ight up there with Spaghetti with Meatballs, Chicken alla Cacciatora is another red-sauce classic that, while quintessentially American-Italian, also has traceable antecedents in the culinary traditions of Italy. In the centuries-old hunter’s treatment of game-birds, hare, and venison, Italians would both mitigate the gaminess and tenderize the flesh of wild quarry by slow-braising their meats in wine,vinegar, or citrus juice.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Mrs. Maria Gentile’s The Italian Cookbook*, (Italian Book Co; 1919), provides a recipe for Chicken alla Cacciatora and recommends, “This is an excellent way to cook tough young chicken.”

Certainly, for most new immigrants and their first-generation American children, who had had little domestic poultry in their own culinary experience, this was also a logical way to cook a sinewy barnyard chicken. Remember, this was prior to World War II, before the concerted efforts of selective breeding for mass-market poultry production had given us the tender supermarket broilers Americans now take for granted.

Since Italian-American restaurateurs would always have abundant tomato sauce on hand, it was no leap of imagination for them to offer chicken braised in tomato sauce and served with the ubiquitous “pasta on the side.” Serving two courses simultaneously—pasta (a primo) and meat (a secondo) on the same plate—was a sure tip-off that a restaurant was catering to a primarily non-Italian clientele.

European Italian cooks favored celery and carrots in their versions of chicken braised with tomatoes, while Italian-Americans introduced green peppers and mushrooms. Indeed, other writers have supposed that it was the inclusion of mushrooms that suggested the woodsy name for the dish (“in the style of the Hunter’s Wife”). However, mushrooms only became common in American red-sauce restaurant cooking after commercial button-mushroom farming had taken hold in and around Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

In any case, you won’t have to hunt for any of the ingredients for this simple preparation; all are readily available. Though the dish can be quickly assembled and left to stew on its own just a couple of hours before supper, it’s even better if you make it a day ahead.

Here is what my grandmother would have done….

Chicken alla Cacciatora

Ingredients:

Olive oil
3 Lb. Chicken cut into 8 pieces (or 8-10 chicken thighs)**
3/4 Cup flour seasoned with salt and freshly-ground black pepper
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and diced
1 Medium yellow onion, peeled and diced
2 Green bell peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 Lb. large white mushrooms, sliced
1 Cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. Can plum tomatoes, preferably San Marzano
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried basil
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley

Preparation:

Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off any excess. Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to coat the bottom.

Add the chicken pieces to the hot pan, lower the heat to medium, and slowly brown chicken on all sides. Do not crowd the pan; if necessary, do this step in two batches.

When all the pieces have been browned, remove and reserve on a plate.

Drain and reserve any excess oil and accumulated chicken fat, leaving just a film on the bottom of the sauté pan.

Add the onions and garlic and sauté, stirring often, until the onions have become wilted and translucent. Add the chopped peppers, and sauté until they’ve wilted. Pour the cooked vegetables into a large casserole.

Return the sauté pan to the heat, add enough of the reserved fat and oil to cover the bottom and sauté the mushrooms just until they have begun to give up their liquid.

Add the mushrooms to the vegetables in the casserole and move the casserole over the heat. Raise the heat to high, then add the wine. Allow the wine to boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol. Add the tomatoes and stir to incorporate the wine and vegetables. Stir in the oregano and basil.

Add the chicken pieces, adjusting them as they go in, so each is completely covered with the liquid.

Adjust the heat so the sauce barely simmers. Cover the pot, but leave the lid slightly ajar, so steam will escape. Simmer for approximately 90 minutes. You’ll know the chicken is done whrn the meat begins to recede from the bones. Taste sauce for salt and pepper.

To Serve:

Add two pieces of chicken to each of four plates, ladle a few tablespoons of sauce over the chicken, and garnish with the parsley. Serve with good crusty bread and a green salad.

If you like, serve pasta as a first course before the chicken or as a side dish. Ladle 1/2 cup of sauce over each small portion of cooked pasta, roughly about 2 cups of sauce to serve over enough pasta for your guests.

Serves four

Copyright © 2009 Skip Lombardi

Genoese were among the earliest Italian immigrants to San Francisco. In many ways their transition to America was easier than that of other Italians who struggled not only with a new language in a new land, but also found themselves having to learn new industrial trades. For the Genoese, fishing in the cold Pacific was not so different from casting their nets in the Gulf of Genoa. Just as they had back home, fisherman concocted stews based on unsold leftovers from each day’s catch, including whatever unmarketable creatures they found in their nets.

Essentially a fish soup, any given cioppino might also have included shellfish and crustaceans as well as octopus and squid. Both name and components can be traced back to the seafood stews, or zuppe de pesce of Liguria. And in Genoese dialect, ciupin was simply the truncation of the Italian zuppina, or “little soup.” As culinary sleuths, we must constantly remind ourselves that the dialectical names of dishes developed by Italian immigrants to America do not necessarily match any names back in the old country.

Cuipin, also known as passato di pesce, is a Ligurian dish that relies on some very tasty, if bony, fish. Among the favorites are various sharp-spined scorpion-fish (members of the Scorpaena family) and gunards (of the Triglidae family)—native to the Mediterranean. Traditionally, these are added—bones and all—to a stockpot, to be poached with water, white wine, and herbs. The cooked flesh is removed by hand and reserved; the fish bones and any remaining meat are then pressed in a sieve to extract every last bit of flavor and nourishment; that extraction is added back to the stockpot, along with tomatoes, onions, and various herbs.

But thanks to the waters of San Francisco Bay, with their great diversity of shellfish—particularly the Dungeness Crab—ciupin developed a far more complex character. And once the next wave of Italian immigrants, the Sicilians, had settled in San Francisco, the dish was embellished with both sweet green and hot red peppers. The white wines of Liguria gave way to more robust California reds, whose color and flavors gave the stew more depth.

It was not long before the aristocracy of San Francisco caught a whiff of what was cooking down on Fisherman’s Wharf. Eventually, the recipe was codified, though the name of the first recording cookery writer is lost in the legendary fogs of the city. Once cioppino began showing up on the menus at tony dinner parties on Nob Hill and Pacific Heights, its place as an iconic San Franciscan dish was assured.

Savvy cioppino-makers use the recipe only as a starting point and let the market determine the ingredients. The result is that cioppino rarely tastes the same way twice, and in that, the best versions are true to the stew’s Old World Italian origins. Exciting as this variability may be, it makes cioppino an elusive item on restaurant menus. Chefs, and more importantly, their patrons, seek consistency. Thus, if suddenly one restaurant’s famous cioppiono should have to be made without one or more marine elements, one night’s stew might disappoint the “regulars.” So whether you seek the essence of cioppino in the city by the bay or in your own kitchen, know in advance that like a marine weather forecast, there will always be a delicious element of unpredictability.

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Olive Oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Large yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 Green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped in 1/2 inch dice
2 Tbs. Tomato paste
1 Cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. Can Italian plum tomatoes (whole or diced; preferably San Marzano)
1/2 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes (or more, to taste)
2 Whole bay leaves
4 Tbs. Fresh basil, torn or cut into shreds
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
12 Live Cherrystone or Littleneck clams, thoroughly scrubbed
1 Lb. Live mussels, thoroughly scrubbed and debearded
1/2 Lb. Squid, cleaned, cut into 1/2 inch rings, tentacles chopped
1 Lb. Shrimp (36– 40 count), peeled and deveined
1 Lb. Boneless fish cut in 2-inch chunks (cod, halibut, monkfish, haddock)
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper

At serving:

6 Thick slices of good bread, toasted
2-3 Tbs. olive oil
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
Lemon wedges (optional)

Preparation:

Heat a large heavy-bottomed soup pot (6 quarts or larger) over medium heat. Add the olive oil and garlic and sauté for about 1 minute.

Add the chopped onion and red pepper flakes. Season with salt and black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent.

Add the green pepper and saute until it has softened, 3 – 4 minutes.

Raise the heat to medium-high. Stir the tomato paste into the oil and onion-pepper mixture.

Add the wine, and stir to incorporate with the tomato paste. Boil for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Add the plum tomatoes. If you are using whole tomatoes, break them up with a wooden spoon or with the back of a fork as they go in.

Add the bay leaf, basil, and parsley. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer, partially covered, for approximately 20 minutes.

Raise the heat to medium, and add the clams and mussels. Simmer, covered, for 5 – 6 minutes, or until the shellfish have opened. Discard any that have not opened after 10 minutes. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the clams and mussels as soon as they have opened. Reserve them in their shells in a bowl to catch their liquid.

Add the fish chunks, shrimp, and squid to the pot. Simmer, covered, for approximately 5 minutes, until just cooked through. Taste for seasoning and salt to taste. Resist the urge to stir the pot at this point. If you do, the fish may disintegrate.

Return the shellfish in their shells to the pot, along with any juices that have accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. You simply want to bring the shellfish to the same temperature as the rest of the stew.

To Serve:

Place a slice of toast in the bottom of each deep bowl and drizzle each with a little olive oil. Ladle some of the stew liquid over each. With tongs or slotted spoon, carefully divide the fish and shellfish equally among the bowls. Finally, ladle as much hot liquid into the bowls as you’d like. Garnish with additional parsley and lemon wedges and serve immediately.

Accompany with a warm, crusty loaf (or two!).This stew cries out for additional bread.

Serves six.

This preparation, quickly assembled from just a few ingredients, became popular during the late 1970′s.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Hailing from the same zip codes as Chicken Scarpariello, Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers derive most of their distinctive and assertive flavor from the peppers and their pickling brine. While the peppers themselves (hot, not so hot, or simply sweet) are the subject of ongoing debate, their vinegar is sine qua non, which is old Roman dialect for “If you don’t have the peppers’ packing liquid—fuggheddabboudit.”

It turns out that many commercial producers use acetic acid rather than pure vinegar for their brine, so be sure to read the ingredients listed on your grocer’s offerings. Vinegar made from apples, other fruits, or grains has a much mellower taste than the harsher acetic acid.

The peppers most commonly used are sliced, pickled cherry peppers. It’s up to the cook to choose those with the desired amount of heat. While many a nonna makes her own pickled peppers—and may even use sweet, bell peppers—nearly all Italian-American restaurants use a commercial product with some degree of zest.

Over the past several years, some restaurants have switched to serving large, center-cut chops, an inch or more in thickness; others use brine-cured pork chops. But the original dish was made with thin chops, pounded even thinner. This was very likely to stretch the dish and to make the portions appear larger. Thinner chops not only absorb the flavors more rapidly and evenly, but require far less fuel to cook through.

A perusal of Italian-American restaurant menus from across the country suggests that Pork Chops and Vinegar Peppers are endemic to the restaurants of the Northeast, particularly Boston. In New Jersey, Tony Soprano has given this dish his okay and Carmela included it in The Sopranos’ Cookbook.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
3 – 4 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced
4 Pork chops approximately 3/8 in. thick
1/2 Cup pickling brine, from the peppers
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 Cup sliced vinegar peppers
Salt, to taste
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add enough olive oil to glaze the bottom of the pan and add the chopped garlic. Sauté for a minute or two, until it is aromatic.

Lower the heat to medium and add the pork chops to the pan. Brown lightly on both sides, cooking for a total of approximately 10 minutes. Season with pepper.

Add the pickling brine and lower the heat so the juices barely simmer. Cook for approximately 5 minutes longer and remove from heat.

Taste for salt. Depending on the saltiness of the liquid, you may not need any.

To serve:

Place one chop on each of four dinner plates and spoon any pan juices over the meat. Garnish with some of the sliced peppers and the parsley.

Traditionally accompanied by potatoes pan-fried in olive oil, the chops also pair well with boiled new potatoes.

Baccalà with Polenta
Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

The very name baccalà permeates Italian-American speech: despite the mayhem with which he was associated on The Sopranos, the mere mention of Bobby Baccala guarantees a laugh. Author Jimmy Breslin chose the name Baccala for his fictional Don in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. A slab of dried baccalà is hard and unyielding…the epithet is used to describe a stubborn dolt, in short, “a blockhead.”

But back to gastronomy…

The irony is that a commodity that become nearly iconic in traditional Italian culture and cuisine was neither caught nor prepared in Italy—nor anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Subjects for a much longer discussion, salt-cod and stockfish (both cod, but distinguished by their salting methods) were caught in icy North Atlantic waters as distant as those of Newfoundland’s Georges Bank. Eviscerated, dried, and salted aboard fishing vessels or ashore in northern Europe, cod became vital to northern trade with the Mediterranean. In ports like Marseilles, Genoa, Livorno, and Trapani, dried fruits, wine, spices, and other Oriental luxuries, as well as SALT (essential to curing the cod back in the Nordic countries) would be loaded onto ships that had just off-loaded dried cod.

Such was the power of trade and the introduction of a product with shelf-life, that in Italy—where no part of the peninsula is more than 75 miles from the sea—people have been enjoying dried salt-cod for centuries. So, like the pomodoro and the peperoncino, here is another gift from La Terra Nuova that needed a few transatlantic passages to realize its gastronomic potential.

One of my earliest childhood memories is my walking into Public Market on Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut, and becoming immediately enveloped by the distinctive, slightly ammoniated aroma of baccalà. Slabs of the stiff, pale fillets were always displayed on a counter in a wooden packing case.

My memory was later rekindled while I studied music in Boston; I became reacquainted with baccalà in open bins in front of Joe Pace’s Grocery, then a culinary mecca on Salem Street in the North End.

Since my non-Catholic family thought of the Seven Fishes, Lent, and meatless fast-days as outside their own tradition, we had the luxury of eating baccalà—holiday or not—simply because it was delicious. Here is my grandparents’ version.

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Dried salt-cod (Look for a package labeled “BONELESS”)
4 Tbs. Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and sliced thinly
2 Medium onions, peeled, and thinly sliced lengthwise
1 28 oz. Can of plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1/2 Cup raisins (My grandparents preferred seedless, blond “sultanas”)
2 Tbs. Capers, rinsed and drained
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

In a cool place 50° F. or colder, soak the baccalà for 2 – 3 days, changing the soaking water 2 or 3 times per day. When ready to cook, drain and cut the fish into 4-inch chunks.

Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan set over medium heat, then add the sliced garlic. Sauté briefly, being careful not to let the garlic burn, then add the sliced onions. Sauté over medium heat until the onions wilt.

Remove the pan from the heat as you pour in the tomatoes, crushing them with the back of a fork so that you have large chunks. Simmer the sauce for 20 – 30 minutes, or until it has thickened.

Add the raisins and capers, then add the baccalà. Simmer, partially covered, for approximately 15 minutes, or until the baccalà flakes easily. Divide among four bowls, sprinkle with the parsley, and serve with bread or polenta.

Serves four.

A small coastal town along the Connecticut border, Westerly is home to one of the largest Calabrese communities outside Italy. Beginning in the late 19th century, as the barons of American commerce erected mansions in their summer playground of Newport, Rhode Island became a magnet for southern Italian stoneworkers.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Between 1911 and 1934, the Le Fabre steamship line brought Calabrians and Sicilians straight to Providence, where port improvements were made to ease the congestion of Ellis Island’s immigration halls. Westerly’s pink granite quarries, as well as horticulture and poultry production throughout the tiny state of Rhode Island, supported an expanding community of Calabrians.

Even though many Westerly residents are now fourth generation Americans, their Calabrian identification remains strong. A US-born nonna more comfortable speaking her dialect than broken English is not unusual. And while there is a large community of recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, the bilingual signage in the excellent Westerly hospital is not in English and Spanish, but in English and Italian!

Unique to Westerly is Spezzi, chicken gizzards in a tomato ragù laced with pickled hot peppers. To the best of our knowledge, it survives in a couple of local bars and one restaurant, where it is served—not as a sauce over ziti or rigatoni—but on its own, in small bowls accompanied only by white bread.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Over the past couple of years, we’ve deconstructed both the history of spezzi and the dish itself.

We began with the etymology: Spezie are simply “spices,” maybe a reference to the cherry peppers? But then we also knew that spezzatino, a “stew,” is from the verb spezzare, to divide into pieces.

We’re not authorities on the nuanced variations of Calabrian speech, but we knew another Westerly word that gave us a clue. Over more than a century, three generations of Westerly’s Italian-Americans have truncated sopressata to the point that it is pronounced and spelled as ‘soupy!’ So, while dropping final syllables is not as predictable in Calabrese as in Neapolitan dialect (e.g., mozzarel, proshoot, brashol), the Calabrese have certainly abandoned their own share of syllables along the Northeast Corridor

So, we decided that spezzatino could have yielded spezzi…

But what about the origin of the dish? Who made it first? And when? A rudimentary knowledge of avian anatomy tells us that no one would have made spezzi with chicken parts prior to the age of commercial poultry production. One gizzard and one heart per chicken… Do the math: at least ten chickens are needed to provide approximately a pound of hearts and gizzards.

Conducting further interviews in Westerly bars, we learned about Chickadee Farms. And as so often happens in a bar, we began to see things from an expanded perspective.

In the mid-1940′s, Joe Russo founded Chickadee Farms in the town of Hopkinton, just east of Westerly. Within a decade, Chickadee Farms was supplying chickens and eggs to virtually every IGA (Independent Grocer’s Alliance) store in Rhode Island and southeastern Connecticut. The farm ultimately processed 60,000 birds per year. And in 1954, long before we’d heard of Frank Purdue, Mr. Russo was instrumental in his State Legislature’s declaration of the eponymous Rhode Island Red as the official state bird.

Chickadee Farms employed a lot of Westerly residents. We have a theory: one of the employee benefits might have been getting to take home the regaglie—the livers, hearts, and gizzards—from the processed chickens. Spurned by many Americans, regaglie have their fans, and there were plenty of Italians who knew delectable ways to prepare them.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Of course, as we’ve said before, recipes aren’t static; they evolve and eventually earn their places in a cuisine. We’re inclined to think that before the Westerly Calabrese encountered a surfeit of gizzards and hearts, they had used the distictive trio of tomatoes, cherry peppers, and the peppers’ own pickling vinegar in other applications. Both a tenderizer and a neutralizer of especially pungent meats and fish, vinegar had a long history in southern Europe as an ingredient in game stews.

One Greek restaurateur (and first-class blues guitarist) in Westerly suggested that spezzi might have begun with venison. Knowing how many Subarus and light pickup trucks with Connecticut and Rhode Island plates bear significant dents after colliding with bucks caught in headlights, this seemed plausible. And as any southern New England gardener bemoaning beheaded tulips will tell you: deer are everywhere.

From their first days in Westerly, Calabrese could have had venison, legal or not. But la caccia in America was not necessarily an option for Italian immigrants, many of whom lacked both access to hunting grounds as well as funds to purchase guns. Nonetheless, New England hunters have a tradition of generosity. Perhaps those who did hunt were happy to share deer numbles (also known as lights, offal, or variety meats) with their omnivorous Italian neighbors, just as happy as the Chickadee Farms management had been to provide take-away gizzards.

If our hunch is correct, then we should note: venison would have been seasonal. So, later, when Italians had a supply of less-marketable, mass-produced chicken organs, spezzi could have been savored year ’round. The gamey qualities of poultry gizzards are a fair match for the taste and texture of venison.

As a plus, gizzards don’t require as much time or fuel to cook as the innards of a larger animal. Today, even if they are not free, gizzards remain very inexpensive to purchase and prepare. Spezzi is the Westerly way to assure every bit of a Rhode Island Red—or any chicken—is enjoyed.

Cucina dei Poveri, meet the official state bird!

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Chicken hearts and gizzards
Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 Medium yellow onion, diced
1 28 oz. Can crushed tomatoes in heavy purée
4 – 6 Pickled hot peppers, finely chopped
1/2 to 3/4 Cup of the pepper marinating liquid
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, chopped
2 Tbs. Fresh basil, chopped
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Place the gizzards and 1 Tbs. salt in a 2 — 3 quart saucepan. Add enough water to cover them and bring the pan to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain. When the hearts and gizzards are cool enough to handle, remove any connective tissue and chop the meat into half-inch pieces. Reserve.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough oil to cover the bottom. Add the garlic and sauté for a minute or two, until it begins to smell delicious. Lower the heat to medium and add the onions.

Sauté the onions until they begin to wilt, approximately 3 — 5 minutes. Season the reserved hearts and gizzards with salt and pepper and stir them into the onions and garlic.

Add the tomatoes, the chopped peppers, and their marinating liquid. Add the oregano, basil, and 2 Tbs. of the parsley. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if necessary.

Adjust the heat so the pot barely simmers. Partially cover and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

To serve:

In Westerly, Rhode Island, the local bars serve spezzi in a small bowl, with white bread on the side. We prefer to serve ours, garnished with additional parsley, over polenta. We also enjoy a robust spezzi over short or tubular pasta and find it reminiscent of the Roman classic, pasta con le regaglie.

Serves four.

Related Posts:

Cherry Pepper Shooters
Chicken Cacciatora

In Little Italys all over America, the name Fra Diavolo is applied to dishes cooked with enough spicy heat to impress the devil himself.

But the literal translation of Fra Diavolo, ‘brother devil,’ refers to the legendary Italian brigand, Michele Pezza (1771-1806), who carried out highway robbery and sundry crimes along the Appian Way. His ‘success’ was attributed, in part, to his disguise—that of a Franciscan friar—which earned him the sobriquet ‘Fra Diavolo.’

Recognizing Pezza’s talents in eluding capture, the King of Naples offered him amnesty in exchange for his services to fight the French. Fra Diavolo earned accolades as a Neapolitan hero until he was captured by the French and subsequently sent to the gallows.

So, how does a highwayman’s nickname relate to a spicy feature of Italian-American cooking?

I can only imagine that when old Napolitani gathered to tell stories of Pezza’s exploits, someone in the crowd would shrug his shoulders (as only an Italian can), and say, “Beh, when you’re hot, you’re hot.”

But, once again, my editor has other ideas… She notes that “deviled” dishes as well as those with Escoffier’s sauce diable had a long tradition in British and French cuisines. Northern Italy, too, had dishes alla diavolo. The heat or bite in all of these came from mustard, black pepper, and, occasionally, horseradish. She suggests that the appearance of deviled dishes on French and American menus gave Italian-American restaurateurs aspiring to white-tablecloth status the idea of renaming their peppery red sauce.

Whatever its antecedents, we have to be honest: while the sauce is delicious, we would never use it on lobster. We both grew up on the shores of New England, where the convention is to eat lobster with drawn butter. One of us thinks that red sauce on lobster goes too far, and we both agree that the delicate taste of lobster, scallops, and most other seafood can be overwhelmed by the wrong proportions of sauce to shellfish.

Nonetheless, because we know there are many who relish this spicy sauce, we want to provide our readers with a good recipe for one of the most extravagant dishes in the entire Almost Italian repertoire. Lobster Fra Diavolo is a favorite addition to the table for La Vigilia (Christmas Eve), when Italian-Americans celebrate with the Feast of the Seven Fishes. And it doesn’t hurt that the dish is red and white, garnished with green—a veritable Almost Italian holiday proclamation.

Do not be tempted to buy a jar of red sauce, no matter how “gourmet” its label may appear to be. As any kitchen capo knows, lobsters deserve your respect.

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

When lobster is involved, you might wish for a little of Fra Diavolo’s booty. In truth, we find that shrimp stand up to the Fra Diavolo treatment better than any other shellfish, and thus, we are presenting two recipes—one for scampi and one for lobster.

At restaurants like The Daily Catch in Boston’s North End and Umberto’s Clam Bar in New York’s Little Italy, you can watch as chefs in their open kitchens quickly sauté the shrimp, add the marinara, and bring everything together with the linguine.

Shrimp Fra Diavolo Photo © 2008, Skip Lombardi

Ingredients:

2 Lbs Raw shrimp (about 40 to the pound), peeled and deveined
2 Tbs. Olive oil
4 Garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
1 Cup dry white wine
3 Cups of My Grandmother’s Tomato Sauce
½ tsp. (or more) Dried red-pepper flakes
2 Tbs Fresh basil, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 Lb. linguine
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Season the shrimp on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bring a large pot of water (at least 6 quarts) to the boil for the pasta. Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the oil. Add the shrimp and sauté for 2 minutes. Stir in garlic and sauté for an additional minute or until shrimp are just beginning to turn pink. (Do not crowd the pan; prepare shrimp in batches if necessary.) Remove the shrimp from the pan to a plate.

Return the pan to medium-high heat. Stir in the wine. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Reduce the heat to medium-low, stir in the marinara and red pepper flakes, and cook for 15 minutes or until sauce has thickened slightly. Stir in the basil, and shrimp and cook for 3 minutes. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as necessary. While the sauce is cooking, add the pasta to the water, and cook until al dente. Drain in a colander and reserve.

To Serve:

Spread the pasta onto a warmed platter. Pour the shrimp and tomato sauce over the pasta, and garnish with the parsley. Serve family-style. If you prefer, divide the pasta equally among four dinner plates and spoon one-quarter of the shrimp and tomato sauce over each plate. Garnish with the parsley.

Serves four.

Lobster Fra Diavolo

Ingredients:

4 Tbs. Olive oil
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Medium onion, finely chopped
1 Cup White wine
1 28 Oz Can Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
½ tsp Crushed red pepper flakes
½ Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 Bay leaf
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 1 Lb. Lobsters, claws detached, bodies cut in half *
1 Lb. Spaghetti or Linguine
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley

Preparation:

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté for about 1 minute. Add the onion and sauté for 3 — 4 minutes, until it becomes translucent.

Raise the heat to high and add the wine. Boil for 1 — 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the tomatoes, red pepper flakes, parsley, and bay leaf.

Simmer for 15 — 20 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if necessary.

Bring a large pot of salted water (at least 6 quarts) to a boil to be ready for the pasta.

In the meantime, take the pre-cooked lobster parts and slide them into the sauce. Warm them through for about 5 — 10 minutes over medium-low heat.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook to the al dente state. Drain in a colander and spread onto a serving platter.

To Serve:

Arrange the lobster pieces and spoon the sauce over the pasta. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve family-style. Be sure each diner has a stack of napkins and a nutcracker to use on the claws.

Serves four.

Buon Appetito e Buon Natale

Recipes are never static; they spawn imitations and adaptations. And they travel—around a neighborhood or between continents. Sometimes the “original” recipe—which may never have been written down—is lost. A good post-Thanksgiving example is Turkey Tetrazzini.

Named to honor the Florentine opera diva, Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1941), the combination of boneless turkey, mushrooms, and pasta in a white sauce, was supposedly created by the French culinary doyen, Auguste Escoffier.

This dish and its permutations highlight yet another aspect of “Almost Italian”—namely, how the popular American notion of Italian food expanded to embrace dishes that did not include “red sauce.” Whether they had troubled themselves to make a simple béchamel, velouté, or had taken an all-too-easy short-cut with a can of cream of mushroom soup, sometime in the 1950′s, cooks across America began to confidently turn Thanksgiving leftovers into something that seemed sophisticated and “Continental.”

Donna Luisa sang before enthusiastic audiences in San Francisco, and murky sources claim the dish first appeared there between 1907 and 1910. The coloratura’s most flamboyant appearance was not on stage, but on the street, in front of the San Francisco Chronicle building. Barred from opera houses in New York because of a contract dispute, Luisa Tetrazzini swept into San Francisco, proclaiming (long before the flower-power fests of the 1960′s), that “the streets of San Francisco are free” and that she would “sing in the streets.” Indeed, she performed on Christmas Eve 1910, for a crowd estimated to have exceeded 200,000.

Turkey Tetrazzini’s only connections to Italian cuisine seem to be spaghetti and the dish’s name. While Escoffier had a propensity for naming his creations to honor opera stars (Tournedos Rossini, Peach Melba), there is no published evidence that he created Turkey Tetrazzini any more than there is corroboration that he ever visited San Francisco.

Domesticated poultry have never figured heavily in the cuisines of Italy. Nonetheless, a turkey might appear on a Christmas table. As European turkeys tend to be leaner than the mega-birds bred in America, holiday turkey leftovers would probably have ended up as ingredients in a soup stock or minced as stuffing for tortellini or ravioli.

Here in America, what to do with left-over turkey has given rise to thousands of recipes. In the tradition of operatic hyperbole, one could claim that there are hundreds of Turkey Tetrazzinis. And though more than a few of them appear in modern European Italian and Latin American cookbooks (Luisa Tetrazzini also toured South America, which had large Italian immigrant populations), the recipe seems to have first “happened” here in North America.

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Spaghetti
12 oz. Button mushrooms, thinly sliced
7 Tbs unsalted butter
1/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 Cups whole milk
1/4 Cup heavy cream
2 Cups chicken broth
1/4 Cup dry white wine
4 Cups coarsely chopped cooked turkey
1 10 oz. Package frozen baby peas, thawed
2/3 Cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/3 Cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1/4 tsp. Nutmeg, freshly grated
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and then add the spaghetti. Cook until the pasta has reached the al dente state. Drain in a collander and reserve.

Meanwhile, heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and add 3 Tbs butter. When the butter has foamed and the bubbles have begun to subside, add the mushrooms, lower the heat to medium and sauté for approximately 10 minutes, until the mushrooms have given up their liquid and it has evaporated. Remove from the heat and reserve.

Heat a 2 – 3 quart saucepan over medium-high heat and add 3 Tbs butter. When the butter has melted, stir in the flour and cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, for approximately 3 minutes.

Gradually stir in the milk, cream, broth, and the wine. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes or until the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Assembly:

In a large bowl, combine the pasta, the mushrooms, the turkey, the peas, and the sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and grated nutmeg. Stir in 1/3 cup of the Parmesan and transfer the mixture to a buttered ovenproof casserole, at least 2″ in depth. (The shallower the casserole, the greater the amount of golden and crispy topping you’ll have to share.)

In a small bowl combine the remaining 1/3 cup of Parmesan, the bread crumbs, salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the pasta, and dot with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter, cut into bits.

Bake the casserole on the middle rack of the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until it is bubbling and the top has browned. Remove from the oven and allow the casserole sit for 10 minutes before serving.

To Serve:

Divide the Tetrazzini equally among six to eight dinner plates and garnish each with the chopped parsley.

Serves 6 to 8.

Vintage Deruta Rooster Plate photo by Skip Lombardi

For the poorest of the early immigrants, Eggplant Parmesan, even though meatless, would nonetheless have been a celebratory dish, enjoyed only when the seasonal luxury of cheese was available to the few sharecroppers who had access to dairy cows or the springtime milk of goats and sheep. Since so few households had their own ovens, a dish that needed long slow baking also required one’s living in a village with a bakery, where one could pay a small sum for the privilege of sharing the residual heat from bread-ovens.

It’s not clear when Chicken Parmesan made its first appearance on an Italian-American menu, but Mrs. Maria Gentile’s The Italian Cookbook, The Art of Eating Well, published in New York by the Italian Book Company in 1919, provides a recipe for Eggplants in the Oven that contains most of the ingredients for the dish we know as Eggplant Parmesan.

And as we’ve discussed in earlier posts, chicken-based dishes really took flight when poultry producers began selling cut-up chicken parts rather than whole birds. Well into the 20th century, most chickens were sold whole and fresh. Eventually, improved refrigeration, freezing, and transportation, as well as more hygienic packaging materials, made selling chicken parts practical—and economical—for both poultry producers and their customers, among them the restaurateurs of Little Italy. Thanks to such innovations, “Chicken Parm,” with a side-order of linguine, has long been ubiquitous on the menus of Italian neighborhood restaurants all over America.

In the 1950′s, when dinner began to take a back seat to Little League practice and American families seemed to have less and less time for sit-down meals, casual chefs and pizza makers adapted Chicken Parmesan as a filling for submarine sandwiches and even as a “topping” for pizza. Clearly, the chef who first dressed a chicken breast in eggplant’s clothing created a hit.

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 1/2 Cups unseasoned bread crumbs
1/2 Cup Parmesan *
1 Clove garlic, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 Cup flour, for dredging
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
4 Tbs. Olive oil
2 Cups of My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce
1 Cup shredded mozzarella
Additional Parmesan, freshly grated
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes, pepperoncini (optional)
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound them with a meat mallet or a rolling pin until they’ve reached a uniform thickness of approximately 3/8 in. Season the breasts on both sides with salt and pepper and reserve on a plate.

Combine the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, garlic, and parsley in a shallow-sided dish.

Season the flour with salt and pepper. Dredge each chicken breast in the flour, shaking off any excess, then dip each into the beaten eggs, and then into the breadcrumb mixture. Reserve coated breasts on a plate.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the oil. Add chicken to pan, cooking only two pieces at a time, if the pan cannot hold all four. Don’t crowd the pan. Cook until golden on both sides.

Ladle 1 cup of the marinara sauce across the bottom of a large ovenproof dish. Place the chicken breasts atop the sauce, in a single layer. Top each breast with the remaining sauce and sprinkle with the mozzarella, Parmesan, and pepperoncini flakes. if you are using them.

Bake the chicken for 20 minutes, or until the cheese begins to bubble and turn brown. Remove from the oven and garnish with the parsley.

Serves four.

Chefs who had been to Italy began to introduce truly Italian dishes and wines to their increasingly sophisticated and figure-conscious American patrons. At the same time, the Italian banking, automotive, home furnishings, and fashion industries were sending a new class of immigrant to America—the Northern Italian executive.

This rediscovery of Italy’s food presented Americans with another way to express Italian culture in America. After years of quantity trumping quality, there was a new emphasis on simplicity and the highlighting of a few fine ingredients. Cooks and diners learned that a disarmingly uncomplicated cutlet, sautéed in olive oil, could say amore just as well as a mountain of red-sauced pasta smothered with quasi-industrial cheese.

One ingredient that helped this transition was chicken. Cooks had learned that a skinless, boneless chicken breast made an excellent substitute for a veal cutlet. Furthermore, chicken breasts looked good on a plate. Their texture and mild taste could be easily enhanced by the simple treatments that had been traditionally used for veal back in Italy.

Chicken alla Milanese typifies the state of Italian-American food in the 1980′s. In this dish, adapted from Costoletta alla Milanese*, a sautéed breaded veal chop, the more economical chicken breast is dredged first in an egg mixture, then breaded before being quickly sautéed and served with no more than a lemon wedge.

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 Eggs beaten and seasoned with salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 Cup unseasoned breadcrumbs
1 Cup Parmesan
Grated rind of one lemon
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
3 Tbs. Unsalted butter
Juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 Lemon, quartered

Preparation:

Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap (or waxed paper, if you want a truly Retro experience!) and pound them with a meat mallet or a rolling pin until they’ve reached a uniform thickness of approximately 3/8 in. Season the breasts on both sides with salt and pepper. Reserve on a plate.

Break the eggs into a shallow-sided dish, season with the salt & pepper, and whisk until blended.

Combine the breadcrumbs, cheese, and lemon rind in another shallow-sided dish. Stir with a fork to blend.

Dip chicken into egg mixture, then into breadcrumb mixture. The chicken should be thoroughly but lightly coated. Shake off any excess crumbs and reserve on a plate.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Add chicken and sauté until cooked through and golden brown (about 4 – 5 minutes per side). Don’t crowd the pan. If necessary, do this step in batches. As each chicken breast is cooked, transfer to a warm platter.

Melt the butter in the sauté pan, then add the lemon juice. Stir, scraping up any caramelized bits of chicken on the bottom of the pan. Pour the sauce over the chicken and garnish with the chopped parsley and the lemon wedges.

Serves four.

Whimsical Chicken is a newcomer to Italian-American cuisine. This dish began to appear on the menus of neighborhood restaurants during the 1980′s, when a wider array of “exotic” and “gourmet” salad greens, like arugula, began to appear in mainstream markets. Patricia Brooks, writing in The New York Times in 1987, mentions—without further comment on the dish—Maresca’s Ristorante in New Haven, Connecticut serving Chicken Capricciosa.

This recipe seems to have popped up at a time when Americans were thinking about “lighter” Italian-American dishes, the same period in which line-cooks were plating dizzying amounts of Chicken Ziti and Broccoli, and Chicken Caesar Salad.

The dish shares the same lineage as Chicken alla Milanese, but the garnish adds flavor, color, texture that take it beyond a simple breaded, sautéed chicken breast.

We’ve also come across an accompaniment of other upscale salad leaves, notably garnet-colored radicchio. However, the pleasantly bitter bite of arugula is clearly the favorite and appears on most menus, making anything, including veal, capricciosa.

Ingredients:

For the Garnish:

2 Cups arugula
1 Cup ripe tomatoes, diced
½ Red onion, diced
3 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

For the Chicken:

4 Skinless, boneless chicken breasts
½ Cup Parmesan 1 Cup unseasoned breadcrumbs
Grated rind from 1 lemon
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs. Olive oil
3 Tbs. Unsalted butter
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon

Preparation:

For the Garnish:

Combine the arugula, tomatoes, and onion in a bowl. Add the olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and toss to combine.

For the Chicken:

Pour the Parmesan, breadcrumbs, and lemon rind into a shallow-sided dish and season with salt and pepper. Pour the eggs into another shallow-sided dish and season them with salt and pepper as well.

Dip the chicken breasts into the egg mixture, then into the breadcrumb mixture. Shake off any excess and reserve on a plate.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the olive oil. Add the chicken breasts and sauté until cooked through and golden brown (2 – 3 minutes per side). Add the butter to the sauté pan, and stir with a wooden spoon to loosen any caramelized bits of chicken that may have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat, and stir in the chopped parsley.

To Serve:

Arrange the chicken breasts on a platter, spoon the pan sauce over all, then drizzle with the lemon juice. Garnish each serving with the arugula, tomato, red onion mixture.

Serves four