My obsession and love of food started in childhood with my mother, Rose, and my Aunt Carme. It continues today, not as that hungry child hoping for spaghetti and meatballs and rich chocolate cake, but as an adult who now creates some of those same dishes, who seeks to blend exotic spices and delicate flavors, and one who devours books on cultural cuisines and food history. Give me a novel, cookbook or magazine on food and I am spirited away to an imaginary kitchen with bulging cupboards containing every spice and food staple imaginable. (In my imagination there is also a six-top stove.)

My mom and aunt were Italian and married to French brothers, one of course, was my father. Though these men were French they loved Italian food. Fortunately, both women sizzled in the kitchen and churned out one Italian delicacy after another. Each of their sauces held a different flavor, but one was as good as the other. Aunt Carme was the go-to woman for elaborately decorated three or four-tiered wedding cakes. A seat at her table—for any meal—was always a treat. I loved my mom’s homemade ravioli, those little ricotta filled dough squares she would make and then dry on a piece of wood the night before a holiday feast.

When my mother died in 2000 I inherited most of her cookbooks. The most precious were kept by my father, certainly not because he could cook, but because these volumes defined her better than anything else. Perhaps her food was partially what held their sometimes tumultuous and sad marriage together. After years of cancer my father died a peaceful death last month. During his last years he divested himself of the family home and most of his possessions. What he had left in his apartment was meager, but it included my mom’s remaining cookbooks. I’d like to believe that, knowing how creative she was in the kitchen and how much food defined her, that this was how he held onto her.

I now have those cookbooks and even a written journal filled with my mom’s and my aunt’s recipes, some of which I’ve spent the last ten years searching for. My mother’s Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of cooking, a 4-inch-thick green cloth-bound treasure from 1947, was inherited from a friend’s mother back in the mid-1950s. There’s a proviso to the book. The original was used so often it disintegrated by the late 1990s. I went to used bookstores and found a replacement—this one from 1952—and gave it to her as an early Christmas present. She was thrilled, but unfortunately she deep-sixed the old version. In that one she had outlined her favorite recipes, what she used as replacements for ingredients we now know as unhealthy, and she made numerous comments. “Great recipe,” or “needs more flavoring,” or even “reduce eggs or milk,” were etched in pencil in the side panels. I would now give anything to see those notes again. But, I am comforted with what I have. It’s as though I have a piece of her and an understanding of why I feel so passionate about anything edible. It also reminds me of my father’s favorite dishes. For a French man he sure made a great Italian.

Meta Given’s book was pretty popular a half decade ago. I look at it now and see ingredients I wouldn’t even put on my shelf, lard being the most offensive. But, like most foodies I know to replace it with butter and adjust the recipe—the same way my mother and my Aunt Carme did with everything they made.

So, this month I thought I’d share one recipe from my mother and from my favorite aunt.

Aunt Carme’s Chocolate Cake

This is the one cake everyone asks for when Aunt Carme is invited to a party.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

¾ cup Hershey’s cocoa
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups sugar
1 cup of vegetable oil
1 cup hot strong coffee
1 cup whole milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Sift all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.

2. Add liquid, milk and coffee and beat for two minutes.

3. Add vanilla and eggs and mix for another minute. Mixture will be watery.

Place in greased cake pans or one 13 by 9 by 2 inch glass pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until done. Let stand and cool before removing from the pan. Frost with your favorite chocolate or vanilla buttercream frosting.

Rose and Mary Lou’s Dutch Tart

This recipe, from Holland, was given to my mother by a next door neighbor. Mom adapted it to fit her style. I often remember it cooling on the counter.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 ¼ sticks of butter (softened)
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk

(Fillings – sweetened cherries, apples, apricot or pineapple. (You can use the canned variety or cut two cups of fruit, add seasonings, two tablespoons flour or cornstarch and mix.)

1. Place the flour, sugar and butter in a bowl and mix with your hands. Add the eggs and milk and continue mixing.

2. Spread the dough on the bottom and sides of a square glass pan. Save a piece of the dough for a lattice topping.

3. Put the fruit filling inside the dough shell.

4. Roll the remaining dough and cut into strips. Create a lattice top by weaving the strips over and under each other.

5. Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Enjoy!