Thanksgiving dinner 2024 was definitely more relaxing last week for Joe Trama, compared to the previous nearly four decades.
Kitchen colleague Joe’s career resume includes his role as executive chef at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster since the cultural venue first opened in 1989. It was Chef Joe and his kitchen team who were already serving the workers refreshments and sandwiches while they were constructing this landmark destination at 1040 Ridge Road and what I so often refer to as our region’s oasis of arts, culture and entertainment.
The Center for Visual and Performing Arts was the dream of Hoosier visionary and philanthropist Don S. Powers, who died at age 95 in April 2015, just months before I was hired at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts as the new marketing director in November of that year for the Theatre at the Center.
Chef Joe, C.E.C., a certified chef by the American Culinary Federation, began his career in 1972 in Stuart, Florida, and later served as an adjunct professor of culinary arts at Ivy Tech Community College. Above all, he is a proud Italian son devoted to his 99-year-old mother who lives in the Southwest Chicago suburbs. He is equally devoted to his wonderful retired nurse wife Nancy, who is always an arm’s length away to roll up her sleeves to help out.
For 35 years, Joe, often with both wife Nancy and his sister Nancy helping out as well, spent Thanksgiving and most of the major holidays in the grand ballroom of The Center for Visual and Performing Arts carving up turkeys for more than 1,000 hungry guests at four sold-out seatings. It required more than 20 roasted full-size turkeys to feed the eager crowds grazing at Chef Joe’s signature holiday brunch seatings.
This year, following his retirement announcement in October, Joe and Nancy spent a much quieter Thanksgiving dinner with their family.
Also at Joe’s side for all of his kitchen adventures and holiday cooking and serving crowds throughout the decades has been Executive Chef Hugo Perea, who along with his wife Maria Arteaga, has purchased the Trama Catering Company and rebranded it the new 10Forty Banquets and Catering Inc. They are continuing the same dining and feasting traditions along with new ideas, events and menus.
I miss Chef Joe, and I remain thankful this Thanksgiving for his friendship and kindness to me when I started my new career path at the CVPA nine years ago. We quickly bonded over culinary topics and kitchen chatter, with Joe always providing the “Joe” (coffee) to catch up on the matters of each morning.
Chef Joe also imparted so many new recipes and kitchen knowledge to share with me. We both share a love of “food and recipe lore.” Recently when I asked him for a good recipe for Turkey Tetrazzini, he reached behind him to a cookbook shelf in his office to secure a handy reference.
“For our champagne brunches and menus, we always opted to serve Chicken Tetrazzini rather than turkey because I didn’t want any diners thinking we use leftover turkey as an ingredient in it for a second serving,” Joe said.
According to his reference cookbooks, Turkey Tetrazzini is named in honor of the Italian soprano opera star Luisa Tetrazzini, who died at age 68 in 1940. Thin pasta coated in a rich and creamy sauce ranked as a favorite meal of stage star Luisa, who struggled with her weight throughout her lifetime.
The recipe gained even further acclaim following the death of the opera star and ranked as a signature highlight on the menu of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City. After the famed Sardi’s along the Broadway stretch of the Great White Way began serving Turkey Tetrazzini in the 1950s, it quickly became a favorite of tourists. Actor Vincent Price, who died at age 82 in 1993, so loved Sardi’s restaurant recipe for Turkey Tetrazzini, he included it in his own published cookbook “A Treasury of Great Recipes” in 1965.
Congratulations Chef Joe Trama on your retirement. I decided to even give Chef Joe a break from providing me with today’s featured recipe. Chef Russ Adams and wife Nancy Adams, owners of Strongbow Inn restaurant in Valparaiso, which closed in March 2015, were equally known for their restaurant’s recipe for Turkey Tetrazzini. I found it originally published in The Chicago Tribune, The Tampa Tribune-Times and other Tribune Media newspapers in November 1985 in the syndicated “A Taste of America” column penned by Michael and Jane Stern, along with a clever cartoon illustration of the Strongbow Inn dining room depicting a portrait of opera star Luisa Tetrazzini framed on the wall.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa @comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Strongbow Inn Turkey Tetrazzini
Makes 8 servings
3 slices bacon
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup green pepper, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
2 cups turkey broth
3 cups cooked turkey, cubed
1 package (10 ounces) frozen peas, cooked
4 oz. spaghetti, cooked
1 small (3 ounce) jar pimientos, chopped
Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup almonds, slivered and toasted
Directions:
1. Cook bacon until crisp. Remove from pan; drain, crumble and set aside. Add onion and green pepper to pan with bacon fat and cook until tender.
2. Remove onion and green pepper from pan with slotted spoon and add mushrooms to the bacon fat in the pan. Sauté until tender.
3. Remove mushrooms with slotted spoon. Add flour to fat; cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Remove from heat.
4. Add celery salt, pepper and broth; cook, stirring gently, until smooth. Add crumbled bacon, peas, turkey and pimientos. Reheat.
5. Spread cooked spaghetti in the bottom of a shallow, buttered, broiler-proof pan. Cover spaghetti with turkey mixture, top with almonds and sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese. Place under broiler until cheese is lightly toasted.
