So let me just say to begin that being a Cher fan is incredibly fun. One week I can be writing about doll outfits (I have another doozy of an eBay doll story coming up) or food recipes or beauty and fashion ideas or makeup-head toys or teen magazine advice columns or memoirs or music or movies or TV shows…or creative things fans do like making little wooden Bulto-like wooden carvings of Cher’s outfits. It’s a grab-bag of fun.
And lately, as I’ve been doing the Cher food stuff, (which is quite an amazing mashup of obsessions, to be honest), I’ve been thinking about who could possibly care about this stuff but Cher fans, and maybe even who cares among Cher fans really…about all this minutia. I mean, who is really out there taking this crazy journey with me? Is this just more and more internet self-absorption?
But then I get a letter. And I’m like oh my God. Yesterday I received this email below from someone who is not a Cher fan at all but found something I had posted.
I asked her if I could share her letter on my blog and she said yes. First let me say this story has echoes of Cher’s own story about her sister finding their mom’s beloved cheesecake recipe in a stack of papers after Georgia died. (I made that recipe a few weeks ago and it was a big smash. And, aside from Shoofly Pie, the only other pie I’ve ever made.)
“Hi Cher Scholar,
I stumbled across your website this evening while I was searching for an old recipe my mom used to make frequently while I was growing up. It was titled “Pollo Bono” in my mom’s hand-typed and laminated binder of recipes, which I always thought was a misspelling of “Pollo Buono”. However, searching the phrase “pollo buono” didn’t return any comparable dishes, so I tried a search inquiry using the original spelling.
Lo and behold, the first result was your site! Specifically, the page wherein you compiled some of Sonny Bono’s old recipes, with Pollo Bono being among them: https://www.cherscholar.com/sonny-bono-recipes/
It was just how I remember: lightly breaded chicken breast in an herby sauce, topped with tomato and onion that come to life under the broiler for a fantastic, rustic finish. I’m not sure how my mom had stumbled across the recipe all those years ago. It would have been the late 90s, possibly even earlier, when she added it to her regular recipe rotation. She was never one for magazines or pop culture, but I suppose it’s not unthinkable that at some point, she’d gotten her hands on that February 1990 issue of Woman’s Day Magazine mentioned on the page and found the recipe interesting enough to keep.
I had this dish at least once a month growing up, but the recipe was lost years ago amongst my parent’s divorce, a family fallout, and several moves. I’m now almost 30 and married to a home chef (for whom I thank my lucky stars everyday!) who has kindly agreed to recreate the recipe for me someday soon, though of course he insists on putting his own twist on it. Whether his version will measure up to my nostalgia remains to be seen!
In addition to sharing my fun discovery, I wanted to thank you for maintaining this site and keeping it free to the world. Accessible information archives are a rapidly deteriorating resource in the age of paywalls and internet regulation. Your efforts are commendable and very, very much appreciated!
Sincerely,
Kara from Pittsburgh”
I told her I was so happy this recipe was making its way in the world though and I asked her what other recipes her mom made.
“There were a couple of other Italian dishes in the rotation, like veal parmesan and lasagna, but my mom’s specialty has always been southern comfort cooking. She’d make a great chicken and dumplings dish that I’ve never been able to recreate.
I’m glad to leave the cooking to my husband most days, but I do wish from time to time that I could have those childhood favorites again. I’ve only been able to find a handful of the original recipes online. I’m really glad the Pollo Bono ended up being one of them!”
And speaking of food, I finished my exploration of the recipes in Forever Fit (with the second and last spaghetti sauce recipe) and I made the spicy shrimp fried rice in Cooking for Cher this week.
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Shrimp fried rice prep.
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Cooking pasta sauce.
So the reason I was more excited about the Cher Garnier commercial Q&A a few weeks ago, more so than for the actual Garnier Diamond Sleek commercial, was because I was in the middle of compiling decades of Cher beauty advice for a new Beauty section on Cher Scholar.
To be honest, I was a better cook last year than when I tried to make the Cooking For Cher recipes decades ago. But I’m still not using the big chopping knife because that’s still scary: “Chrissy! Bring me the big knife!”
