texasmesquite

Garlic festival cooks share secrets

pair shares penchant for puns and the pungent
By Aleta Watson
Mercury News
Article Launched: 07/22/2008 01:47:17 PM PDT

Gene Sakahara and Sam Bozzo use plenty of garlic when they cook — 2741/2 cloves just to cover the recipes in their 106-page cookbook.
For 16 years, the pair of retired school administrators has been cooking with garlic and clowning around at the stove at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, which begins its 30th annual run Friday at Christmas Hill Park.
Now they're sharing their most popular recipes in a self-published, spiral-bound cookbook called "Any Bozzo Can Cook" (Jumbo Jack's Cookbooks, 106 pp., $16).
It's a pungent collection of home-style recipes for everything from sandwiches made with fried slices of bologna —a staple of Sakahara's childhood — to eggplant stuffed with sausage, onion and garlic. The title, a play on Sam Bozzo's name, reflects their fun-loving approach to the kitchen.
The two jovial friends have been involved in the festival almost from its beginning, when Gilroy could still claim to be the true Garlic Capital of the World. (Now, much of the garlic sold in the United States comes from China.)
Bozzo, 68 and former human relations administrator for Monterey Unified School District, served as the organization's president in 1990. Sakahara, 60, a lifelong resident of Gilroy and retired assistant superintendent of Gilroy Unified School District, held the post in 1991.
When their terms were over, they found themselves without an official role in the community enterprise that had meant so much to them. So they created a stage persona — SakaBozzo, twins separated at birth — and took to the festival's stages.

Their act involves hamming it up in cooking demonstrations that end with them donning clown wigs and noses and assuring their audiences, "If SakaBozzo can cook, any bozzo can cook.''
Not only do the self-taught cooks perform at the festival every year, they've taken their culinary hijinks as far as Japan, Florida and Canada in their zeal to promote their favorite hometown project.
"We're totally committed to the Garlic Festival. We see what good it has done," Bozzo says. He points out that total funds raised for local schools and charities are expected to top the $8 million mark this year.
Some 100,000 visitors are expected to show up for three days of spicy food, live music, arts and crafts and a cook-off drawing creative cooks from across the nation.
The men's recipes for dishes such as garlic-ginger chicken stir-fry have become staples on the Gourmet Alley, where volunteers cook and serve a lively menu ranging from scampi and garlic calamari to pepper steak sandwiches and garlic fries.
This weekend, they'll perform at the cook-off stage at 2:30 p.m. Friday and on the Gourmet Alley demonstration stage at 11 a.m. Saturday.
They'll also serve as judges for the Garlic Showdown, an Iron Chef-style competition among four professional chefs from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday.
Their cookbook includes a number of festival standards plus family favorites that don't include even a clove of garlic, among them a chocolate cake named after Sakahara's grandson, Shea.
Each recipe is followed by an anecdote tracing the history of the dish. Pasta IOU, for example, got its name because Bozzo didn't realize as a child that his mom was saying aglio e olio when she was describing the simple spaghetti dressed with garlic and olive oil.
"Part of our philosophy is you don't have to be a culinary chef. Enjoy yourself. Experiment with flavors in your kitchen. Have fun. Enjoy it with family and friends," Sakamoto says. He began cooking as a kid, when he prepared lunches for his family on days they worked the harvest.
Bozzo learned his way around the kitchen when his family ran a sandwich shop in downtown San Jose — Our Place near San Jose State University -— and, later, opened the now-closed Digger Dan's in Gilroy.
"Our wives are better cooks than we are,'' Sakahara concedes. "But they're not hams on stage," Bozzo concludes with a grin.
Contact Aleta Watson at awatson@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5032.