Today I looked at the butchers’ counter and decided I wanted to try to re-create a recipe I cut out of a magazine while in college, a recipe for pasta with chicken and Italian sausage in a tomato sauce attributed to The Chairman of the Board (yes, Frank Sinatra).
I remember that the original recipe had at least a cup of olive oil in it, way too much. There’s a new butcher, who messed up my order last week and tried to charge me $25/lb. for chicken breasts. He caught his mistake and this time was able to correct it without assistance from a more senior butcher.
He must have found my ingredients strange, 1/2 lb chicken and 1/2 lb sausage, so I told him I’d let him know how it went. He asked what I was making:
Dee: Frank Sinatra’s chicken and sausage, from the 40’s. I don’t have the recipe.
Butcher: You can probably find it online.
Dee: I know the basics and will just work it out.
Butcher: Good luck with it.
Dee: I’ll just “Do It My Way.”
Butcher: “Oh, Elvis!”
Whereupon I had to ask an older butcher where he first heard “My Way,” and even he said Elvis. Please.
What has this world come to, readers, especially the musical ones? Come Fly With Me is my favorite mono album (from my folks) of all time. I bought the CD in the UK but ended up giving it as a parting gift to our favorite Italian restaurateur and former carabinieri in Glasgow at our going-away party.
I know Frank never wrote his own music, but with Tommy Dorsey teaching him vocal phrasing and Nelson Riddle doing his arrangements, he could have rapped his way through a song and people would’ve thought it was music.
So, it’s nearly seven p.m., snowing like crazy and Jim hasn’t even called from work yet so I may hold off on the chicken and sausage recipe until tomorrow morning, because I’d like the flavors to meld a bit. Cheers, Dee
Cooking with Dee 