There is no recipe for Croatian lamb on a spit.
My grandfather was a hard man, a hard worker who did not write, read, or tell stories. He did cook, beginning during his time in the Navy. His life was action and decision, plainly put–even down to the meals he prepared for his family.
Stories are like recipes; they change with the years, the hands that make them, and the table that they are served upon. It seems that the margins of both recipes and stories hold the secrets, and they’re only likely to offer themselves to you in small batches, a few at a time.
Horse
I have no idea how it happened. I know it was in the Croatian Dalmatian village of Sinj, which is famous for the yearly knights tournament called Sinjska Alka. In early August, the Alkari knights in traditional garb of black, gold, and red aim on horseback at a ring shaped target—the Alka—with their lances. It’s turned into a tourist attraction, but its purpose used to signify the marking of the victory over the attacking Turks by the people of Sinj and the surrounding Cetina district (the Cetina river flows through the village quietly and most unassumingly.) The winner of the tournament has his name etched in gold letters for all to see. The crowd is ordered to observe the winner’s name “for the coming generations to remember.” The people tried so hard with their rituals to never forget. There seems to be a sin in the forgetting.
Arambaši is a local version of sarma (stuffed cabbage), consisting of ground beef, pork, onions, garlic, parsley cooked in a tomato based sauce, with salt, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and lemon zest. Arambaši are served at the Sinjska Alka tournament every year, and can also be served at Easter. I do not know if my grandfather ever saw the tournament as a child or young man every sun drenched August in Sinj.
Alternatively, the Sinjska Gospa, a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Sinj, occurred on the Assumption Day of August 15th, which is the birthdate of my grandfather’s eldest daughter, Rosemarie—my mother. She was born in Manhattan, a few hundred worlds away. The Arambaši dish was strangely also connected to August 15th. Food seemed to tie them all together.
As a child, I easily discerned my grandfather’s small, but fierce green eyes. He passed these eyes to my mother, though they did not make it to me. My grandfather had a sister. Barely two years younger, she had light brown hair and a gentle beauty. When she was 16, she fell from a horse. In my mind’s eye I picture the horse to be tawny coloured. Probably spooked. Nothing more dramatic than that. She broke her arm.
As my mother tells me, “there was no Penicillin in the village. Those things killed them.”
Those things killed my grandfather’s sister. She died of infection, which likely saddened his family but did not surprise them. Life could simply disguise itself out of sight and death could take you if its whims bent in your direction. They did not question it. Her name was Lucia, which became my middle name.
Overboard
There was no Ellis Island experience to look back upon, at least on this side of my family. Like other Croatians we knew, my grandfather “jumped ship,” according to my mother. This did not literally mean he went overboard, jostling with the sharks and the mobster dumped bodies in the New York harbor. He came to New York City on a ship, yes. In a much more pragmatic fashion befitting my grandfather’s demeanor, he simply got off the commercial boat, likely coming in from Toronto—a popular route—and did not get back on.
My grandfather, once Stipe Smoljo (known here as Steve Smolich, had worked as a busboy in various cafes and restaurants in and around Sinj, and learned to cook properly in the Navy. He was the ship’s cook. I wonder if the ship of Crotian seaman were all eating stuffed cabbage in the mess hall onboard, or if he just became really good at peeling potatoes and making some Croatian version of naval gruel.
Waterfront
The Italians ran the Brooklyn docks. The Irish ran Manhattan’s. By being a longshoreman, my grandfather found the means to take care of his New York born wife Mary and his two daughters: Rosemarie, my mother, looked more plainly Ukrainian with her sallow skin, curls, and strong jaw. Her sister Joan looked more like their mother, but she was different. Her dark brown eyes, jet black hair, and small stature made her look more Italian than anything else. There was a rumor that my mother now distrusts wherein the Sicilian postman was fond of her mother Mary. Steve and Mary were in a traditional, but not all that loving marriage. My grandfather came from a rigid place and remained so. He had to on the docks.
Sometimes, he’d arrive back to their two bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, with the bathroom right off of the kitchen (because all facets of life were to be juxtaposed in America) with gifts including tins of Danish cookies and bottles of Irish whiskey. They came from crates that were “damaged” in transit, i.e. opened or broken into purposefully by the longshoreman.
My grandfather came to distrust personal ownership. He turned down the opportunity to purchase a house numerous times. He did spend his money on food and cooked for the family whenever he was not working. He enjoyed plucking recipes from the New York Times. We still use his recipe for gizzard infused Thanksgiving stuffing every year, along with various mid century modern roasts and stews.
He did have a penchant for exotic tastes where he was concerned. It may have come from his travels in the Navy. He would often go to the local butcher and purchase a slab of cow’s tongue and brains. My mother, her sister, and my grandmother did not partake, but my mother still shudders when she sees any shiny, mysteriously dotted grey-pink meat hiding out in the delicacies section of the butcher’s window.
Picnic
By the 1950’s, my grandfather’s work remained stable, but he never bought that car or that house. Sometimes my mother and her sister would be dropped off to their relations in Bayville, Long Island, where a bold teenage girl in shorts who was their godmother would babysit them, while my grandparents worked out their marital difficulties. They were truly becoming American in some ways.
Often, my grandparents, mother and aunt would take the train with all the other Croatians to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. It was vast and green, and fresh water ran over rocks that my mother remembers dipping their cups into for a drink of water. The centerpiece to these cultural outings—Croatian style lamb on a spit. This meant olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. There were no rules against this sort of old world cookout and they did not go about it in any small way.
I try to picture the surreal subway car as they packed in, the men carrying huge legs of lamb over their shoulders, along with six foot sharpened sticks, firewood, shovels; the woman sacks of potatoes, herbs, bread, wine. They would dig a hole in the dirt about a foot deep just next to the spit to slow roast the meat. At least during these holidays, my grandfather’s ideology remained intact—everybody shared, no one was left out. Comrades all in food, feast, and the great American outdoors.
When my mother married my father John (born Ivan), my grandfather Steve referred to him as a “gambler.” My father hailed from the Dalmatian village of Drnis in the principality of Ruzic, not 20 miles from tourist-friendly Sinj. He was everything my grandfather was not: dark eyed, lanky, but strong, gentle and romantic. He rode horses bareback in his village as a teenager, but other than being kicked in the nose by a cow as a child, he came to America in one piece—on a commercial airplane in 1959. My father proceeded to buy land in Westchester and build his own version of an American dream in the form of a house on a hill.
More than twenty years after my grandmother died during a routine hospital stay, my grandfather was knocked down by a van in Astoria, Queens. By the early 1980’s, he came to live with us in the big house and began to suffer from dementia. As a little girl, I remember sitting at the white plastic table and chairs out on the patio by the pool, watching my father turn the leg of lamb slowly—using a hollow steel pipe as the spit—as my grandfather would sit, his body more square with age and decline, and crudely suggest alternative techniques. Still, the ideological machinations between men that rang in the ears of their children did not lessen the sweet taste of the red wine that flowed plentifully, the home roasted meat, the more casual fields we owned, or the late August sunshine that watched over us. We had our own picnics for years to come.
Easter
In 1986, my grandfather resided in a rest home in Florida. My parents had moved us to Florida, because my father had bigger dream houses to build. We had replaced our world of familiars with the destiny of something further away, as-yet-unlived, something closer to the sun.
The last time I saw my grandfather, I could see his health had deteriorated some. His dementia was at a constant incline. He usually didn’t recognize who we were and, even after my mother would remind him, he would still call us by another name, or ask what year it was, or where he sister was, noting that she was born in 1902, a mere year after him. In the wilderness of old age, facts escape like water; the mere remembering of them creates a safety net, at least for awhile. History happens how we assemble it to. Meals are forgotten, then recalled. Horses. Cabbage. Cafe. Ships. The Docks. Lamb. Van Cortlandt Park. Memory. The lack of. Recipes not written down.
Easter Sunday–evening. In a small, temporary rental house, my family’s bellies are full with colourful tin foil chocolates and wine. There is no real backyard to speak of, just a small patch of sand with man made grass laid on top. There are no hills; there is no lamb on a spit. A lamb had been roasted in the oven. My father has laid down. My mother sits at the head of the dining room table that we transported to Florida, the same one around which my grandfather, parents, uncle, aunt, cousins, brother and I yelped loudly over many meals about the names of countries, governments, land, ownership.
In her tan and white dress and slippers, her legs neatly crossed, my mother, without speaking, holds her hand to her forehead, her other arm supporting the first by the elbow. An Easter lamb cake sits half eaten on the table. The crudely shaped eyes made from oversized gum drops look at my mother. Next to the lamb cake are endless handwritten notebooks of recipes, many of which came from my grandfather: stuffed cabbage, Thanksgiving stuffing and turkey, Croatian roast. The dessert recipes were my mother’s doing alone. She always had a sweet tooth.
On the phone just now, word has come down that my grandfather, hardlined and healed from the broken bones, rituals, and kingdoms of his youth, has died at age 85. My mother’s green eyes behind glasses are cast down in remembrance, in thought, in defense, in consideration. She does not cry.
After graduating from NYU’s Tisch and Trinity College Dublin, Maryana worked in film, television, and publishing. She then had an early midlife crisis, becoming a massage therapist addicted to the free breakfasts at Google. Maryana received her MFA in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) at The New School in 2017, where she interviewed NBCC Nonfiction finalists, contributed to The Inquisitive Eater, worked with the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and published in Vice (Tonic). Maryana is now a food writer, home cook/baker, and memoirist, writing mostly about her Croatian culinary heritage, food history, and a love of the immigrant meal
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