FOOD
A COOKBOOK
CELEBRATES
BENSONHURST
AND FAMILY
by CRAIG HUBERT
26
Daniel Paterna. Photo by Mark de Paola.
Food is about family. The recipes, the stories, the large
gatherings around a crowded table. In a time of social
distancing, these aspects are doubly important for fear
that they will disappear. In “Feast of the Seven Fishes: A
Brooklyn Italian’s Recipes Celebrating Food and Family,”
Daniel Paterna — a graphic designer and photographer
by trade — takes readers back to his childhood home
in Bensonhurst. It’s not just a cookbook: It’s as much a
memoir and visual history of a changing neighborhood
as a series of recipes and kitchen tips. Paterna revels in the
sights (he also shot the beautiful images in the book) and
smells of an Italian kitchen, passing along anecdotes and
personal memories. “My Bensonhurst was the world before
the media tapped into it,” Paterna writes. He explores
his family history and its relationship to the borough,
and the book has an entire section on local Bensonhurst
shops, which Paterna says he spent an entire summer
researching. Another section focuses on “feast days,”
including the Christmas Eve tradition of the book’s title,
and the book has more than 50 everyday recipes. Paterna,
who currently lives in Park Slope, has been amazed at
the response to the book. People have been sharing their
own stories, and reminiscing about their family kitchens
growing up. “The reactions have had an outright humbling
effect on me, to the brink of tears,” he says. While
it may be difficult to envision celebratory, family-style
dinners in the near future, Paterna has offered a guidebook
for their return.
The way you describe the familial atmosphere around
the food of Bensonhurst is extremely evocative. What is
your earliest food memory?
There were many but I distinctly remember being a boy
at my mother’s side entering a well known salamaria on
Eighteenth Avenue named Martino’s. It was the very first
time I experienced all the foundational blast fragrances
of an Italian market, outside of my mom’s home-cooked
meals. Mr. Martino himself was at the counter, and the
universal offering from him to me was a taste I will never
forget — freshly made warm mozzarella. It stayed with
me enough to inspire me to ask a local Italian purveyor on
Endicott Street in Boston almost 30 years later to teach me
in exchange for help in his shop. From Martino’s we would
usually stop at the original Sbarro’s Italian Grocery on the
corner of 65th Street and 17th Avenue. There, Mrs. Sbarro
(of later Sbarro pizza shops found at many interstate stops)
would grace the counter with the elegance of a Fellini film
actress. That was more of the higher end boutique, if we
even attributed such a word to a local food shop.
Can you talk about the origins of the book? How did you
arrive at this format?
It was all inspired by my mother’s beautiful workmanlike
recipe cards she would amend and annotate yearly to hone
a holiday recipe. It became a meeting place for her and our
relatives via phone calls. They became calls that bound us
together. At first I resisted making it a cookbook. I was
too protective of my family’s cooking legacy.
What do you think people get wrong about Italian food?
Is there a misunderstanding you’re trying to clear up
with the book?
It’s not all red and spilling over your plate. I tried to
portray basic simplicity, brick-and-mortar type dishes in
a glorious light. Food that generations were raised eating.
Nothing precious but delicious, by all accounts full of
nutrition, vitamin rich, and protein and carb balanced.
And we never eat bread with pasta.
Are you nervous that the traditions you write about in
the book will disappear?
This was the food I was raised on and I’m doing all I can
to keep it vital and alive, not only for our children but for
those who did not have the tools or presence of mind to
record and preserve these traditions for future generations.
Lots of culture passes away with the grandparents
because many have become too reliant on them until they
realize it’s all gone.