One of life's little pleasures is the Mormino Clipping Package. If you've ever shared a meaningful cup of coffee with Gary Mormino, co-founder of the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg, odds are you've received at least one packet of photocopied microfilm news clippings, relating to that conversation or something he knows fascinates you. For about 10 years now I've gotten regular care packages from him, and they never fail to delight.
He sent one a few years back, though, that puzzled me: a prize-winning July 1, 1945, recipe from the Tampa Tribune (RIP), submitted by Gladys Laird, dean of women at the University of Florida's summer school. Its name? Roman Holiday. I can only assume I received the food formula amidst an assortment of cabbage palm and Florida travel-related clippings because — in addition to a borderline-personality-disorder-obsession with Florida — Gary and I also share a last name that ends with a vowel. I let the clipping gather dust for a few years, but last month, when I went through my recipe files, I came across it and decided to do a test run.
America's idea of Italian food as World War II drew to a close was… not the same as it is now, at least not in most of America. Scanning the ingredient list, I see a few items I'm certain would make my Italian grandmother spin in her grave, had we not cremated her.
Tomato soup? American cheese? Scandaloso!
The more I looked at the recipe, though, the tastier it sounded. Preparing it, however, posed a problem. Meaghan, CL's food editor, doesn't eat meat. My husband doesn't eat olives. And I can't have gluten. Since the three of us were about to share this meal, I clearly had some adjustments to make.
First change? No way in hell was I putting tomato soup in a dish that's supposed to be remotely Italian in nature, but I was out of tomato gravy and didn't have time to make more. My neighborhood grocer, Pasadena Produce, had the answer — a carton of Alessi chopped tomatoes. As for the meat, that was easy. Beyond Meat's Beyond Beef Crumbles are soy-free, vegan, gluten-free and tasty AF. Macaroni was more of a challenge. While I normally eat the brown rice pasta sold at Trader Joe's, it doesn't hold up as well in baked macaroni dishes. Enter Barilla's corn-based elbow macaroni, aka gomiti.
I set to cooking while Meaghan watched and tweeted about the experience. It felt wrong, utterly and completely wrong — I'm talking the kind of wrong that's cheating on your husband or leaving a puppy out in the snow all night — to mix American cheese and pasta, but I'd changed enough already. Meaghan wondered if the war made mozzarella too expensive to use, so I call my mother, who confirms Meaghan is correct. Although mozzarella, in the '40s, was perhaps a staple in Little Italy, it wasn't readily available in her hometown of Mamaroneck. And it certainly wasn't an everyday occurrence in Tampa. Also, the war — this is from the original article:
"…Mrs. Laird's recipe [is] a wonderful company dinner for these days of hard to get fryers and steaks. Cheese is readily available at most groceries and a pound of ground beef can be begged from the butcher. The other ingredients are point free and inexpensive, and the combined result is a smoking savory combination."
While the Tampa Tribune isn't around to award me the $5 in prize money, I will say that my resulting Roman Holiday (hey, since I adapted it, can I call it a D'Abruzzo Holiday?) hit big with our lunch crowd. As Meaghan and my husband both pointed out, the dish tastes a little like beefy mac, which I wouldn't know because Italians aren't actually allowed to put American cheese on pasta.
That's not to say I didn't have two more helpings later that night, but no one tell my grandmother.
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2018.