Cookbook serves up recipes from the heart

How did Pamela Hensley Vincent, a nice Ashkenazic girl from California, end up writing "The Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook" (Overlook Press, $24.95 hardcover)?

It's a long story. Almost as long as the megillah of Esther, the tale of a nice Jewish girl from ancient Persia whose Uncle Mordecai helped her save the Jews from disaster.

"I remember the little triangular cookies my grandmother Yetta made at Purim," says Vincent, a former television and movie actress turned cookbook author. The cookies, filled with apricot preserves, were a version of hamantaschen.

Although they lived centuries apart, there was a lot of Queen Esther's courage in Grandma Yetta. The only daughter of a rabbi, Yetta left Austria to escape anti-Semitism. Like the Persian queen, she was sponsored by a powerful uncle, who opened his home to her. When Yetta fell in love with Manny, a man her uncle considered a playboy, her uncle threatened to disown her.

Yetta defied her uncle and married Manny. She was then cut off from her family. Like Queen Esther at the Persian court, she found herself among strangers. She was a 17-year-old bride living across the hall from a kind Italian family.

"The Italian lady taught my grandmother to cook," says Vincent, recalling the fragrant aroma of garlic that would fill Yetta's house whenever she made spaghetti sauce.

A few decades after Grandma Yetta learned to cook, her granddaughter's acting career took off. Vincent played Janet Kiley, actor James Brolin's girlfriend and then his wife, on the television show "Marcus Welby." She played the infamous Princess Ardala in "Buck Rogers" on both the large and small screens.

Arriving at an audition for a new television series, "Matt Houston," she met E. Duke Vincent, a television producer whose credits include 70 shows, including "Melrose Place," "Beverly Hills, 90210," and "Dynasty."

In the ultimate Hollywood plotline, Pamela Hensley not only landed the part of Matt Houston's girl Friday, C.J. Parsons, but went on to marry Duke Vincent.

Still madly in love, they say, the Vincents entertain often.

One spring evening, as her husband savored a salad that was the signature dish of Pamela Vincent's father, Jack, he said, "This is delicious. You ought to write a cookbook."

At first Vincent resisted, believing there was nothing special about her cooking. "My dad never measured ingredients and neither did my grandmother," she said, and she convinced herself that her recipes were too simple for anyone to be interested in them.

Recently, Vincent came across a small faded photo of her grandparents on their wedding day. Two Ashkenazic immigrants, gentle and loving, they stare into the camera, waiting for the future to unfold. The picture rekindled her husband's suggestion that she write a family cookbook.

"The tastes you remember from childhood are magic," she says. "Unless you go to someone's home who makes the same foods in the same way, you could forget those tastes and smells forever. It's amazing how food rekindles the past."

She started by writing snippets about family. Before she knew it, she'd created a scrapbook of their lives and the dishes they lovingly prepared as a way to thank them for her beautiful childhood, filled as it was with luscious memories and delicious food.

"I needed to write a cookbook. I knew it was locked inside my heart all these years," she says.

Yetta's Spaghetti

1 tsp. salt, plus a pinch
1 stick of butter
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 10-ounce can tomato sauce
Dash of paprika
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. sugar
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed
1 pound spaghetti

Put on a large pot of water, including 1 teaspoon salt.
As you wait for it to boil, melt the butter in a saucepan. Then add tomato paste and tomato sauce. Stir until smooth, keeping the heat low. Add pinch salt, paprika and black pepper. Add sugar and stir. Add the garlic. Simmer sauce about 5 minutes.
Put pasta into boiling water. Cook until al dente - check after several minutes by taking a fork, removing a strand and biting into it. If it's too firm, try again in 20 seconds. The spaghetti should be slippery and supple, but just slightly firm.
Drain pasta in a colander.
Place pasta in a big bowl and pour sauce over it. Toss together and serve immediately. Serves eight.

Jack's Pescado Portugal

3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium green pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 14-ounce can of tomatoes, drained
1 1/2 pounds halibut, snapper, or sea bass divided into 2 pieces
Salt and pepper to taste
Rice, prepared according to package directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Place olive oil in a skillet. Heat slowly. Add chopped pepper, onion, celery and garlic. Saute a few minutes.
Add tomatoes. If tomatoes are whole, break them up with a wooden fork. Simmer 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, place fish on a double layer of large sheets of heavy aluminum foil. Sprinkle fish lightly with salt and pepper. Then carefully spoon the sauce over the fish. Fold the foil over fish to form a closed pouch. Make sure edges are closed tightly enough to prevent steam from escaping.
Place foil pouch in oven and cook for 40 minutes. Serve fish and its sauce over rice.Serves four.

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