together in Hoboken.
“Like thousands of other Hoboken descendants, we made an upward migration over generations. After Hoboken, my grandparents moved up the hill a mile or so to better towns like Weehawken and Union City – still in the urban ring with brick houses all clustered together.”
Although Schenone was raised in Hackensack with her two sisters, her path eventually brought her back to her grandparents’ hometown. Her sister Lisa opened a computer graphics business in Hoboken and for a time Schenone worked with her sister.
While now Schenone lives in Montclair, she returned to live in Hoboken, but moved away 12 years ago. She lived in town with her husband until the birth of her first son.
Schenone, who has become quite adept at making several different kinds of ravioli, said that she recently made ravioli for the holiday.
“I made 350 the other day,” she said. “I wish I had made more, especially the Christmas ones. It goes so quick. Six hours of work and gone so quick.”
Schenone said that making the ravioli went quicker this year since her sons, who are old enough to help now, and her husband helped prepare them.
She said that making ravioli will continue to be a tradition in her family.
In addition to her freelance work, Schenone said that she has several ideas that she is working on for her next book.
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” said Schenone, who said she wants to cover new ground. “I think I will always like stories with long threads that go into the past. I don’t know if it will have food – it might.”
Laura Schenone will be in Hoboken on Feb. 2 from 2 to 4:30 p.m. for an event run by the Urban Kitchen. Schenone will give a demonstration, a talk, with a tasting to follow. Copies of the book will be available. For more information about the event, call (201) 418-0101. For more information about the author or her book, visit: www.lostravioli.com.
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