Cooking - Jennifer Baljko

If I remember only one thing about my family’s history, it’s that my grandfathers – both of them- ruled their kitchens. While my grandmothers had some memorable dishes, my grandfathers are who always come to mind when I think of the great family gatherings.

Grandpa Bill had it in his southern blood, making the turkey for Thanksgiving Day, making the ham for Christmas. A butcher, originally from Georgia who moved to New Jersey after WWII when he met my grandma, had a certain way with the meat, a caring finesse with a carving knife. An extraordinary feast was coming when Grandpa Bill with his white, finger-splotched apron, would give the sauce a last stir, turn off the gas flame, and shout down the hall dinner was ready.

Dide Krsto, my other grandfather, on my Croatian side, had a different way around the kitchen. He was a baker who left his small village to start a career with Belgian patisserie chefs. When he came to New Jersey to give his family a better life, he traded in time around the oven for time hauling cargo around the docks. Still, he stayed up many nights pouring his TLC into divine desserts and sweet breads like dove-shaped meringues, apple strudels, Napoleons, custards. Baptism, graduation, and holiday meals were topped off with his sugared love.

As we all got older, they both cooked less and less. And, then sadly, stopped cooking altogether. Their recipes, locked in their heads, escaped all of us when they died. Two men from the same generation, from different corners of the earth, sharing the same passion: finding the way to their family’s hearts through their stomachs.