Growing up in the kitchen at Ken's Steak House, Michael Hanna learned to cook with his Italian grandparents' passion for herbs and spices and his mother's insistence on "doing everything just right."
The son of the late Kenneth Hanna, who founded the landmark Route 9 restaurant, he recalled learning to cook eggs and bread from his grandfather Peter Bacigalupo, who shared secrets he'd learned growing up in Genoa, Italy.
And he still remembers his late mother Florence (Bacigalupo) Hanna "always tore the lettuce and never cut it" when making her famous salads.
"For Mom, cooking and preparing food always involved lots of love," said Hanna from his home in Sarasota, Fla. "Her salad dressings were so good customers used to order two salads."
Digging deep into memories of cooking in MetroWest and Italy, Hanna has written and published his first book of recipes, "3 Dozen Reasons To Be An Italian Cookbook."
"You just can't cook unless you really put your feelings into it," said the 69-year-old former Framingham native and longtime resident. "But it's the sequence of the cooking that gives things their flavor."
Hanna has written an 87-page cookbook that mixes exact lists of ingredients with detailed instructions and inside tips to give his dishes their special tastes.
For example, in one of his personal favorite recipes, Shrimp and Scallops in Pesto Sauce, he specifies that garlic cloves should be "finely minced" before they're added to the saute pan and after removing the "tails from the shrimp, make sure that they are cleaned and deveined."
Listen up, Rachel Ray, "allow the butter to melt by using the heat from the pan (without adding heat.)"
Hanna has organized his book into separate chapters devoted to appetizers, vegetables, breads, pasta, chicken, steak and seafood. Additional chapters offer advice on the foundations of cooking, a grocery list and glossary with Hanna's own ideas about everything from how many "shakes" of black pepper equal an eighth of a teaspoon, why Ritz crackers make good crumbs and why he always uses sea salt in all his recipes.
Each recipe features a specific list of ingredients followed by detailed cooking instructions. Several recipes, such as linguini and sausages, include a "chef's hat" symbol with "special instructions," which inform readers they can skip the marinara sauce and still get "delicious" sausages.
Though barely mentioned, Hanna's own history is sometimes as international and interesting as his recipes.
He is the second youngest son of a family of four boys and a sister, Connie Shay of Southborough.
Much of his life revolved around his father's restaurants, the Sandy Burr Country Club in Wayland, the 41 Cafe which was the precursor to the steak house and Ken's Steak House which remains a MetroWest institution on Rte. 9 in Framingham.
Growing up in the family business, Michael Hanna learned to cut meat, bus tables and tend bar. In the late 1950s, he rejoined his father as chef of the Finale Room at Ken's and designed the menu for a new lunch service which offered a 7-ounce sirloin steak, salad with his mother's dressing and French fries which were cut on location.
Despite his cooking background, after graduating from Sacred Heart High School in Newton in 1959, Hanna enrolled in L'Academia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, where he spent two years studying sculpture.
When money was tight, he'd work in Italian restaurants where his experience broiling steaks for tourists was in great demand.
Consumed by wanderlust, Hanna spent several years visiting Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt before returning to the U.S. Upon arriving, he studied art in New York and then business at Babson College.
"Then I got married, put art on the back burner and went to work in the restaurant business," he said.
In the 1960s, Hanna opened Ristorante La Bimba on Union Avenue in Framingham and ran it for several years. After it closed, he rejoined the family business where he worked for many years before moving to Florida in 2005.
He credits his wife, Elsa, for encouraging him to write his cookbook, helping him write down the recipes and photographing the finished dishes.
Hanna presently plans to write "a more elaborate cookbook next."
"I was always used to cooking my own way. All of a sudden, Elsa's standing beside me with a pen, writing down everything I'm cooking with," he said. "I never realized how much nutmeg I used."
While he considers cooking a fine art, Hanna is confident even amateur chefs who follow his instructions won't leave the dinner table disappointed.
"If you follow my directions, you're going to be absolutely delighted with the final results," he said. "Put in what you're supposed to and that's how it'll come out."
After his book was finished, Hanna dedicated it to his mother and his late son, Kenneth Michael Hanna.
Asked his favorite recipe, he thought a moment and then named his marinara sauce with a splash of white wine, eight fresh tarragon leaves, two tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of black pepper.
"My mother loved it," said Hanna. "That's as good a compliment as anyone could get."
Michael Hanna's "3 Dozen Reasons To Be An Italian Cookbook" can be purchased online from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com for $17.95. It can be ordered from Bacigalupo Publishing, LLC by calling 941-366-6125 or e-mailing dosamigos1017@comcast.net.
