Home Cooking

U.S. OPEN FEVER has hit Main Line homeowners like the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu, fueled by fantasies of making five-figure fortunes by renting their houses near the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore for the June 10-16 tournament. One online ad for a four-bedroom, five-bath colonial boasting a 650-bottle wine cellar suggested, "Chat with Tiger Woods and the rest of the U.S. Open golfers as they walk the 8th hole directly behind this home. " Another ad touted "formal and informal dining rooms" and "three living rooms with two grand fireplaces.

Stop in for a sack of basmati rice, garam masala, or perhaps the British chocolates the owners have set under glass - in case a light-fingered Anglophile with a sweet tooth shows up. As you wander the aisles of this West Philadelphia grocery store, wondering what is what and how you would cook it, the sound of foreign voices, singing, catches your ear. Curious, you move to the back of the store and find a fluorescent-lit room with a predominantly...

The sign on 49th Street near Woodland Avenue made me stop the car and turn around. "Hot and delicious soul food. Hazel's secret recipes," it said. It was lunchtime, and the ladies of Evangel Temple Church had just finished setting up tables weighed down with Hazel's chicken (fried, baked or barbecued), ribs, meatloaf, greens, potato salad, macaroni and cheese and spaghetti with meat sauce. Hazel was inside, overseeing the candied yams still in the oven. On Sundays, she and her husband, Rev. Alfonzer Patrick, oversee the church's flock.

Giacomo's Ristorante in downtown Norristown is a charming outpost of culinary civility. Although it looks much like a country French cafe, Giacomo's is an Italian restaurant with good home cooking and moderate prices. The attractive mix-and-match decor blends several styles. Pretty flowered blue wallpaper and light-blue ruffled cafe curtains with balloon valances at windows fronting East Main Street suggest French influences. Polished-wood wainscoting and brass lantern sconces attest to the building's long history.

Fast proliferating, Italian restaurants are all the rage these days; indeed, dozens of new places have been opening the past year or so in seemingly endless splendor. But few can match the quality of the home cooking at the new Riviera Ristorante & Pizza in Sharp's Run Plaza outside Medford. Riviera shares space with a pizza operation on one side, but make no mistake: The restaurant side has memorable cuisine at low prices you'll long remember. Small enough for intimate dining (it seats only 36)

"I want them to eat and be happy," is the way Alfonso Luberto explained it. Each word carried its own particular emphasis. "I want them to be comfortable. I want the restaurant to be a combination between food and aesthetics. " And then he added: "I want to give this restaurant a soul. " Spoken like a true Neapolitan. Even without music in the background, a telephone dialogue with Luberto conveyed the deep passion of a young man from Naples. Luberto, who has been in this country for about 15 years, was speaking about his new restaurant - Luberto's - which opened in April in a small shopping strip across from the Grant Plaza at Welsh Road and Grant Avenue.

If casual defines your comfort standards and family-style dining appeals to you, better not miss Cassano Italian Cafe and Bar. This Cherry Hill restaurant sets the standard. Cassano's has been open for about 2 1/2 years, but it wasn't until late last year that it developed its family theme. "I actually had the idea a few years back, but kept it on the back burner," says John A. Cassano Jr., chef-owner. "We were an upscale supper club. People really had to dress. You couldn't just walk in and sit down and eat. " 'This isn't the way to do business,' I thought.

Three, not two, things in life are certain: death, taxes and the assurance that you will never go hungry in the Capri Room, Pennsauken's newest restaurant. The restaurant opened three months ago as part of the House of Pizza, but don't let the name fool you; the dining room is separate from the pizza operation. The Capri Room resembles the many family-run South Philadelphia restaurants that specialize in good home cooking - and lots of it. The tradition has now crossed the Delaware; the result is that the Capri Room is already so popular that reservations are virtually mandatory.

When Juanita Welch was learning the intricacies and flavors of Mexican food from her mother while growing up in Torreon, Mexico, she never thought her love of cooking would become a thriving home-based business. But necessity proved to be the impetus for the birth of JSS Enterprises, when her husband, Bob, lost his job in November as an engineer at a West Chester company. "I wanted to do something to help out with our family's finances," she said, sitting in the spotless kitchen of the Welches' West Bradford home in Chester County.

The watchword for 2009 is less , as in: getting by on less; using less expensive ingredients; eating out less often. And more home cooking. The trend will affect families at all points along the culinary spectrum. Bon Appetit magazine, for example, suggests its home cooks substitute truffle oil for more expensive truffles, while Wegmans supermarkets say sales of supplies for home baking and canning are way up. "Over the last year, we've seen increased sales of baking ingredients such as flour, even over the spring and summer when flour prices were rising dramatically," says Josephine Natale, spokeswoman for the supermarket chain.

U.S. OPEN FEVER has hit Main Line homeowners like the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu, fueled by fantasies of making five-figure fortunes by renting their houses near the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore for the June 10-16 tournament. One online ad for a four-bedroom, five-bath colonial boasting a 650-bottle wine cellar suggested, "Chat with Tiger Woods and the rest of the U.S. Open golfers as they walk the 8th hole directly behind this home. " Another ad touted "formal and informal dining rooms" and "three living rooms with two grand fireplaces.

Some years ago, when, my daughter, Regina, was living on her own in Manhattan, she received a notice from the gas company. The utility offered to shut off service to her stove because the appliance hadn't been used since she moved into her apartment the year before. Regina was amused by the offer. I was not. My daughter, who was raised on nutritious home cooking, couldn't bother to switch on a burner or heat up an oven to make a meal. Instead she dined on takeout or cereal. It was little comfort to me that other young singles she knew received the same notice.

Maybe the Flyers should stay in a hotel the night before home games - as they have done on occasion in past years - and it will help them play with the same focus they have on the road. It will also keep them away from the real reason they have struggled at the Wells Fargo Center this season: Too many orders from their wives and girlfriends. At least that's a theory espoused by Jaromir Jagr, the legendary Flyers right winger who will be in the Hall of Fame someday.

Craig: After all my recent restaurant eating, it was a joy to do some home cooking. This weekend I tackled David Chang's phenomenal bo ssam roasted pork butt from the Momofuku cookbook, with all the fixings, plus some homemade steamed buns. The pork was amazing, like salty-sugar glazed pork candy. But I was really proud of these buns: Just look at these steamy little guys! Chinatown at home! Reader: What would it take for a three-bell restaurant like Le Virtu to get four bells?

Bio : 35; from Ocean City, N.J.; lives in Philadelphia with his wife. Philly/Jersey restaurant connections: Avenue B, Café Loren, Fathom Seafood House, Fish, Little Fish and Washington Inn. Culinary training: Academy of Culinary Arts, Mays Landing, N.J. First restaurant gig: Age 13, as a busboy at Daniel's Restaurant in Somers Point, N.J. What's new? Mike sold Little Fish and Fathom Seafood House (now East Girard Gastropub) to their respective chefs de cuisine to focus on his newly expanded Fish (1234 Locust St., 215-545-9600, fishphilly.com )

A CROWD OF 6,850 showed up at Convention Hall in 1963 to watch Lee Shaffer score 31 points in the Sixers' first home game in Philadelphia. There could be triple as many in attendance tonight when this year's young and interesting group takes on the Pistons in the 49th home opener in franchise history. Here's a look at some odds and ends from the team's first home games throughout the years: All-time record: 31-17 Most lopsided win: Over Cleveland, by 24, on Oct. 30, 1981 (128-104)

Philadelphia-area photographer Sabina Louise Pierce was sitting on the patio of the White Dog Cafe one night with Maddie, her wirehair fox terrier, and a thought came to her: "Wouldn't it be great if there was a menu for dogs, instead of 'a bite for me and a bite for her'?" She filed that away. Shortly after the 2007 pet-food recall over melamine, chef Matt Levin, at the time working at Lacroix in the Rittenhouse Hotel, let on that he cooks for his dogs. Pierce approached her friend, the author Kathryn Levy Feldman, with the idea of a cookbook: Pierce's photographs and Feldman's words.

What's behind the doors of a chef's home pantry? One imagines a cornucopia of fancy ingredients: jars of colorful exotic salts, nun-massaged pastas, and the handpicked stamens of rare plants. In reality, the professional chefs you know and love probably cook with Morton's Kosher, De Cecco spaghetti, and Hellman's mayo when they're off-duty. The irony is that consumers are heading in the other direction. With so much attention being paid to every detail of our restaurant meals, and food celebrities pointing out the merits of gray salt and pomegranate molasses, consumers are looking for the same quality at home, shelling out big bucks for international preserves, artisan condiments, and heirloom grains.

Giuseppina Carrara is what they refer to in Italy as a buongustaio - literally a "good taster. " "She loves to eat," says chef Jeff Michaud, speaking of his Italian mother-in-law, whose home cooking inspires many of his dishes at Osteria. "She's not into the dainty. When I put the francobolli on the table [at Osteria], she says, 'Come on Jeffrey. I want a plate of pasta, so give me a plate of pasta,' " says Michaud, chef partner at Osteria. Michaud, 33, met Carrara in 2004 about a month after he started dating her daughter Claudia, a bella donna with big brown eyes who walked into the restaurant where he was cooking in Bergamo, Italy.