I once assumed that Pasta with Clam Sauce was just one more “wise guy” dish invented by self-assured Italian-Americans in beach communities along the Eastern Seaboard. The New York Times first mentioned linguine with clam sauce in a restaurant review in 1951. And back in the Seventies, no less a wise guy than Joey Gallo was, as they say, “dispatched” at Umberto’s Clam House in Greenwich Village while he was midway through his dish of Linguine alle Vongole. That unfortunate mayhem aside, clams are a great condimento for pasta. And although the dish is firmly fixed in Little Italy restaurant folklore, it really is Italian. Few pasta sauces are easier: you don’t start this one until you’ve put your pasta into a pot of boiling water.

Linguine with Clam Sauce
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

The traditional Italian preparation calls for spaghetti and live clams (in their shells) quickly cooked with olive oil, garlic, and a splash of white wine. The heat causes the clam to  steam themselves open, and their flavorful, briny liquor is released into the other ingredients.

Mahogany clams (Arctica islandia, raised in the icy waters of Maine), or any other small, hard-shelled clam will by closest to the mollusks used in Italy. But if you can’t find clams (2” or smaller) in their shells (fresh at fish-markets or frozen in many Asian markets) the fresh, chopped clams at your supermarket seafood counter or even inexpensive and widely available canned baby clams will all produce a delicious sauce.

For this dish, I like to cook the pasta just short of al dente. I then drain the pasta and add it to the clam pan where it finishes cooking as it absorbs the garlicky clam broth.

For the sake of simplicity, the recipe here depends upon canned clams or fresh, chopped clams. That makes it a perfect late-night dinner that you can always produce from ingredients in the pantry or fridge.

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Linguine
1 Lb. Chopped clams  or 2 10-ounce cans of baby clams
2 Tbs. Olive oil
2 – 4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and thinly sliced
24 Mahogany or small Cherrystone clams (Optional—they add another flavor dimension and look great!)
1/2 Cup dry white wine
Juice and grated rind of one lemon
Clam liquor, reserved from the chopped or canned clams
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper

Preparation:

Bring a pot with 4 – 6 quarts of water to a boil. Add a teaspoon of salt, and then add the pasta.

Drain the fresh, chopped clams (or canned baby clams) through a fine-meshed sieve into a bowl. Reserve their liquor.

Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and add the sliced garlic. Cook the garlic until it is fragrant, about a minute.

If using the optional in-shell clams, add them now to the sauté pan and cook, covered, for about 5 minutes, or until they have all opened. After 5 minutes, remove and discard any clams that have not opened.

Add the drained chopped or baby clams, raise the heat to medium-high, and sauté all for a 2 minutes, shaking the pan gently back and forth.

Add the wine and let the mixture bubble for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol.

Now, check your pasta. It should bend, but still be a bit stiff. Drain it in a colander and then add it to the sauce. With two forks or kitchen tongs, lift the pasta in hanks until it is all gently coated with the sauce. Lower the heat to medium, add the lemon juice and grated rind. Sprinkle in half the chopped parsley. Continue to gently combine all the ingredients. Add some of the reserved clam liquor as necessary to keep the sauce from becoming too thick.

When the pasta has cooked to the al dente stage, twirl a couple of strands on a fork and let them cool before you taste the dish for salt. Season as necessary with salt and freshly ground pepper. Divide the pasta and sauce equally into four shallow bowls. Garnish each serving with the optional steamed clams and remaining chopped parsley.

Serves four, as a light supper, or six as a first course.

From the elaborate timballo that is the centerpiece of the feast in Big Night to the staple “side of ziti” in ordinary Italian-American restaurants, casseroles of tubular pastas are everywhere. Their antecedents are the celebratory baked pasta dishes of southern Italy and Sicily. Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, set in Sicily in the 1860′s describes the scene of an aristocratic banquet:

Ziti al Forno
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

One of the guests at the novelist’s Sicilian table notes that he and his wife “could exist for a month on the cost of one of these dishes.” We feel we cannot overstate just how infrequently most Italians were able to afford a dish of pasta prior to the economic boom of the 1960’s. Oretta Zanini de Vita* traces the mechanization of Italian pasta production back to the late 16th century, when wooden machines allowed for the extrusion of pierced forms like bucatini, tubetti and other hollow shapes. Technology opened the way to specialization: Naples had separate pasta guilds for the makers of solid forms like vermicelli—and hollow forms, collectively known as maccaruni.

The extrusion machinery was best suited to doughs made from semolina flour. So, for contadini, tubular pasta would have been a real treat—both because of its durum wheat composition and because it would not have been a commodity easily acquired within their localized and largely cashless economies, where much depended on barter.

In southern Italy, enjoyment of durum wheat pasta—the solid, cylindrical forms like vermicelli, spaghetti, capellini, etc. and the hollow maccheroni or maccaruni—was the privilege of city folk.

Today, in both Italy and abroad, there are literally scores of tubular durum pasta shapes. However, we’ve chosen to use the name “ziti” because it has long been the most widespread here in the U.S. It is also the most laden with meaning, for ziti (masculine) and zite (feminine) mean “grooms” and “brides” in Sicilian dialect. Back in Sicily, baked ziti were wedding standards for those who could afford them. So is it any wonder that immigrants arriving in the New World in the first half of the 20th century were delighted to discover that this dish, largely confined to wedding feasts, was something many could afford every day?

While not as elaborate, most ziti casseroles contain many of the same ingredients as the more celebrated lasagne. Pre-cooked pasta, tomato and meat ragù, and multiple cheeses make for a richly festive dish. Indeed, many of the recipes we’ve found mimic lasagne, for they they call for layers of pasta, ricotta, mozzarella, and a dusting of Parmigiano before they go into the oven.

Baked Ziti (Ziti al Forno)
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

But as we continued our research, we noted, with weary dismay, the many modern perversions of a perfectly lovely dish. Far too many baked ziti recipes now rely on a hodgepodge of commercially prepped and supposedly time-saving ingredients. In fact, the last straw was a recipe that called for “a jar of tomato sauce” and “a jar of Alfredo sauce.”

While writing the recipes for AlmostItalian.com, our goal has always been to maintain some connection with the Old World cooking sensibilities that fostered the development of Italian-American cuisine. In this instance, we are certain that those sensibilities could not possibly have countenanced “a jar of Alfredo sauce.”

The recipe we’ve developed here honors the integrity of the traditional southern Italian ingredients while adding what might, at first, seem to be a distinctly northern Italian touch: besciamella—a simple white sauce of milk thickened with a liaison of butter and flour.

The French call this sauce béchamel, and the liaison a roux, but it is the same sauce that the French chefs employed by Neapolitan and Sicilian aristocracy during the 18th and 19th centuries used to enrich to their baked pastas. These French or French-trained chefs, known as monzu (a corruption of monsieur) were the creators of what came to be known as la cucina baronale, baronial cooking.

Often found in northern Italian preparations of lasagne and pasticcio, another baked pasta, the besciamella provides the creaminess of ricotta without the sweetness. The lighter besciamella takes the place of the daunting quantities of industrial mozzarella included in some modern American recipes. We think reducing the amount of cheese yields a more delicate dish with a better balance of textures and flavors.

Baked Ziti
Pasta al Forno

Ingredients:

Olive oil
4 Italian sausages, sliced into “coins” 1/4 inch thick
1 Medium onion, finely chopped
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced
1 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
1 28 oz. Can crushed or diced tomatoes with any juice
1/2 Cup dry red or white wine
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp. Dried basil
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

1 Lb. Ziti rigati, penne, rigatoni, or other short, tubular pasta *

1/2 Cup shredded whole-milk mozzarella

For the Besciamella:

4 Tbs. unsalted butter
4 Tbs. flour
2 1/2 – 3 Cups whole milk
1/2 tsp. Freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
2 – 4 Tbs. freshly grated Parmesan
Additional parsley for garnish

Preparation:

For the tomato sauce:

Serves eight to twelve as a main course.

* The Encyclopedia of Pasta

Depending on the dialect your Italian forebears spoke, these chewy curls of pasta were cavatelli, cavatieddi, cavatel, cavateel, gavadel… And whether their maker was your nonna, great aunt, mother, sister, or third cousin, you and everyone else in your family elevated any woman who made them to a higher plane. Made to absorb a little Sunday Gravy or support wilted greens, homemade cavatelli hold a special place in the hearts—and stomachs—of Italian-Americans.

Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

Once again, we need to remind ourselves that most 19th and 20th-century immigrants from southern Italy left behind lives of abject rural poverty. In Italy most of their calories had come from the soft-wheat flour baked into their daily staple, bread. The more nutritious durum wheat was milled as a coarser, sandy-textured flour, semolina; this was used for manufactured pastas in urban areas, especially Naples. However any wheat-flour pastas were rare luxuries for peasants and shepherds. Food historian, Oretta Zannini de Vita,* who has meticulously documented pasta throughout Italy, discusses the many alternative substances from which pastas have been made. In most instances those who lived in the rural south, where conditions favored growing the harder wheat, had little access to the semolina used by city pasta factories. Nor did rural southerners consume much of the finished spaghetti and vermicelli, products that had to be purchased with cash, not acquired through barter. Instead, peasant housewives stretched whatever wheat flour they may have had, or replaced it entirely, with ground fava beans, chestnuts, acorns, rye, barley, bran, corn, potatoes, stale breadcrumbs, dried porcini, and even charred wheat grains collected from fields after gleaning and burning (grano arso). All found their way into pastas made at home.

Both for its nutrients and dough consistency, semolina was and continues to be preferred by commercial pasta manufacturers. Durum wheat dough demands far more laborious kneading than dough made from soft wheat flour, and this very toughness makes it better-suited to production of dry pasta, pasta secca. So although semolina pasta was a luxury, making it was also much more work for any home cook who undertook the task..

Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

And this brings us to the curious case of cavatelli in America. Search the Internet and you’ll find numerous blog threads on pasta and bulletin board requests for lost family recipes for cavatelli, “the dough my nonna kneaded and formed…,” “only on Fridays…,” or, perhaps, “for someone’s birthday.” But what made this a special-occasion pasta? In Italy, cavatelli treatments range from ordinary to richly festive, from wilted arugula or spring turnip tops to a spicy tomato and lamb ragù. Sauces and condimenti vary from village to village, house to house. But here in America, the focus seems to be on the pasta itself. Meanwhile, we wondered, why we were seeing frozen cavatelli. Frozen meat-stuffed ravioli and cheese-filled tortellini made sense, but why freeze an unstuffed pasta form? We started reading recipes, both American and Italian, in greater detail…

It is striking how many of the American cavatelli recipes include ricotta—not as a stuffing, but in the pasta dough itself. It is safe to say that cheese is virtually unknown in old-country Italian pasta-making, with the exception of gnudi, also known as malfatti, gnocchi, or gnocchetti depending on the region. Many culinary scholars would debate whether these are pasta at all. Gnudi literally means “nudes,” and indeed they are more like the stuffing of modern ravioli, for they wear no mantle of dough. At their most basic, gnudi are a combination of finely chopped seasonal greens or herbs combined with ricotta and just enough flour or stale breadcrumbs to bind the mixture, which may also include an egg. The soft, fresh gnudi are then quickly poached like dumplings, done when they float to the surface of the water.

In the micro-economies of the traditional Italian campania, fresh cheese would have been available only in the spring when animals were lactating. Seasonality explains this inside-out “pasta” creation, which made use of both cultivated and foraged spring greens. At winter’s end, wheat flour was likely to be the least abundant pantry staple.

Much has been written on the word “gnocchi,” (most of which are not made from potatoes). Let us just say that over the centuries, Italian women have made “dumplings” from a wide variety of ingredients. But Signora de Vita points out one common feature, that most gnocchi evolved “in areas that were once very poor.”

The “Friday Special,” Cavatelli with Broccoli and Artichoke Hearts
at Mike’s Italian Kitchen, Cranston, RI
Copyright © 2010, 2011, Skip Lombardi

As usual, we have digressed, but the ricotta in gnudi/gnocchi has given us a clue to how cheese found its way into cavatelli here…

The first generations of poor immigrants discovered that in America they could afford foods that had been beyond their means back in Italy. They found not only the esteemed semolina flour but also abundant milk products, which were available year ‘round. No special skill is required for someone with a few spoonfuls of vinegar or lemon juice to turn a gallon of hot milk into curds and drain the whey to make fresh ricotta. And why not make use of ricotta, letting its butterfat enrich and soften the hard-wheat pasta dough they fashioned by hand into forms like cavatelli, orecchiette, and other concave pasta shapes?

Many immigrant women would have known the techniques for both quickly-made gnudi and the more tedious pasta secca, even if both were festive treats enjoyed only a few times each year. An opportunity to combine the two would have been tantalizing.

The irony is that this most basic of pasta formations, curled over the edge of a dull knife or a pressed fingertip (as demonstrated in many YouTube videos) has antecedents among the poorest of the poor. Immigrant housewives must have felt empowered by the chance to use ingredients from the fat of the new land to create a food so elemental, yet one they had barely experienced in Italy.

As generations of American Calabrians have enjoyed their “gavadel” and Sicilians their cavatieddi (which some call gnucchetti), cavatelli seem to have acquired a mythic stature never completely articulated by proud people who wanted to be seen by their community as “carrying on the old ways,” even if those old ways were actually Italian-American innovations.

Cavatelli with Broccoli

Ingredients:

Make your own Old World-style cavatelli or buy the ricotta-enriched pasta. Use fresh or frozen broccoli, jarred or salt-packed capers, tinned or salt-packed anchovies—this recipe is flexible, allowing anyone to produce a delectable dish.

For the Pasta* (to serve 4 as a pasta course, or 2-3 as a main dish)

1 1/4 Cups fine semolina
1/2 tsp. Salt
4-5 Tbs. water
Ordinary flour or a little more semolina for dusting

Stir the salt through the semolina and add the water. Stir to moisten the flour and knead the mixture until you have a smooth and slightly elastic dough that does not stick to your hands. Allow dough to rest, covered, for at least 10 minutes. You can also mix the dough in a food processor, pulsing until the dough forms a ball.

Dust a little semolina or flour on the board and on your hands. Pinch off a piece of dough the size of a walnut. With your fingers, stretch and roll it into a cord about 1/2 inch thick. Cut off pieces of dough the size of a chickpea. With the edge of a butter-knife or your fingertip, flatten a piece as you move the blade or fingertip towards you. The opposite edges of the dough will curl to form a shell. You may need to practice a little, but the dough won’t suffer from being reworked. Once you can do this easily, forming the cavatelli will go quickly. Use up all the dough. As you make the cavatelli, set them so they are not touching each other on a board sprinkled with semolina. Roll each form lightly on the board to coat it with semolina. Let them air-dry for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour. Cook according to the instructions below.

For the Broccoli:

1 Head of broccoli, cut into florets; stalk peeled & cut into bite-sized pieces OR
1 Lb. Frozen broccoli florets, thawed
2 Tbs. Olive oil
3 large Cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp. Peperoncini (crushed red pepper flakes)
A few grinds of black pepper
4 Anchovy fillets If salt-preserved, debone & rinse. Otherwise, use fillets packed in oil.
2 1/2 Tbs. bottled capers, drained OR 2 Tbs. salt-cured capers, rinsed.
1/2 Cup dry white wine
Juice from 1/2 to 1 lemon
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Parmesan cheese
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

For the cavatelli

In a 4-quart pot, begin to bring 8 cups of water to the boil.

If using fresh broccoli, steam it first. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a large saute pan Add the broccoli pieces, reduce the heat to medium and steam the broccoli for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse broccoli with cold water. Set it aside in a colander to drain.

Meanwhile, dry the sauté pan and use it to heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, peperoncini, and black pepper. Sauté for approximately 1 minute.

Lower the heat and add the anchovies. Stir until the fillets have dissolved, then add the capers.

Have your cavatelli and a slotted spoon ready. (If you are using frozen cavatelli, measure out 1 pound of frozen pasta from the package; do not thaw before boiling.)

Add the steamed broccoli to the sauté pan. Stir the broccoli, shaking the pan, until it becomes coated with the oil mixture. Add the wine and lemon juice and simmer for 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low.

Wait until the pasta water begins to boil and add 2 teaspoons of salt to the water. Add a third of the cavatelli to the now-boiling water. (Fresh cavatelli will take about 2 minutes to cook, floating to the top when they are ready. Frozen pasta may take a little longer.)

With the slotted spoon, scoop them out as they are done and gently stir them into the broccoli mixture. In batches, continue boiling more cavatelli, adding them to the sauté pan as they are done. When all the pasta has been boiled and added to the broccoli, stir in the grated lemon rind and parsley. If you like the dish to be a little more liquid, add a ladle or two of the pasta water. Taste the mixture for salt and pepper.

To Serve:

Divide the pasta and broccoli equally among 4 shallow bowls and finish with a light grating of Parmesan.

Serves four.

* The Encyclopedia of Pasta

As children visiting our grandparents at the beach, we’d collect the empty grey shells of channeled whelks, scungilli. Long after the last grains of sand had fallen from our sneakers, we’d hold the whelks to our ears to “hear the waves” of Long Island Sound and dream of our next trip to the beach. As that trip might not be until the following summer, we treasured our only connection to those sunny days without school. Perhaps this association with real shells explains our particular fondness for stuffed conchiglione, giant pasta shells that resembled nothing on our beaches, except perhaps little boats—of cheese, meat, or tuna stuffing.

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

We knew that Almost Italian dot com would eventually get around to Stuffed Shells and admit we procrastinated because we’d hoped that, by now, we’d have learned more about their “old country” origins. But, we have only a few hunches. As one of our history professors used to say, “the sources are silent.”

What we do know is that throughout the provinces of southern Italy, one will find pasta shells cradling mixtures of sheep cheeses, bitter greens, and even potatoes.

Along with tufoli, manicotti, and lumache (thick shell-shapes that look a little like French escargot), conchiglione are the only dry pasta shapes that, once par-boiled, become a large enough receptacle for stuffing. And here we may have a clue to their invention. The cowrie-shell shape with its ridged exterior would be awkward to form by hand, and this is one reason we suspect large pasta shells to be a mid-20th century innovation. Indeed, conchiglione appear only as machine-made forms.

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Usually sold as “Jumbo Shells,” conchiglione, (the Italian suffix—one denotes that they’re bigger than mere conchiglie,) are thick-walled—tough enough to stand up to boiling, handling during the stuffing process, and then baking. We think the shape was developed as a convenience.

By the 1950′s fewer women in both Italy and the Americas remained home to roll out the soft egg doughs for ravioli and other stuffed pastas that are best quickly boiled. A dry pasta form that could withstand less delicate (dare we say, more haphazard or rushed?) handling would have been a boon to the busy homemaker who might also hold down a full-time job in a factory or office. Casseroles and baked pastas, which could be kept warm and served to individual family members as they came home at staggered times, suited the less leisurely weekday suppers of America’s post-War suburbia. (We find no references in pre-World War II cookbooks—in Italian or English—to stuffed shells.)

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

The ever-changing foodways of America’s many immigrant populations sometimes enjoy surprising intersections. Twenty years ago, I was struck by the resourcefulness of a young Polish immigrant with a grad student husband and two toddlers. She was not a seasoned cook, but her heart and hospitality were what counted when she invited us for a dinner of pierogi—Polish pasta half-moons commonly stuffed with fried onions, mild white cheese, potatoes, cabbage, and/or ground meat. Rather than making her own dough, our hostess had simply spooned ricotta and fried onions into—you guessed it—jumbo pasta shells (which she’d previously boiled far beyond any semblance of al dente). Fast-forwarding to the Internet era—you’ll now find scores of “pierogi” recipes that fill pasta shells with everything from mashed potatoes and shredded cheddar to Mexican taco-seasoned beef to curried tuna fish salad.

While these are not treatments we would recommend, and indeed, your nonna would reach for her bottle of herbal digestivo if you so much as whispered these variations to her—we discuss them because, for better or worse, they are part of the story of what has happened to Italian food outside Italy.

And though we have good reason to fear that somewhere out there lurk Buffalo Chicken-stuffed Shells Fra Diavolo, we trust they are consigned to an appropriate circle of the netherworld.

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Remember those uncomplicated childhood days at the beach. Keep your shells simple, and enjoy them warm from the oven, not microwaved hours later. Turn off the TV, sit down at the table, and make Nonna proud.

Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

1 10 oz. Package chopped, frozen spinach, thawed
2 oz. Prosciutto, finely diced (1/4- inch)
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. peperoncino (red chili flakes)
1 Large egg
1 1/2 Cups whole milk ricotta
1 oz. Parmigiano freshly grated
Freshly grated nutmeg

2 – 2 1/2 Cups My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce
Additional Parmigiano
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

20 Conchiglione, jumbo pasta shells (about 8-9 oz)
Salt

Preparation:

The Filling:

Unwrap the thawed spinach, and place it to drain in a strainer set over a bowl.

Meanwhile, heat a small sauté pan over medium heat, then add the prosciutto. Sauté until it has crisped slightly, rendering some of its fat. Add the peperoncino and a few grinds of black pepper black pepper and sauté for another minute. Remove pan from heat and reserve.

Break the egg into a large bowl, and beat thoroughly. Add the ricotta and Parmigiano, stirring gently to blend with the egg.

Using your hands, squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach, chop roughly and add to the ricotta mixture.

Grate approximately 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg into the filling, (Freshly grated nutmeg makes a real difference!) Add the reserved prosciutto. Stir thoroughly to combine. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour. (You may do this step up to one day ahead of stuffing the shells.)

Precooking the shells: (Radical technique—but it works and lessens the chance you will damage or overcook your shells.)

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a heavy, lidded saucepan. When water reaches a full, rolling boil, add 1 1/2 tsp. salt; stir to dissolve. Gently sink the shells a few at a time into the pot so that all are completely submerged.

TURN OFF THE BURNER, place the lid on the pot and set the timer for 4 minutes.

After 4 minutes, with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, gently stir the shells. Replace the lid and set the timer for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes, the shells will be UNDERCOOKED, not al dente. You want them just pliable enough to stuff. With a slotted spoon, remove the shells from the water and place them in a strainer.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Ladle enough marinara sauce (about a half-cup), into the bottom of an oven-proof dish.

With a dessert or iced-tea spoon, take a shell and fill it with about 2 tablespoons of the ricotta-spinach mixture. Set the shells, filling-side facing up, into the baking dish as you stuff them.

Arrange shells side by side so they touch each other and stay in place. When you have stuffed all the shells, carefully spoon additional marinara over the shells, leaving some of the filling exposed (see photo).

In the middle of the oven, bake the shells, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes.

For each serving, use a large spoon to gently remove 3 or 4 shells and a little sauce into a shallow bowl. Dust with a little more Parmigiano and chopped parsley.

Serves 4 – 6 as a very rich pasta course.

What’s in a name?

Most connoisseurs of the American red sauce repertoire would deem Mussels Posillipo to be a relatively recent addition to the menu.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

A little research reveals that Florence Fabricant had discussed Mussels Posillipo in The New York Times in 1978, and I know that I had not heard the name until the early-1980′s, when I lived in Boston’s North End.

I was, however, very well acquainted with the combination of mussels with marinara sauce, because it had been one of grandfather’s signature dishes. When I was growing up in Connecticut in the 1950′s, I recall him and other members of our Sicilian community combining shellfish with whatever homemade tomato sauce anyone happened to have in the refrigerator.

In the summer, my grandfather (‘Pop’ to his grandchildren) engaged in marine foraging whose rewards were always welcome at the LaBella table…

As I wrote in my first cookbook about growing up in the kitchen of Italian immigrants:

In our family, Pop’s creation was simply “mussels with tomato sauce,” or cozze alla marinara if we were going to speak proper Italian. Posillipo was terra incognita to us Sicilians, but obviously, it meant something to somone…

View of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius from Posillipo

Turns out that Posillipo is a rather toney suburb of Naples; it was developed during the 19^th century by those affluent enough to live and build out of town, on a high bluff with a view of that famous bay. It was definitely not the sort of place frequented by most of the Napoletani immigrants to North America.

However, Posillipo is exactly the sort of place that second or third- generation Italian-American GIs and sailors from the Sixth Fleet would visit for their R & R. In short, just the sort of romantic location you’d long remember… especially if you went back home and joined the team at your family’s restaurant in Hoboken.

Posillipo, a little bit exotic and just the right seasoning for a delicious dish….

So think of any checkered-tablecloth restaurant with walls covered in sports memorabilia, signed photos, and one of those less-than-Leonardo landscapes of Vesuvius soaring above the Bay of Naples. The clue is right there…

Posillipo—the origin of the name (like so many in southern Italy) is from the ancient Greek; no surprise. But the meaning of pausílypon, “a respite from worry or pain,” is both ironic and completely appropriate for this posh, high-rent district.

For most who left Italy in the age of immigration, America was quite a respite indeed. Consider that so many who escaped destitution and famine in the Mezzogiorno not only survived the transatlantic crossing in steerage but also became the parents and grandparents of people like me, Americans who have never known hunger. That those people, i poveri, left Italy to found the culinary culture we celebrate here on AlmostItalian.com is truly a wonder.

And a dish that just happens to be red, white and blue is certainly a fitting tribute to that irony.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 Small onion, finely chopped
4 Cloves garlic, minced
1 Cup dry white wine
2 Cups my grandmother’s tomato sauce
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Fresh basil, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes
30 – 36 Mussels, scrubbed and debearded

1 Lb. Linguine or Spaghetti
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large (4 – 6 qt.) pot over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until the onions become translucent.

Raise the heat to high and add the wine. Boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol.

Add the tomato sauce, then the parsley and basil. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Add the red pepper flakes. Lower the heat, and simmer the sauce for approximately 10 minutes.

As the sauce is simmering, bring a large pot of salted water (at least six quarts) to the boil.

Add the pasta to the boiling water.

As the pasta cooks, add the mussels to the marinara. Cover and simmer until the mussels have opened; about 5 minutes. Discard any mussels that have not opened after 5 minutes.

When the pasta has reached the al dente state (after approximately 10 minutes) drain in a colander.

To Serve:

This is a dish that truly wants to be served family-style.

Pour the pasta onto a platter or into a large bowl. With a large spoon or ladle, scoop the mussels from the sauce and mound them atop the pasta. Ladle the sauce over the mussels and the pasta. Garnish with the additional parsley. (Provide an empty bowl for discarded shells.)

Serves four.

During the 1970′s and ’80′s, television cooking shows and glossy food magazines exponentially expanded America’s perception of Italian food. La Cucina Italiana-Americana literally unfurled its colors from red to white to green, like a giant tricolore.

Or, to put it another way: Americans seeking to “eat Italian” went from marinara to cream sauces to pesto in less than two decades.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

We’ve written about the tomato-free pasta treatments that captured the attention of sophisticates because they were deemed to be “lighter.” Pastas in pale sauces were offered as northern Italian and seen as more subtle and refined than southern Italian pasta swimming in marinara.

By this time, a third generation of Italian-Americans were pushing out the boundaries of “traditional” dishes by inventing new ones as certain ingredients, such as imported cheeses and artisanal fresh pasta, became easier to find.

Alfredo Viazzi—while not the Alfredo, the one who originated the dish in 1917—certainly rode the “white sauce” wave. During the ’70′s, Viazzi could barely keep up with the orders for his own interpretation of Fettuccine Alfredo, served at his Greenwich Village trattoria, da Alfredo. (We hasten to clarify that pasta Alfredo does NOT consist of pasta and a separate sauce. Rather, the dish is simply hot pasta tossed with abundant butter and Parmesan, just before serving. Nonetheless, this has not kept dozens of food manufacturers from the transgression of offering various comestibles, including pizza, with “Alfredo sauce.”)

Some Italian-American inventions sprang from the plentiful availability of prepped components. Boneless chicken breasts and frozen broccoli were inexpensive and available year ’round—a boon for restaurateurs striving to consistently offer favorite dishes. And chicken breasts had the added attraction of their light color. It wasn’t long before Chicken, Ziti and Broccoli, like a distant cousin claiming kinship, managed to find its way onto menus in red sauce joints across the country.

Chicken Caesar Salad could be found in the Italian “continental” restaurant with valet parking and a maitre d’ as well as in the smallest strip-mall luncheonette with checked vinyl tablecloths. In just a few years, this salad was considered an “old Italian favorite” despite the fact that most pre-WWI immigrants had never tasted chicken back in Italy.

Meanwhile by 1980, Americans had discovered pesto… The tricolore was complete and waving across North America.

Our first recollection of this seductive substance goes back to 1973 when we saw the late Franco and Margaret Romagnoli prepare Pesto alla Genovese on The Romagnolis’ Table, their PBS television program. Franco followed tradition and made it with a mortar and pestle, while Margaret demonstrated the wonders of that revolutionary new kitchen device, the “food processor…”

But basil pesto, a specialty of Liguria, though delicious and easily made, didn’t secure its place on Italian-American menus immediately. It was simply a question of supply: very few American farmers were cultivating basil as a crop in the ’70′s. A medium-sized restaurant kitchen would have required a bushel or more of fresh basil daily in order to add linguine al pesto to the menu. But once farmers realized they had a market, basil, the pot-herb that had delicately scented a century of Italian-American cooking, was seen as a green whose production could be measured in acreage. Production caught up with demand, and basil pesto stepped up to take its place alongside marinara.

Before the commercial growers in California, Arizona, and New Mexico had established basil production on a large scale, there was a period of green sauces that were not so basil-dependent. Creative substitutions proliferated; newspapers and magazines were filled with tricks for extending that little bit of basil from one’s windowbox herb garden and for making parsley and frozen spinach pesto (which is simply Italian for “something which has been pounded,” usually with a mortar and pestle). Our focus here is on pesto made with basil.

Given chicken’s prominence on Italian-American menus and the long-standing custom of most red sauce joints to serve “pasta on the side,” it was logical that the side dish would one day come with pesto. Once they had a reliable supply of basil, cooks could apply pesto to a variety of foods that had never before been thus anointed. The combination of chicken with pasta al pesto was simply waiting to happen.

The most common restaurant preparation involves sautéed chicken breasts. However, we prefer the deeper flavor of dark meat that has been grilled. Our recipe gains its depth from grilled chicken thighs, which, not incidentally, are cheaper than breasts and easier to grill and bone.

If you’re inaugurating your grill this Memorial Day, it is worth grilling extra chicken pieces just to make this dish in the days following the holiday weekend. With little effort, you’ll have completed the first step for an over-the-top dish that has earned its place in the Italian-American repertoire.

For the pesto itself: Ligurians use walnuts and/or pine-nuts and Pecorino Romano, not Parmesan. There is no standard recipe—not in Italy, nor among Americans. With a little thought, a wonderful condiment can be achieved using what’s available. (One of us likes to use roasted sunflower seeds in place of the walnuts.) Sine qua non for this neo-classic are copious amounts of fresh green basil leaves.

Ingredients:

4-6 Grilled chicken thighs (skin left on)

3/4 Cup walnuts, pecans, or raw sunflower seeds
2 — 3 Medium-sized cloves garlic, peeled
3 Cups fresh basil leaves, loosely packed
4 — 5 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
1 Cup freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Hot pasta water, at least 1 cup, reserved

2 – 3 Tbs. Whole pignoli (pine nuts) for garnish (optional)

1 Lb. pasta. We paired the chicken with farfalle (bow-ties). Fettuccine or linguine also work well.

Preparation:

Heat a toaster oven to 325 F. Spread the raw shelled nuts or sunflower seeds on a sheet of foil or tray in the toaster oven, or dry roast them in a pan over medium heat on the stove. Stir occasionally and watch them constantly, as they burn easily. Roast until they are lightly browned and fragrant (7-10 minutes). If you are using the pignoli, repeat steps separately, as pignoli toast more quickly. Remove all toasted nuts and seeds from the heat and set aside to cool. Reserve any pignoli for garnish.

In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, chop the garlic. Add the cooled nuts and pulse to chop. Add a handful of basil and pulse, repeating until you have chopped it all. With a spatula, scrape down the sides of the processor. Add half the grated cheese and black pepper. Pulse for approximately 1 second, two or three times.

With the motor running, slowly pour 2 — 3 Tbsp of the oil through the feed-tube into the swirling pesto. Stop the motor, scrape down the sides, and taste for salt.

Meanwhile, slice the grilled chicken into pieces no larger than 1″ x 2″ and set aside

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook 1 lb of pasta until al dente. Drain and reserve at least a cup of the starchy cooking water at the bottom of the pot.

In a bowl large enough to hold all the pasta (or the empty cooking pot itself), spread 1 Tbsp of olive oil, 2 Tbsp of the pesto and 2 Tbsp of the hot pasta water to coat the bottom of the bowl. Add the hot, drained pasta and chicken slices to the bowl.

With two wooden spoons or tongs, gently turn the pasta in the bowl, adding the rest of the pesto gradually so it does not clump. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water to the food processor to rinse down the sides and pour that into the pasta Gently turn over the pasta until it is evenly coated with pesto.

Divide into four shallow bowls and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Garnish each serving with a few toasted pignoli.

Serves four.

When Imperial Rome was the center of the ancient Western world, its cuisine was as multinational as the capital itself. Well-to-do Romans enjoyed produce from the the fertile plains of Campania, grain from North Africa, spices and dried condiments from Asia, along with the bounty of the Mediterranean Sea.

During the Renaissance and heydey of Genoese and Venetian trade with the Ottoman Empire, Italy’s urban centers were cauldrons of food fusion.

But during the Age of Discovery, the Italian peninsula was left behind. Columbus sailed for the Spanish crown, not Italy. And after the seismic culinary effects of the introduction of the tomato and pepper, those New World interlopers that forever altered all Mediterranean cuisines, Italians settled down to what they already knew. Indeed, they were among the last in the Mediterranean to embrace tomatoes, which were not staples in the Mezzogiorno until well into the 18^th century.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

This is all the back-drop to Italian food in the post-industrial age. To put it simply: Food throughout the Italian peninsula has not changed with anything like the speed that it has in many other parts of the world.

Likewise, Italian-American cuisine has remained remarkably static since its birth. Spaghetti with Meatballs served in an immigrants’ boarding house at the turn of the 20^th century was pretty much the same dish served in a wise-guy café in Hoboken in the 1970′s. But once they began to imagine and adapt dishes like Pasta Primavera, Penne alla Vodka, and cold pasta salads, Italian-American restaurant chefs expanded menus that had once been limited to variations of pasta with red sauce.

Let’s look at a Roman classic, Pasta alla Carbonara, as a starting point. Sometime in the past 30 years, an inventive chef was inspired to replace the requisite guanciale, cured pork jowl, with smoked salmon. Thus was born Smoked Salmon alla Carbonara.

We don’t have that first printed recipe, but the Internet is littered with permutations we couldn’t (or maybe, shouldn’t) have imagined. On March 17, 1982, the St. Petersburg, Florida, Evening Independent published a recipe for “Salmon Carbonara” featuring canned salmon and Parmesan cheese. (You may easily surmise that, in 1982, that cheese would have been the industrial product in the shiny green foil cylinder.) Needless to say, any Old World Italian would have considered the combination of seafood and cheese an infamita of the highest order.

Think back to the 1980′s… recall the Silver Palate cookbooks and that decade of decadence when cream ruled. Italian-American restaurants attempting to cultivate a more sophisticated clientele were serving pasta without red sauce. Pasta presentations in “a Parmesan cream sauce” appear to have gained favor because they were “lighter” (only in color, for they were certainly no lighter in calories) and because they were more delicately flavored than dishes in a garlicky marinara. Compared to a red-sauce dish, these creamy pastas seemed to express urbane luxury, just what the upscale Italian-American restaurant diner wanted to experience.

Curiously, we found many of that period’s recipes included peas, a reminder of the New England tradition of Salmon and Peas on the 4^th of July. Though these recipes stopped short of Tuna Noodle Casserole, there were some unfortunate similarities.

Despite its wayward past, we think that Salmon alla Carbonara deserves rehabilitation.

We wanted our rendition to be closer to the original Italian alla Carbonara treatment, named for the “charcoal-maker’s wife.” We’ve kept it simple. In the original, guanciale (or pancetta) is rendered and crisped, the fat and crispy bits added to beaten eggs. Abundant black pepper and grated Parmesan go into the mix. At the last minute, the heat and starch of the cooked pasta, straight from the colander, thicken and partially cook the beaten-egg mixture. The result is an unctuous sauce that clings to every strand of spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccine.

Our version omits the guanciale and also the Parmesan—in the Italian tradition of keeping cheese far away from fish and seafood.

But without the hot fat to help emulsify the eggs, the sauce lacks body. So, we’ve added just a little sour cream. Smoked salmon, sliced into strips, requires no further cooking and replaces the pork to yield a quick and elegant meal. Since the stove is needed only to boil the pasta water, the dish is perfect for a warm evening.

Ingredients:

2 Large eggs
1/4 Cup sour cream
Freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Bermuda onion, finely diced
1/2 Lb. Linguine or fettuccine
6 oz. Smoked salmon, cut into ribbons 1/4 inch wide

Preparation:

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.

Break the eggs into a large bowl, and with the back of a fork or a whisk, beat them thoroughly. Beat in the sour cream. Add four or five grinds of black pepper, the parsley, and the onion.

When the water has come to a boil, add the pasta and cook until it reaches the al dente state.

Drain the pasta in a colander and immediately add to the egg mixture. Stir vigorously with tongs or a wooden spoon. This will cook the egg mixture as it comes into contact with the hot pasta.

When the pasta is thoroughly coated, gently stir in the salmon. Divide the pasta equally between two dinner plates and garnish with additional parsley.

Serves two.

I confess that when it comes to Italian food, I’m a reactionary. With my forebears’ culinary traditions predating the Medicis, I feel entitled. When I make my grandmother’s recipes, I do them the way she did. (I still wear L. L. Bean’s blue, oxford-cloth, button-down-collar shirts, the same brand I wore in junior high, though that’s a story for another time…)

When my grandmother cooked pasta, she used a large pot filled nearly to the brim with salted water. (Hers was so large that she needed help to set it on the stove.) And if her example weren’t sufficient, the late Franco and Margaret Romagnoli, who helped me expand my view of Italian food beyond Sicilian-American, trumpeted the necessity to cook pasta in “a capacious pot with copious amounts of salted water.”

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

And still, the iconic Lydia Bastianich recommends at least four (better yet, six, quarts of water) per pound of pasta. These are the exacting standards of my mentors. And until quite recently, they were mine…

My enlightenment occurred at one of the chain close-out stores where I regularly buy discounted treats like Croatian eggplant spread and hecho en Mexico hot sauce. I found myself drawn to a large display of Lexan plastic tubes, cooking devices whose packages promised fast, fool-proof cooking of everything from greenbeans to kielbasa.

But what really caught my attention was the name: Pasta Perfect ™ “as seen on TV.” I imagined the sort of infomercial that always boasts it has “operators standing by.” The sheer silliness of it all was as appalling as it was intriguing. That any self-respecting Italian would attempt to cook a pound of pasta in a quart of still water! My co-author (whose attitude towards traditions, even Italian traditions, is that they are merely suggestions—not mandates) was beside me, saying, “We’ve got to write about this. You know we do. ”

I wondered why…

Like many others, I’ve become a lot more energy-conscious over the past decade. And considering the amount of pasta I cook, I’ve often pondered how much energy it takes to cook this Italian staple, that is, to bring six quarts of water to a “full rolling boil” before I’ve even dropped in the pasta, which then cooks for seven to ten minutes. So while “receptive” might not be the precise term for my initial attitude towards Pasta Perfect, I was persuaded that it might be worth some consideration.

But despite my suspicion that I may have a big sign around my neck that reads, “Rube,” I wasn’t immediately prepared to part with even $5.95 to find pasta Nirvana in a Lexan tube.

Holly and I decided that an experiment was in order. Back in her kitchen, we took an 8-cup vintage Fire King Jade-ite mixing bowl and put in a teaspoon of salt and a half-pound of farfalle. This pasta, shaped like bow-ties, is notoriously unpredictable to cook in any amount of water. (The corners tend to get overcooked and break off before the pinched centers are done.)

I brought approximately one quart of water to a full rolling boil, poured it over the pasta, gave it a quick stir, and covered the bowl with plastic wrap and a thick kitchen towel (thinking that the towel would provide additional insulation). Following the directions we’d read back at the store (those that came with the Pasta Perfect we had not purchased), we set the timer for eleven minutes. Because Jade-ite is opaque, we were unable to see whatever alchemy was in progress. We poured a couple of glasses of vino and watched the clock.

Given my skepticism, I was astonished that the pasta had cooked to any point of edibility. But to find it exquisitely al dente was mind-boggling! It just didn’t seem reasonable that pasta that sat in still water for eleven minutes could cook to the same degree of doneness as pasta cooked for eight minutes in rapidly boiling water. How could generations of Italians not have known this?

But there we were. We looked at each other and said, “We need to tell Harold McGee and to ask him WHY.” And we did—emailing him about a two and a half years ago, in the fall of 2006.

We never heard back from him, but who knows what the reigning American kitchen scientist’s SPAM filter is like. Maybe he doesn’t watch late-night shopping channels… Chances are pretty good he’d never heard of a Chinese-made plastic cylinder for cooking pasta—or of us…

But back then, we were undaunted and more than a little curious. Because of that experiment with the covered bowl, we did go back to purchase the Pasta Perfect. (We confess: we bought two of them, one for each house.)

Our first test of the real Pasta Perfect wasn’t quite perfect. It certainly wouldn’t have been suitable for TV. Again, following the tips in the “handy” recipe booklet that came with our “utensil,” we used a half-pound of linguine. After the magic eleven minutes had elapsed, the pasta was indeed suitably al dente, but we found it slightly gummy. Then, we tried a half-pound of penne rigate for the recommended fourteen minutes. Pasta Perfect’s instructions give specific times for different pasta shapes. Again, we found this tubular pasta gummy, and this time, slightly undercooked. So, this was not noodle Nirvana, at least not yet. We persevered.

What we couldn’t deny was that we were saving at least ten minutes of energy to keep an electric burner on high heat every time we cooked pasta. Multiplying that by a few bowls of linguine with clam sauce, the savings would be substantial. Meanwhile, my co-author, who has another life organizing yacht charters in the Mediterranean, was thinking of conservation of fresh water aboard a sailboat. A lot of pasta gets served on her summertime charters… and Pasta Perfect was lightweight,virtually unbreakable, more compact than a large kettle…

So it seemed to us that Pasta Perfect could have a place among our kitchen armamentaria after all.

As Mario Batali has demonstrated on Food TV, Italians frequently finish cooking pasta in the sauce in which it is to be served. That is, the chef will cook the pasta to near-completion in boiling water, then add the drained pasta to a pan of sauce to finish cooking. The pasta absorbs both flavor and color from the sauce and develops an unctuous quality that mere boiling cannot achieve.

We’ve developed a routine in which we use the Pasta Perfect technique, but ONLY IF we are going to make a sauce in which it would be appropriate to finish cooking our pasta.

I’ve been feeling especially virtuous about the electricity we’re saving. However, as the author of two Italian-American cookbooks, I’ve kept mum on this heretical way of cooking pasta all the while thinking of how I could break the news to other traditionalists.

In the meantime, I must admit we’ve been making some pretty good pasta. Well, mostly…

I had a small lapse the last time I made Pasta alla Carbonara. This is a dish in which the hot pasta is supposed to cook the sauce. And because the sauce consists of crisped pancetta, Parmesan, lots of freshly-ground black pepper, and beaten raw eggs, one can understand why it is important that the pasta be VERY HOT indeed.

Perhaps I was distracted by another project which entailed the sixth or seventh change of soaking water for my salt-cod? (Look for our baccalà recipe in a week or so.) In any case, it never crossed my mind that pasta cooked in a closed, insulated vessel, and fully cooked “to the tooth,” would not be hot enough to cook and thicken the egg mixture when all the ingredients were combined.

We didn’t wind up with any egg-borne ailments, but the eggs stayed runny and never gave the spaghetti the rich coating that makes the dish a success.

Moral of the story: Don’t use Pasta Perfect for Pasta alla Carbonara.

In fact, you don’t have to use Pasta Perfect or any of its plastic clones (Pasta Pleasure, Pasta Express, Clear-Cook, etc.) for anything, though the see-through tubes are nice for storing pasta. Here’s how to use the Pasta Perfect cooking method with vessels you already own:

Take a lidded 2-3 quart saucepan with some heft. Heat-proof glass, enameled cast-iron, anodized aluminum, heavy stainless all work well. Be sure it’s at least as heavy as as RevereWare.

For a half-pound of pasta, use a 8 cups of water; for a full pound, you may use a little bit more (say, 10 cups) because you want to retain the heat from the boiled water.

Bring the water to a rolling boil, then stir in at least a teaspoon of salt and the dry pasta. Turn off the heat; set a timer according to the pasta package instructions for al dente doneness. Put the lid on the pot and stick around. Half-way through the countdown, grab a wooden spoon or chopstick and quickly stir the pasta (for about 5 seconds). Immediately replace the lid to conserve the heat. Get the rest of your dish ready.

When the timer goes off, your pasta is done—or done enough. Drain* it and add to whatever warmed sauce you have waiting. Combine pasta and sauce over low heat for up to two minutes. Sit down to a perfectly cooked bowl of pasta and know that your carbon footprint is a little smaller than it might have been.

We’d been planning to write up this culinary infàmita for over two years… but we thought we’d save it as a pick-me-up for us and the blog when we’d exhausted all the Italian-American chicken recipes…

If we’d heard back from Harold McGee in the fall of 2006, we’d have had him over for a bowl of pasta.

Maybe now he’ll respond to his fans… In the meantime, we’ll get the water boiling.

Here is my grandmother’s basic tomato sauce. This is the one she always seemed to have on hand “just to color” slices of sautéed zucchini, mix into a pot of beans, or spoon over pasta.

During the summer, she and my grandfather would put up gallons of tomatoes, but when her larder ran out, she wasn’t at all averse to using commercially canned tomatoes. However, with those, she claimed that adding a grated carrot sweetened the sauce and took away the metalic, “canned” taste.

We recently got some affirmation of my grandmother’s practice from a surprising source, the former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. In his book, Politics and Pasta, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci talked about his own marinara sauce, devoloped to raise money for local scholarships.

“I created the Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce in the early 1990′s as something to sell at a fund-raiser. It was supposed to be a one-time thing. I made it with the owners of the West Valley Inn. We put in a little of this, some of that, added a pinch of whatever; we just kept experimenting. I wanted it to taste just like the sauce my aunts would make on Sunday afternoons so many years earlier. Their sauce would simmer on the stove for hours as they occasionally added their own ingredients until it was slightly better than perfect. But whatever I added, we couldn’t get it exactly right—until the Old Canteen’s Joe Marzilli suggested we had to add carrots to take away the acidity. Once we did that, hmmmmm, it was perfect.”

My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce

Ingredients:

Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and thinly sliced
2 28 Oz. Cans peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1 Small carrot, grated
1/2 tsp. Peperoncini (hot red pepper flakes)
4 Tbs. Fresh basil leaves, torn
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, finely chopped
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Add the garlic. With a wooden spoon, stir for about one minute, until the garlic begins to give up its aroma.

Remove the pan from the heat and slowly add the tomatoes and their liquid. Return the pan to the heat and begin to break up the tomatoes with either the back of a fork or the wooden spoon. Simmer the tomatoes to evaporate some of their liquid, then add the carrot, the red pepper flakes, basil, and oregano, .

Simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and the clear liquid from the tomatoes has evaporated. Add the parsley and the remaining 2 Tbs. of basil. Cool a spoonful of the sauce and taste for salt and pepper.

Makes approximately 6 Cups (1 1/2 Quarts).

Making “Sunday Gravy” in Chicago
Photograph courtesy of Francesca Folinazzo

This dish, perhaps more than any other, has defined Italian-American cuisine. In fact, the concept of Spaghetti with Meatballs inspired the first edition of Almost Italian.

Italians eat spaghetti. Italians eat meatballs. But they don’t eat spaghetti with meatballs. Writing in 1897, Pellegrino Artusi, author of La Scienza in Cucina e L’Arte di Mangiar Bene, The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well, includes three recipes for meatballs, none of which involve pasta. But the Italian immigrants who first opened restaurants in the Little Italy communities were not cooking so much for their fellow paesani as for a non-Italian clientele.

Ingredients that had been scarce or costly back in Italy were at hand in America, where the new entrepreneurs found that they were able to prepare and offer their version of “Sunday dinner” every night of the week. For the immigrants, the most lavish meal would have been meatballs, sausages, and perhaps pork shoulder, braised in tomato sauce. This would have followed a course of pasta lightly dressed with some of the braising sauce—the red sauce that evolved to become “Mom’s Sunday Gravy.”

Customers lacking intimate knowledge of Italians’ foodways seem not to have understood that something farinaceous could be savored as a course on its own. Among northern Europeans, there is no equivalent to a separate course of rice or pasta, as served in Italy. And so, among the American immigrant populations, the difference persisted. Those of non-Italian descent, having become accustomed to having meat and starch together on the same plate, liked to place two or three meatballs on their pasta. It wasn’t too long before the Italian restaurants abandoned the practice of serving the meat separately and began to serve individual plates of pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce.

During the past few years—in Rome, for example—spaghetti with meatballs has infiltrated the menu turistica, ‘tourist menu,’ at many of the neighborhood trattorie. This gives a new twist to the adage, “When in Rome…”

But here, I’m really more concerned about “when in New Haven or Hoboken.” So, I’m happy to share my Sicilian grandmother’s recipe for meatballs, along with her recipe for the marinara sauce in which to braise them.

My Grandmother’s Meatballs

Ingredients:

1/2 Lb. Ground beef
1/2 Lb. Ground pork
2 Large eggs
1/2 Cup bread crumbs (see Note)
2 Cloves garlic, peeled, and finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1/2 Cup freshly grated Parmigiano
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper
Olive oil

1 Recipe for Marinara Sauce—recipe follows

1 Lb. Spaghetti
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Additional freshly grated Parmigiano

Preparation:

Using your hands, mix together, the beef, pork, and egg, then mix in the bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, and Parmigiano. Season with salt & pepper. Form the ground beef and pork mixture into balls slightly larger than the size of golf balls. I usually wind up with fifteen to twenty, depending on how large I make the first few.

Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan to a depth of about 1/4 inch. Add the meatballs and brown all over, regulating the heat if necessary to avoid excessive spattering. The meatballs are done when they’re brown all over, and have a slight crust. (see Note below)

Simmer gently for about an hour and a half in four cups (one quart) of my grandmother’s tomato sauce. Recipe follows.

Approximately 15 minutes before serving, bring a large pot of water (at least six quarts) to a full, rolling boil and add the pasta. Cook until just al dente. Drain in a colander, and pour the pasta out onto a serving platter.

Spoon the meatballs over the pasta, then pour the sauce over all. Garnish with the parsley, and serve family-style at the table. Pass the additional Parmigiano separately.

Serves four.

Here is my grandmother’s basic tomato sauce. This is the one she always seemed to have on hand, to go over pasta, or “just to color” some sautéed zucchini, or to mix in with some beans.

During the growing season, she and my grandfather would put up gallons of the stuff, but when the larder ran out, she wasn’t at all averse to using canned tomatoes. However, when she used canned tomatoes, she claimed that adding a grated carrot sweetened the sauce and took away the “canned” taste.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and thinly sliced
2 28 Oz. Cans peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1 Small carrot, grated
1/2 tsp. Red pepper flakes
2 Tbs. fresh oregano, finely chopped
2 Tbs. fresh basil, finely chopped
1/4 Cup flat leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Add the garlic. With a wooden spoon, stir for about one minute, until the garlic begins to give up its aroma.

Remove the pan from the heat and slowly add the tomatoes. Return the pan to the heat and begin to break up the tomatoes with either the back of a fork, or a wooden spoon. Simmer the tomatoes to evaporate some of the liquid, then add the carrot, the red pepper flakes, oregano and basil.

Simmer gently for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and the clear liquid from the tomatoes has evaporated. Add the parsley and season with salt and pepper.