Father reminds his daughters to take time for home cooking

NEW YORK -- Dedicating a cookbook to his daughters doesn't reflect the limits of Tony Casillo's fatherly feelings. When you publish such a book you clearly have a paternal concern in seeing that everyone is well fed.

The book is "Tony Casillo's Family Cookbook: A Treasure Trove of Recipes and Cooking Advice From a Dad to his Daughters" (Reader's Digest, 2003, $30). In the dedication, he says to daughters Gina and Christina that after they set up their own households, he wanted them "to treat yourselves to decent, wholesome foods."

So he wrote down the recipes they had cooked together to help persuade them to make time in their busy lives for cooking family meals.

"Mostly, I'm trying to tell my daughters -- and young men, too -- 'Look, it's not that hard, in fact, often it's much easier than getting in the car and going out for fast food, and it's much better for you. Your daily food should be good, easy and quick,"' he said, talking by phone from London.

He learned about cooking early in life. "Right from infancy we lived most of the time with extended family and cooked and ate together," he said. "Eating and cooking was something you did in the family. I think I sort of learned by osmosis."

They were not short of food, he said, but "you treated food with respect."

Among his recipes, Casillo writes about "a family of vegetable soups," which he refers to as "first-aid dishes," for when you want something hot with no fuss.

All you need is some pasta and vegetables, he says. The theory is that you use something, more than one thing if you like, from each of these food groups:

Fat: oil, margarine, butter or bacon.

Flavor 1: garlic, onion, celery or carrot.

Flavor 2: parsley, tomato, spoonful of tomato paste, oregano or basil.

Starch: potato, any kind of pasta, rice or barley.

Legumes: beans, chickpeas or lentils.

Greens: lettuce, escarole, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, cabbage, endive, turnip tops, radish tops or celery leaves.

Here's one version to get you started.

Clean-the-Larder Soup

1/4 cup olive or sunflower oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium tomato, chopped

1 medium potato, peeled and cubed

Handful spaghetti, broken up

Handful penne pasta

16-ounce can borlotti beans, drained and rinsed

1 handful salad greens

4 cups water, or more as needed

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over high heat. Add the onion and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the potato is tender and the pasta is firm-tender, about 30 minutes. Add more water, if necessary.

Makes 4 servings.

"When we were children, mother would hoard eggs for weeks prior to a big holiday to make her cakes. Whether there were enough depended not on the supermarket but whether the hens were laying. The really special treat was a fluffy golden cake redolent of vanilla," Casillo writes.

Yellow Cake

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream Filling (recipe follows)

Frosting (recipes follows)

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Butter and flour two 8-inch cake pans.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer at high speed until light and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter and sugar, a little at a time, alternating with the milk and vanilla, while beating. Beat until smooth. Pour into the cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans and continue cooling on the wire racks.

While the cakes cool, prepare the filling and frosting. When the cakes are cool, slice them horizontally in half to make four layers. On a serving platter, place one cake layer, and spread a third of the filling on top. Cover with another cake layer and repeat until all the cake and filling are used, finishing with a layer of cake. Cover the top and sides with frosting.

Makes 12 servings.

Basic Cream Filling

2 cups heavy or whipping cream

Confectioners' sugar to taste, about 1/2 cup

Using an electric mixer, whip the cream, adding the sugar, a spoonful at a time, until fluffy.

Variations:

Vanilla Cream Filling: Combine the cream with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract before whipping.

Chocolate Cream Filling: Add 1 tablespoon cocoa powder to the sugar before whipping.

Basic Frosting

4 tablespoons ( 1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature

2 cups confectioners' sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons heavy cream, or more as needed

With an electric mixer on high speed, cream the butter. Gradually add 1 cup of the sugar and the salt. Add the remaining sugar a little at a time, alternating with the cream.

Variations:

Almond Frosting: Beat in 1 teaspoon almond extract. If the frosting is too thick to spread, add a little more cream until you get the desired consistency.

Chocolate Frosting

8 ounces semisweet chocolate

1 cup heavy cream

In a double boiler, heat the chocolate and cream slowly over medium heat. Stir the mixture until amalgamated. Cool slightly before spreading. If the frosting is too liquid, cool it some more by immersing in iced water.

(Recipes from "Tony Casillo's Family Cookbook: A Treasure Trove of Recipes and Cooking Advice From a Dad to his Daughters," Reader's Digest, 2003, $30).