Welcome To Chef Leopold's Cooking Pages

Here I want to share with you one of my main passions: Food. You see, as most Italian Chefs I grew up with the love to cook by hanging out with my mother (Christa ) in the kitchen. Now my mom was a great cook. Yea, yea, everybody says that about their moms. But what I'm try to say is that my mom could really cook. Everybody, and I mean everybody loved my mom's cooking. No one ever went away from our table unsatisfied. My mom was that good.

The difference was that my mom was not Italian. She was German. Born and raised in Germany. She came to this country after WWII. Settled in Boston, didn't speak English, need a hair dresser, (when my mom was younger, she was a looker, in the style of a young Elizabeth Taylor. She was that good looking). Anyway, her hair dresser soon began to woo her and then he married her. My father. Yes that's right, my father Leopold (Leo the Lip) Lacrimosa was a hair dresser. After the war ended he got out of the service from serving in the Pacific and attend cosmetology courses to became a hair dresser of woman's hair. You see, my father was a player. He liked being a hair dresser because of one reason. Women. He got to touch woman. Talk to women. Play with women's hair. Listen to there gossip. And most important....He got to hit on women. Until my mom, there was no greater player in greater Boston than my dad.

Well my mom, met my dad and married the guy. My dad, born in the North End of Boston of Italian/Sicilian descent loved Italian food. My mom, wanting to please him learned to cook Italian. What a combination, my brothers and I grew up in the world of two cultures. German and Italian. And my mom could cook both.