Gloria Revilla Doyle wrote this book for her children as they graduated from college and were ready to assume their adult lives, to give them the nuts and bolts of cooking and food preparation. They needed a guidepost to help direct them.

Her mother, Antonia Ramos Revilla, was the great cook of the family. She inspired then all.

Food has always had the highest importance in her family’s life. Preparation and eating food was the daily ceremony around which they gathered. They came together to eat and to connect with one another. They shared an appreciation of the tasty meal; they shared their adventures and misadventures. It was an occasion they honored every single day. Not cooking a meal never occurred to her. Carry out food was not an option.

For Gloria, high-quality food and coming together is as important as anything that goes on in the world. It is the stuff of life.

This edition of my cookbook is dedicated to my mother, Antonia Ramos Revilla. The whole world knew her as Toni. She is known as Dama to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The daughter of Spanish immigrants, Emilio and Juliana Ramos, she was born in 1916 near Vacaville, California. They lived within a tightly held small Spanish community, highly disciplined and hard working. The influences of her early life were Spanish with food at the center. Special days were honored with family festivities.

My mother was the product of two worlds, the Spanish colony where she was born and raised, and the American sensibilities in the culture of California. My grandparents’ vision of educating their children led her and her brother to the University of California at Berkeley from which they both graduated. There she met my father, Roberto Revilla, a student from Chihuahua, Mexico who graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1938. They married in 1939 and moved to Chihuahua where I was born. After two years they returned to California. Daddy became a successful businessman, owner of a construction company, Valley Builders, and entered into a life typifying the American dream. Blessed with a happy marriage and good fortune, Daddy and Mother were well suited. Sharing a sunny ebullience, they supported one another and reinforced each other’s strengths. Possessing enormous charisma, they were wonderful to be around.

My mother is a great and grand figure, blessed with beauty, style, and myriad talents. She could do anything with mastery. She was a teacher of Spanish. Not only did she teach us, her children, to converse and read and write in Spanish, but she taught the children of her friends. She also taught at Fresno State College, now University. The McClatchy Company, owners of the Fresno Bee newspaper, sponsored my mother in two television programs. In the 1950s she taught Spanish on KMJ TV, channel 24 NBC, Here’s Pepe, featuring Pepe the Puppet geared especially to children. In the 1970s she had another program which featured my beautiful mother presenting the ins and outs of conversational Spanish for adults.

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In addition, she was a gifted practitioner of what Martha Stewart refers to as the domestic arts. She managed beautiful, well run houses and gardens and was a master chef de cuisine. Everyone loved eating at her table. She was an ebullient and gracious hostess, and attracted interesting people from all walks of life, from places near and far.

My mother and father are my great inspirations. They lived an elegant and gracious life, traveled widely and were interested in everything. Music comes to mind. Daddy played the guitar and sang, along with my mother and my sister and me, Mexican and Spanish songs. He studied the classical guitar. Great followers of classical music, my parents enjoyed the symphony and the opera on a regular basis. I remember many family festivities with Daddy and other musicians singing and playing the guitar in the house, as well as being treated to evenings with beautifully trained classical musicians playing the Spanish guitar. In later years mother and Daddy had evenings with string quartets.

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My parents entertained often and imaginatively, set an elegant table, served delicious food, and presided over fascinating conversation. As a young mother I was worried that my table and food would never measure up to my mother’s. It was true. It never did, but we went home often and enjoyed my parent’s bounty and extended family largess. Grandchildren and sons-in-law adored Toni’s food and gatherings as well.

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In the 1960s when they were in their 50s, my parents built another house, their third. Some 40 miles to the east in Tivy Valley, outside of Fresno in the foothills on the road to Sequoia National Park, they bought 67 acres and planted an almond orchard. Toward the back of the property was a hilltop with California oaks overlooking the Sierras in the distance. There Daddy built a grand adobe house with a Spanish tile roof. Surrounded by gardens, a patio, and a pool, it was large enough to accommodate the extended family and guests. For 25 years it was a magnificent gathering place.

We had memorable Thanksgivings and fabulous Christmas celebrations at Tivy. It was a hub of festivity and served as a magnet for talented and interesting people who came from far and near. … Patsy, mother’s special friend, referred to my mother’s parties as going to Mount Olympus. We had such good times.

When my children completed college and went out into the world, I was called to put some of this legacy into writing. The first edition of this cookbook was printed in 1993 exclusively for the family. I printed nine copies and had them bound by a local Florentine bookbinder. It became popular among our friends, an enormous surprise to me. I was prompted to create a second edition, with additions, in 1997. We printed 80 books and have since run out of copies. Beyond all expectation, we are issuing a third version, slightly revised. I added certain new recipes and a new introduction. The rest of it remains pretty much as it was in 1993.

Christmas 2006

We’ve had years of living dangerously, others of living with improbability. This year, I want to focus on living practically. I want to highlight the details, the nuts and bolts, of what it is to put together the daily aspects of life. Food is a good place to start.

For a long time, it’s been my intention to write down recipes to give to my children. Some are family recipes of long-standing, little treasures from my mother and my grandmother, some are from my Tía Socorro, and still others are from me — garnered from friends and sources picked up along the way in 31 years of married life.

When Jessica and I began work on this project, I thought I might have 25, possibly 30 recipes important enough to write down. I did not want to put in everything I had ever cooked or all the recipes in my big collection. I just wanted to record the important ones. In several afternoons in October and November, 1993, we have managed to write down and comment on 87 different recipes. It has been a shocking revelation, for I do not think of myself as a cook.
When I think of a cook I think of my mother who relished being in the kitchen. She is a master cook. She loved food and its preparation.

When I think of her, I see her in the kitchen. In contrast, I never enjoyed being in the kitchen much. However, my mother told me recently, when we were consulting on the details of a recipe, that I had always been a discriminating critic of food. She said that even as a teenager, when I had a friend to dinner, I requested what she should cook and what she should not cook for the occasion.

Later, in my early married life when I despaired of ever becoming a cook, Denis told me, “You’ll become a good cook because you hate eating bad food.” Maybe that is what has gotten me from there to here — all 87 recipes.

One thing has emerged from this collection. This food is old-fashioned food. It is not part of the politically-correct, nutritionally-correct genre of the cuisine of the nineties. The main dishes consist mostly of well-cooked chicken, beef, pork and lamb with only a few exceptions. The butter and oil content is reduced from the way in which these recipes were prepared 30 or 40 years ago. Apart from the soups, there are no vegetarian dishes.

In the main, it is good-quality, tasty food. I recall a comment of Pierre Franey. He wrote that as he got older, he gravitated more and more toward the traditional food he had grown up with in provincial France. In his time as a chef and food writer, he mastered all the cuisines, the old and the new. Still, his comments are telling. I, too, suffer from the same nostalgia. Many of these foods are from my growing-up years, others have been added from my married life. The nutrition content is very high. This food is still good for us. I believe if one is dieting, just eat less of it.

We can eat meat once or twice a week instead of every night. Soup, pasta dishes and fish can be featured. There are lots of ways to reduce fat or caloric intake without throwing away these wonderful dishes.

Another emphasis crops up as I ponder this. Food has always had the highest importance in our family’s life. The preparation and eating of food was the daily ceremony around which we gathered. We came together to eat, to interact, and to connect with one another. We shared an appreciation of the tasty meal; we shared our adventures and misadventures. It was an occasion we honored every single day. Not cooking or sharing a meal together never occurred to us. The idea of carry-out food was unimaginable. For me, high-quality food and coming together is as important as anything that goes on in the world. It is the stuff of life.

Bon appétit.

Christmas 1993