Neighbors Feeding Neighbors

We don't come from a large family, and on any given day my mother and I usually only have my father and grandfather to cook for...but we are of Southern descent so often our dishes can feed way more than 4 people. We also bake, and if only the four of us finished each goodie we created, lets just say instead of blogging about new and innovative recipes I would be blogging my Jenny Craig shipments. My mom is really big on "it takes a village" and "extended family" and I have "Aunts" who are not remotely blood related to me. Therefore it's not a surprise that when we cook, we want to share our cooking with those in our "family". Some of our neighbors are like family to us, and if we bake a cake, make a macaroni and cheese or make a pot of oxtails we often give some of our food to our neighbors. Annette who lives next door (who I've mentioned in other blogs) has a son named Joe who lives across the street. I've known Joe since he was 2 years old, and he is a great friend our general contractor for the Wine bar that we are constructing at Catskill Maison, and an incredible cook and bigtime "foodie" (though I'm not sure he realizes that he is). Joe is from Italian descent, and he makes "gravy" (for those of us non Italian's that's code for "red sauce") almost every Sunday. We often bake cakes or make food and give to Annette and Joe, and Joe makes gravy on Sunday and I'm the lucky recipient! A couple of weeks ago I made an incredible Zuppa de Pesce over angel hair with his sauce and my family raved about it.

Last night I received a special treat, and I'm so incredibly touched. Joe made Zucchini Parmigiana from the zucchini in his garden, and he and his beautiful family came over with red sauce in a container AND the zucchini parm and pasta!!!!! OMG that zucchini parm was AWESOME! And though we were in the middle of preparing our own dinner it didn't stop me from having a sample. I had a taste for eggplant parmigiana and said to myself that if I was lucky enough to snag some of Joes special sauce on Sunday I might make an eggplant parm because eggplant is available at Barber Farm and Shaul Farm this weekend. I (the self proclaimed foodie) never thought about making zucchini into parmigiana, and I think that zucchini might actually be better. It's sweet and not bitter like black eggplant is if you don't remove the tough outer skin, and more easily accessible than the white and purple eggplant that we often try to find at the farm to cook with. Joe breaded it, pan fried it, added mozzarella, and ricotta and his magical sauce and baked it and created a wonder, Brilliant!

This zucchini parm is so good that I really don't want to share...hmmm, I hope my dad isn't reading this blog post!

Joe thank you thank you thank you for all that you do...

I see a lasagna in our future to be shared with all of our neighbors! An excuse to go to one of my favorite shopping haunts, Arthur Avenue Little Italy in the Bronx for ingredients!