The Smellier the Better

Learning to eat smelly food in the good old days, with a recipe

I was born in 1959, in the canyon between the Greatest Generation and the Me Generation. I feel very lucky to be born at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation.

I grew up in Fair Haven, Connecticut, a blue collar section of New Haven. The majority of my neighbors were Italian, African American, Portuguese, East European, Puerto Rican and Irish Catholics. I am old enough to have grandparents from the old country who lived through the Great Depression.  My parents, my uncles, aunts and many neighbors came of age during the post war baby boom that made up America’s greatest working class. Many dads worked in the manufacturing plants and urban factories that were thriving in New Haven at the time. Most men worked a first, second or third shift job and many women were full time or at least part time home makers. Plenty of guys came home for lunch in their dark green uniforms and blue jumpsuits. Supper was served at served a 6 o’clock sharp. Restaurants were for Saturday nights, maybe, or Sunday after church.

When I was still in grammar school, I played with my friends in the neighborhood after school, but always had to be home by 5:30 for dinner. In this working class world, dinner was served at 6 at the latest. On my late afternoon walks home, a myriad of distinct cooking aromas wafted from the apartments and small houses I passed. Some of the smells were enticing. I was especially attracted to the mysterious frying smells from Puerto Ricans and the garlicky aromas from the Italian households. Others were revolting to me. The smelly fermented aromas that wafted from the Polish, Czech and Ukrainian houses repelled me. In my mind the people living must be smelled stinky like their food.

I flash back to a dinner at my boyhood friend Anthony Demarco’s house. His dad was Italian and worked second shift, 3-11pm, at the Armstrong Rubber factory. His mom was Ukrainian. She was a stay at home mom. She was a tall, powerful looking blonde who always wore bright pink lipstick, sky blue eyeshadow, brown high heeled shoes with large brass buckles and floral patterned knee high dresses. When she was at home, she seemed to always be wearing the same stiff, off-white bib apron with the pink pockets over her dress. She was a confusing early crush for me. She was my best friends mom, after all. Even though she always smelled of her drugstore perfume, I wondered if under it all, she also smelled like her stinky food.

On a sunny fall afternoon, Anthony and I were playing one on one basketball in his driveway, banging into each other and heaving the dirty basketball at the rusty hoop nailed to the peak of his dad’s garage. We were really going at it, pounding each other hard, in our sweat stained white t-shirts and gray school pants. When Mrs. Demarco whipped open the kitchen clothesline window it made an urgent sound, like a hurt puppy squeal. She stuck her head out of the window and yelled, “Anthonyyyy, c’mon. Suppertime...NOW!” Her bleached hair glimmered like cotton candy in the smog filtered late day sunlight.  

Anthony yelled up, “Ma, can Ricky eat over?” 

“We got plenty. I call his muthuh.” echoed from the kitchen.  

The window slammed shut, sending a few pigeons fluttering from the gutter.

We climbed up the narrow stairs to his second floor apartment. His mom pushed us into the small wallpapered bathroom and made us wash our grimy hands and faces with a worn bar of Ivory soap.

“You boys smell like pig” she grunted as she tossed Anthony a clean polo shirt and me a coarse yellow washcloth. We took off our sweaty t-shirts and scrubbed up; face, hands and armpits, too. I was very conscious of the fact that not only was a hand taller than Anthony, but I was developing a dark peach fuzz of chest and armpit hair, while blond Anthony was smooth as a baby. I covertly watched Mrs Demarco’s dress sway as she turned and left us in the bathroom. After we washed up, he put on that clean shirt and I put my white Oxford school shirt back on over my damp torso.

We plopped down at the oval table in the small eat in kitchen. It was dressed with a yellow tablecloth with brown fringe trim. She had her back to us while putting together our supper. I was a little intimidated. The food she was cooking smelled like farts. Her house always kind of smelled like farts, old people with accents kind of farts. Except on Fridays, when like a good catholic she made fried fish and on Sundays, when Anthony’s dad made Sunday sauce.

I was a nervous. I didn’t want her to think I was a little kid who was afraid of food. At 12 years old, even though I wasn’t really very adventurous at the table, I knew that whatever farty smelling food she served me, I had to eat it. These were times when you ate what was put in front of you. There were no special meals for kids. Not eating your food was a “sin” and if you didn’t like a particular food, the men at the table would mock you mercilessly.  If you didn’t clean your plate before leaving the table you were called a baby. I thought of backing out of dinner but since Mrs. Demarco had already called my mother, there was no escape.

“Ricky, have you ever had Kapusta?” she asked with a tingle of excitement in her voice.

“Ka—what?” I asked timidly. Oh, no, I thought. Not only does it smell bad, but even the name sounds like kaka and poo at the same time. I was sunk.

“Kapusta, silly. It is a famous Ukranian soup. It was my Tato’s favorite.”

Just as I was beginning to assume that Tato may have been her dog when she was a kid, Anthony murmured under his breath with a tinge of embarassment, “Tato is what Ukranians call their dads.”

When she pivoted to serve us, her gold crucifix slipped into in her freckled cleavage. She removed the ashtray overloaded with lipstick rimmed butts and dropped a quart of coke, a plate of dark rye bread and a tub of soft spread Blue Bonnet margarine between us on the table. Was that chocolate cake, I thought? I had never seen bread like that before.

Then she carefully set before us shallow, delicate china bowls rimmed with a blue flower pattern. She brought the steaming pot to the table, set it on an owl shaped cast iron trivit and spooned bits of ham, shredded cabbage, fat pink sausage, potatoes, carrots and onions into each of our bowls. Then she smothered it with the funky smelling, steamy broth speckled with little golden spheres of fat. I just stared into my bowl. Anthony immediately began slurping big spoonfuls of the broth into his oversized purplish mouth. He then grabbed a piece of bread and submerged it into the broth, gathering some ham and veggies in it, folded it like a piece of pizza and jammed the whole thing into his face.

“You are a pig” his mother barked. “Eat like a gentleman! Ricky must think that I starve you” she said, and smiled at me with her big shiny face.

I primed my palate with big gulp of the coke, gathered my courage and timidly went in first for a small piece of the pink meat. After all, it was only ham. How bad could it be? The fatty ham was hot and it almost melted in my mouth; salty, briny, porky, slippery. Damn. It tasted way better than it smelled. I went back in for a piece of the big pink sausage. Italians didn’t eat those kinds of sausages. Our sausages were brown and were always served with either fried peppers and onions or stewed for hours in red sauce with braciole and meatballs. They always had those annoying fennel seeds and were usually spicy enough to make my grandfather laugh at me when I choked on the chile burn.  This sausage was soft and simple, like a giant grainy hot dog. The ham was fatty and almost sweet, the potatoes and carrots were creamy and buttery and the cabbage was salty and sour. I especially loved that silky, smelly cabbage. I didn’t even know I liked sauerkraut. Following Anthony’s lead, I soaked up some juice with margarine slickened dark rye bread and took a big bite. I also didn’t know I liked dark rye. The flavor of the bread was sour and the broth was salty. Soaked into the bread with he fatty margarine, it was delicious. I ate my entire bowl and a bowl of seconds much to the approval of Mrs. Demarco.

“You must really like my Kapusta” she said proudly.

“Yes I do, Mrs. Demarco. Yes, I do.”

Fifteen years later, trying a recipe from The Frugal Gourmet cookbook, I made my first version of this Ukrainian stew in my tiny Boston apartment kitchen. As the sauerkraut-y, porky effluvium filled the kitchen, my memory of Mrs.Demarco kicked in. I was really transported back in time. I knew the recipe was what I was hoping for, just from the aroma.  

Mrs. Demarco’s Kapusta

This is the recipe from my memory. It is a little soupy and has potatoes and carrots in it. I think that makes it better.

Makes a big pot

One yellow onion, peeled and diced

1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into chucks

2 large russet potatoes, peeled and diced stew size

1 28 oz jar or bag of high quality sauerkraut

1 whole kielbasa, sliced into 1/2 inch thick rings

1 pound ham or ham hock, with the bone is possible

Put the ham, sausage, onions and carrots in a heavy pot.

Cover with three quarts of water.

Bring to a rolling boil, skim, and then reduce to a brisk simmer. Cook covered for one hour, adding more water if it cooks down too much.

Add the potatoes and sauerkraut and cook an additional thirty minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Remove the ham and shred it into pieces, fat and all.

Add it back to the stew.

Adjust salt.

Serve with dark rye bread and room temperature butter. You can skip the bottle of Coke and instead serve cold pilsner beer with it.

More recipes snd stories, as well as info on my Sicily food and culture tours and my webstore are at https://ricorlando.com