Charm City (featuring Nana's Apple Cake)

My flight into BWI was an hour and a half late.

“Just touched down,” I texted my parents, who had flown in from Italy the night before.

My mom texted back, “Since your flight was late, we have to go directly to the restaurant. We’ll see you outside the terminal.”

I looked down at my jeans and gently stained pullover. I touched my hair, unwashed after cooking for 30 people in Portland the night before. I thought I’d get a chance to freshen up at the hotel before dinner, but it had been a stormy October day in Maryland and my flight had paid the price.

“I’m not sure I’m dressed for Sabby’s,” I texted.

Sabatino’s is an old Italian restaurant in Baltimore’s Little Italy and has been a Tucker family haunt for as long as I can remember.

Staring out the window, my eyes lost focus over the airport’s rainy tarmac as I envisioned myself, 6 or 7 years old, excited beyond reason to be taken out to dinner at Sabby’s while visiting my grandparents.

I remember the anxious fuss swirling around Nana and Poppoo’s apartment at Ruxton Towers in Towson as we gussied up for our big night out.

Though he probably wore aftershave, to me Poppoo always smelled like the brown germicidal Listerine mouthwash he obsessively gargled while staring at the bathroom mirror in slacks and an undershirt. Nana probably wore Chanel No. 5 or some other classic scent, but I only remember the department store smells of her Estee Lauder compact and lipstick. That night, I had my straight long brown hair brushed back behind my ears, wearing some forgettable frilly dress they’d bought me at Hochschild Kohn’s with shoes to match.

“Let’s go!” Poppoo barked with his classic Baltimore accent (“Let’s gew!”) as Nana ran feverishly around the apartment, snapping and unsnapping her pocketbook to make sure she had what she needed.

Tumbling around unbuckled in the backseat of my grandparent’s big-ass American car, I tried to zone out as they bickered about finding a closer parking spot. We were excited. It was special to go to Sabatino’s. It wasn’t fancy exactly, but it wasn’t a jeans and stained pullover event. It was a nice outfit “that will be ruined if we have to walk 4 blocks to get there” affair.

But life these days is more casual, I guess. A lot has changed.

“You’ll be fine,” my mom texted back. “We’ll see you soon.”

I sucked on my bottom lip. My uncle Ed had taken my Aunt Barb to Sabatino’s on their very first date so of course that’s where we’d go.

Uncle Ed had passed away the week before.

My parents and I hugged deeply, but only for a second amidst the relentless honking, shouting, and whistling outside the airport terminal.

“To Sabby’s!” we exhaustedly whooped, not able to properly harness the weight of our loss quite yet.

At the restaurant, the host lowered his eyes when he saw my dad.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Tucker.” And then to my mom and me, “Sorry, so sorry.”

Many more of the staff were standing in the entranceway of the restaurant and then in the main room, some with tears in their eyes, some looking forlorn, all heads bowed, “We’re so sorry for your loss. Ed Tucker was a great man.”

There’s a burrito shop up the street from our house in Portland that knows mine and my husband’s name from our frequent orders, and over the years there have been a few Chinese restaurants that knew me well enough to marry my name with my face, but I’ve never had a restaurant connection like the Baltimore Tuckers do with Sabatino’s. If I died tomorrow, there’s a possibility someone might say, I wonder what happened to Pollo Burrito Alison, but there certainly wouldn't be any weepy tortilla makers in the doorway. I’m too private or shy or jaded to build a deep relationship with restaurant owners. I feel life just isn’t like that these days.

Someone --was it my grandfather, Henry (Poppoo), or my uncle Ed —loved that extended family feeling and fed it enough to make it grow. I didn’t know my uncle Ed very well. He was an extraordinarily smart man, who often made me feel intimidated, but he had a loyalty to friends and family that was exceptional and a smile that could light up any room. These were rooms he had lit up many times.

We were led up to the second-floor private party room where the local contingent of family and friends had gathered. I squealed when I saw my cousin Lauren, one of my favorite people on the planet, and we hugged until our arms were tingly. I gave my handsome and hilarious cousin Matt a solid squeeze.

“I’m so glad you could come,” said my aunt Barbara, obviously tired but gorgeous in that stripped-down, here’s who I really am way that occurs only in devastating times.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I replied honestly.

“Hey, Peachy, we’re going to need some more drinks!” someone said to Peachy, the 77-year-old waitress who has worked at Sabatino’s since the 70’s. “And let’s get some food going too!”

Peachy, nicknamed for her peaches and cream complexion, has a “keep on truckin” attitude, nodding as she jotted the orders down, smiling as she carried 6 plates at a time into the dining room, happily refilling glasses. I’ve met 20-year-olds who couldn’t do a fraction of the work Peachy did effortlessly. She is part of Sabatino’s charm. 50 years of waiting tables in the same restaurant feels both incredibly rewarding and stultifying. I learned later that she’s also a published author of 4 books, so I’ll be shutting the fuck up right about now.

Sabatino’s renowned bookmaker’s salad appeared minutes later.

“With extra dressing on the side,” Peachy said with a wink, as she placed a few small bowls of their famous salad dressing next to the bread baskets for dipping. The dressing has a classic punch of vinegar, a big parmesan umami hit, and tons of oregano in olive oil and I shoveled the smothered romaine leaves, chunks of salami, and cheese into my mouth. Suddenly I was back with my Nana and Poppoo, proud that they didn’t have to beg me to eat salad because the dressing was so good.

Then it was time for the entrees. Peachy placed the baked rigatoni with melted mozzarella and provolone in front of me and I eagerly scooped a heaping forkful into my mouth. It was…oh my…

There is a technique for cooking pasta that few people know. First, you boil the pasta in salted water for about 2 minutes less than you think you should. That gives the pasta a hardy chew that’s still a little rough but has room to absorb the sauce, which is key because perfectly cooked pasta is like a sponge that will soak up all the robustness of flavors that surround the noodles. Right before you add the sauce, and this is the real trick, you continue to boil the noodles for approximately another 45 minutes until they have lost their shape, their ability to play with anything saucy, and their will to live. You’ll find the pasta now resembles white phlegm both in taste and consistency.

This is the cooking method used very successfully on my rigatoni that evening. The loogie of pasta lay on the plate like toxic waste floating in a sea of canned, unseasoned, unedited tomato sauce under a layer of melted grated cheese medley that covered the pasta like a leathery roof shingle.

It was at this moment that my eyes refocused on the room; the yellowed white tablecloths, the carpets stained and frayed, the lighting sconces held together with that high-gloss scotch tape I hadn’t seen in decades.

I was chuckling defensively at my memories and my family and loving the experience more every second. I wasn’t there for the food. I wasn’t there for the room. I was there for the safety of tradition and the people I love.

Now, I know I’ve already given you a pasta recipe, but I like you and I think you could use another.

My Nana had a signature dessert that she made for all occasions. I can see her little ringed fingers shaking as she measured flour into a bowl, her shoulders tense as she whisked eggs with the oil. I have zero recollection of her peeling the apples, which is the only true cooking task of this cake, but peeled they were because she made a million of these cakes over her lifetime. After my trip to Baltimore, I asked my cousin if anyone had Nana’s recipe and she texted me a transcription that someone had written down years ago. I baked it, loyal to each word, and it was… terrible.

This is the moment in this story where I question my family’s judgments and perceptions of taste.

But I ate this cake as a kid and loved it.

The original recipe had no salt, a laughingly small amount of orange juice (1/2 teaspoon!), and only a suggestion of sugar and cinnamon to macerate the apples before they’re put into the cake. One of my favorite things about this cake when I was a kid was that when you pulled a cooked apple slice out of the cake there was a cinnamon fossil left. I thought the form left by the apple was a prize only I knew about and I would secretly dip my tongue into those fossilized apple cake spaces, licking up the cinnamony sweetness.

When I made the first cake, the apples weren’t seasoned enough to create any fossils. So I went back and added some more of everything. It’s not a fancy cake. It’s not the best cake you’ll ever eat, but it is perfect for these days when we all need something comforting.

Nana's Apple Cake

Ingredients

• 6 apples (I used 3 pink lady and 3 granny smith)

• 2 tablespoons cinnamon

• 4 tablespoons sugar

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• 2 cups white sugar

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 4 large eggs

• 1 cup vegetable oil

• ¼ cup orange juice (low or no pulp)

• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Peel the apples and cut into ½ inch slices. Toss them in a bowl with the cinnamon and sugar. Let sit for 20 minutes for the apples to macerate.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan.

3. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, the sugar, the baking powder, and the salt.

4. In another bowl, beat the eggs and then add the oil, the orange juice, and the vanilla.

5. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and blend until no flour lumps appear.

6. Pour a layer of cake batter into the bundt pan, followed by a layer of apples. Repeat two more times until the batter and apples have been used up.

7. Bake for an hour and 20 minutes (that's 80 minutes).

8. Let cool. Enjoy!

Here is a clip of me making this apple cake on KATU’s show Afternoon Live.

https://katu.com/afternoon-live/cooking-recipes/alison-tucker-shares-her-nanas-apple-cake