How Recipes Travel

Year ago, I commuted to work in Garden City, NY, on the LIRR. Al Polo was a conductor who finished up his shift on that early train out from the city. He’d come by with a cheery, “Hi, sunshine!” and sit, regaling me with horror stories of New Year’s Eves on the train and funny stories of boozy nights at McSorley’s. He made the commute bearable. Tonight, with a hint of fall in the air, Chuck and I made Al’s grandmother’s Irish lamb stew. He wrote it out for me in pencil on lined, 3-ring paper, probably from a notebook he used in his graduate work at NYU. I wish he’d been here this weekend. We watched “The Gangs of New York” on video last night. His degree from NYU was in New York history, so he’d have loved adding more details of life in 19th century Manhattan, sharing a beer with Chuck, and tucking into the stew his ancestors brought over from home.