nothin Thank The Lord, & Pass The Squash | New Haven Independent

Thank The Lord, & Pass The Squash

Paul Bass Photo

Claire Criscuolo is serving her traditional Thanksgiving meal again this year — not turkey, but stuffed acorn squash. And as always, she’ll give thanks to what she learned from her mother: vegetables will cure any ailment.

Criscuolo (pictured) grew up to open New Haven’s landmark vegetarian restaurant, Claire’s Corner Copia, which this fall celebrated its 40th anniversary at the corner of College and Chapel Streets. (Read about that here.)

She sat down in the WNHH studio for a Thanksgiving Eve interview on Dateline New Haven” to talk about how her mom, the late Anna Bigio LaPia, shaped her epicurean and business outlook.

Criscuolo will think Thursday of her mom, the late Anna Bigio LaPia, when she cuts open the acorn squash and, before placing it in the oven for her family guests, fills it with stuffing of homemade bread, organic apples, celery, carrots, mushrooms GMO-free soysages, fennel that had been slowly cooked in organic apple juice.

Because growing up with Anna, first in Wooster Square, then East Haven, Criscuolo learned to love vegetables. They not only filled her plate each night. They healed her physical ailments.

Food was our medicine,” Criscuolo recalled during the interview.

If you had a sore throat you had the winter tonic. We stew apples with lemons and honey and cinnamon. And you literally stew it. You mash it down with a potato masher. And you drink it when it’s really hot, in bowls.

My mom would make that. She didn’t knew the apples [and honey were] natural oxidants.” She just knew it worked.

Anna also knew how to unclog ears.

Criscuolo at WNHH Wednesday.

Just Wednesday morning Criscuolo woke up with a clogged ear.

I thought, Oh my god. What would my mother do?’ And I remembered. She heated the olive, rubbed it on the outside of my ear and down my neck. You do the entire outside of the ear, and you do the side, the neck going down, with warm olive oil. You rub that. And my mother would take a flannel shirt and put it in the oven.

I just used my microwave. I put in a damp washcloth.”

I was fine 20 mintues later. I said, Thank you mom.’”

Sprained ankles? Criscuolo got those a lot. Anna pulled out fragments of old sheets she had saved for rags. She beat egg whites into them in a shallow bowl, then stuck the combination in the freezer. After it froze, she wrapped it on the ankle.

I’m telling you, this stuff works,” Criscuolo recalled. If you think about it, it’s brilliant. It gets stiff.”

Of course, vegetables didn’t just cure ailments in the LaPia household. They were staples of the daily diet.

Dinner always included broccoli, carrots and spinach — at least. The family called those the big three.” Some nights potatoes or sweet potatoes, or other veggies, would be added to the mix.

Mom was a big fan when she discovered the staemer basket. It was hilarious. Everything went int he steamer basket. She would put it on the plate, drizzle it with a tiny bit of olive oil, and take half a lemon and squeeze it on top.”

Criscuolo, center, at the Sept. 16th 40th anniversary celebration.

I’m not surprised you opened a restaurant,” Anna told Claire after Claire, at that time a nurse, opened the restaurant with her husband Frank in 1975. You used to sit on the porch and invite everybody in for dinner.”

And it was no surprise that the restaurant would focus on what used to go by the term health food,” and has since acquired plenty of synonyms and variants (such as organic, non-GMO, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, low-sodium …). Food always nourished the body and the soul in Anna’s household. Entering her fifth decade as a nationally known restaurateur and cookbook writer, Anna’s daughter is thankful this Thanksgiving that she can keep that tradition alive.

Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full episode, which also touched on the wonders of Amalfi, the smoke points of various cooking oils, the history of Claire’s, the decision to go kosher at the restaurant, why small businesses outperform big corporations, and how to make chocolate-covered eggplant for the Feast of the Assumption.

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