Heirloom Kitchen

When we pass items down from one family member to another, we are keeping memories alive and celebrating our cultural heritage. New Canaan resident Anna Francese Gass has done just that with her newest venture, Heirloom Kitchen: Heritage Recipes and Family Stories from the Tables of Immigrant Women, which hit shelves earlier this year. The book is a beautiful example of what great food and community can do; it can honor and inspire. It is full of vibrant photos, stories, and recipes that will surely rouse readers to unearth the history from their own families and, further still, spend some time together in the kitchen.

Gass highlights 45 immigrant women from across the country, including six living here in Connecticut, and their special connection to their native culture. With recipes from around the globe that begin with Gass’ native Italy and continue through Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and the Middle East, readers are sure to find their own reflection in the diverse array of dishes chosen for the collection.

Born in Italy but raised in Rhode Island, Gass is familiar with that sense of duality with which immigrant families live. At school, she was American; at home, she was Italian. Honoring our ancestry while proudly calling ourselves American is not always an easy balance to find. As a child, Gass remembers coming home from school to any number of Italian treats that many of us would drool over, but she and her siblings hoped their mom would treat them to some of the prepackaged or frozen American snacks they’d seen other kids enjoy. However, Gass does fondly remember visiting her grandmother in Italy and attentively watching her as she cooked.

Despite graduating from The French Culinary Institute in New York and working as a professional cook in and out of test kitchens, it was not too long ago when Gass realized she didn’t have her own mother’s recipe for meatballs. How many dishes had she prepared, read, and written? How many professional techniques had she become fluent in for her own work, and yet, couldn’t determine how many eggs or breadcrumbs to include when making one of her mother’s regular dishes? Slowly but surely, she began “Nonna’s Meatball Project,” working with her mother to learn and record the staples of her Calabrian heritage. Although Gass says her mother, Gina, from the town of Acri in Southern Italy, did not initially sense the importance of the project, the bond it created and the stories they shared amidst it reignited a sense of her mom’s own pride in her journey as an immigrant.

This sparked Gass’ desire to meet other immigrant women with similar journeys and recipes to pass down and, ultimately, keep alive. She wanted to spend time with them, hear their stories, and cook with them, side by side. She traveled across the country, and thus, began her real collection for Heirloom Kitchen, which first became a blog, before it grew into a book.