Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 16, 1990 TAG: 9005160100
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So when the Surruscos were asked to host a meal as a fund-raiser for the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts, the couple didn't flinch.
Even though it meant spending the better part of two days in the kitchen, crafting a five-course Italian meal that featured such treats as a flaming vodka-tomato sauce, homemade bread and pasta, and pecan-amaretto cheesecake. All for a group of 10 guests who were paying $75 a plate.
Dinner-party anxiety or what?
Or what, it turned out. As Barbara Surrusco puts it, standing at her Cuisinart in her Architectural Digest-style kitchen, "Ten is nothing."
Surrusco should know. This is the second time in three years she's volunteered for "Dinner a l'Art," a museum fund-raiser in which area supporters choose from about 15 dinners specially prepared by chefs, caterers or experienced home cooks. Last year, the dinners brought in about $22,500 to the museum.
For the Surruscos and their co-hosts, neighbors Jim and Pam Gacek, the project brought long hours and good smells - especially if you happened to be standing in the Surrusco's kitchen on a recent Friday.
And a horn-o'-plenty it was: Fresh basil, simmering tomatoes, strawberries hand-dipped in two kinds of chocolate, roasted chicken and sausages. The blenders and the skillets were in full swing. And with a menu of more than 15 items that each required many ingredients and cooking processes, so was the dishwasher.
"We're the clean-up crew," Pam Gacek says, admitting that she sometimes has trouble making a pot of coffee. "And Barbara is definitely the woman I don't usually invite to my house for dinner," she jokes.
"That's why we're having the dinner at our house - then we can say we've had the Surruscos over to dinner."
The Surruscos' dinner, formally titled "Casalinga Dalle Madri," was billed as a collection of home-style Italian dishes, several as prepared in Le Madri, New York's newest Italian restaurant. "They import six Italian grandmothers to do their cooking every year," says Dick Surrusco, an emergency-room doctor at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
"This is the stuff my mother used to make."
A third-generation Italian born in New York, Dick explains that a home-style meal is a rarity in most Italian restaurants across the country. "More and more now, people travel, so they've had the formal Italian meals. But they haven't had the home-style.
"We wanted to do something a little different, give people a new experience."
This particular home-style meal features a tray of roasted meats and poultry as a main course, and vegetable accompaniments of tomatoes au gratin, braised spinach and spiced mushrooms. Two kinds of pasta share the "soup course," served directly before the main course. They are: bird's nests made of angel hair pasta in a red vodka sauce, and a tortellini-like pasta smothered in a sauce of walnuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and cream.
Spread on a homemade flat bread, a mixed antipasto of pate, assorted marinated vegetables and meat serves as the appetizer. And a different wine accompanies each course, comprising about half of the total $400 grocery bill.
This, organized by a woman with no formal cooking training. As Barbara says, "I didn't learn to cook; I learned to eat. My mother never let me in the kitchen because I made too much of a mess"
The Surruscos lived in Italy during the early '70s, while Dick was finishing up medical school there. It was a time that gave Barbara her first taste of authentic, home-style Italian cooking.
"When we got back, I couldn't find the food anywhere here, so I just tried making it on my own," she says.
So she delved into all the available Italian cookbooks, experimenting and re-experimenting, until she happened on that perfect combination, the tastes she'd savored in Italy.
And judging from the Dinner a l'Art patrons, her recipes work. As Pam Gacek reported the following week, "Let's just say we had very few leftovers."
As for the hosts themselves, a can of Slimfast sat conspicuously on the Surruscos' kitchen counter during the first day of preparation. "For the day after," Barbara says, smiling as she pours the cream into one of her pasta sauces.
"Around here, we're on low-fat, low-cholesterol diets."
Pass the olive oil.
by CNB