Author: Hillary Busis

Hawaiian Chicken

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Hawaiian Chicken 1

Can’t you just feel the island breezes blowing?

Hawaii had a hold on Nonnie. She and my grandfather took my mother and her brothers to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel shortly after its grand opening in 1965; at the time, it was allegedly the most expensive hotel ever built. The trip made such an impression on her that 50 years later, my mother and I discovered that Nonnie had saved the menus from every single meal her family had eaten on that vacation.

I didn’t take any pictures of those menus, because I am a dummy. However! I’m pretty sure none of them featured this chicken, which is basically Shake ‘n Bake with a can of pineapple dumped on top. Continue reading →

Eggplant Caviar

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Eggplant Caviar 3

Alternate title: A Tale of Too Many Onions.

Look, I have nothing against onions. They’re a culinary workhorse. They have the power to make grown men weep. They figure prominently in the denouement of one of the best books ever written, Holes by Louis Sachar.

Even raw onions have their place — a sprinkling of scallions to top off your bowl of soba, a smattering of red onions folded into your quinoa. They’re sharp; they’re pungent; they’re good in small doses.

You know what isn’t a small dose? A whole onion, chopped. That’s what Nonnie’s recipe for eggplant caviar — a sort of Eastern European take on baba ghanoush — calls for. I looked over it a few times, just to make sure I was reading it right; once it became clear that I was, I tried investing in some cautious optimism. Continue reading →

Banana Bread

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Banana Bread 1

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from five years of obsessive food blog consumption, it’s that the world hardly needs another banana bread recipe.

Sure, you can jack it up with chocolate, or millet, or peanut butter, or bourbon, or cream cheese and buttermilk and icing spiked with coconut and pecans in what’s supposedly a healthy, guilt-free recipe (yeah, okay, Southern Living). But at its core, it’ll always be the same humble loaf — a cake designed to seem healthy enough for breakfast consumption, and to use up the spotty brown chiquitas on your countertop before they turn into their own thriving, fruit-fly-based, self-contained ecosystem. Continue reading →

Ratatouille

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Ratatouille 1

We’ll begin with a recreation of the first real dish I ever cooked for myself: ratatouille, which I believe is French for “chop shit up and toss it in a pot.”

It’s a completely idiot-proof meal — at least, the way my family makes it. (If you’re Thomas Keller, not so much.) That may be why my mom suggested I give it a try when I told her, the summer after I graduated college, that I was finally ready to tackle something a little more complicated than scrambled eggs.

The year was 2010; the recipe she sent me, of course, was Nonnie’s. (With an extra soupçon of Mom: She signed the email by saying, “OK, now send me your updated resume . . . . xoxo.”) Continue reading →

An introduction

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Nonnie on the beach

We called my mother’s mother Nonnie. Not because my family is Italian — we’re basically the Mousekewitzes from An American Tail, give or take a hundred years of assimilation — but because that’s how Queen Victoria had her own grandkids address her.

At least, that’s the story I remember. (A cursory Google reveals that it may, in fact, be total bullshit.) Continue reading →