Rivalling Spaghetti with Meatballs, Chicken alla Cacciatora is certainly one of the defining dishes of Italian-American cuisine. Italians in the first waves of of emigration, many of whom were desperately poor, might only have heard of dishes prepared ‘hunter’s style.’

Photograph courtesy Jackie Messineo

And even if they had been fortunate enough to have actually tasted them, such dishes would more likely have featured pigeon or hare, small game ensnared or felled with a slingshot. Poverty in 19^th-century Italy, especially following the Risorgiamento, was so severe that few contadini would have been able to afford a gun, and most were without legal access to the game in forests and fields controlled by i galantuomini, the landed classes. ¹

In Italy, domestic fowl had never been widely consumed. Even in modern Italy, chicken has yet to gain favor as an everyday dish. ² So before we turn on the stove, it is worth considering the Italian origins of a dish that became a staple on the American red-sauce circuit.

We gleaned some hints as to the recipe’s evolution from food historian, Gillian Riley and her new book, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. She reminds us that Italian cuisine maintained many of the ancient medical divisions of foods into “hot” and “cold.” The divisions have nothing to do with temperature but are part of a system of classification similar to what persists in Chinese and other Asian cuisines to this day. That is, certain foods are considered “invigorating” and thus hot or warming (yang), while others are calming and cooling (yin).

Pigeon, because of its dark, rich-tasting flesh, was considered a “hot” food and thus a meat to be complemented by something cooling—which is to say, fresh and acidic. The medieval method for preparing pigeon often incorporated verjuice, the juice of unripe fruit, usually grapes. Among Italian recipes for game and other meats, it is this acidic inclusion that makes a dish ‘alla cacciatora.’

Following World War II, as Italian-American restaurants expanded their menus beyond foods remembered from “the old country,” many began to include chicken, whose firm texture and neutral flavor made it adaptable to myriad treatments. While European Italians may not have eaten much chicken, their American descendants took to it readily—for its economy and availability, and especially for its versatility. Because it could support many of the flavors previously used for veal dishes, chicken became a common stand-in for veal—a meat that, even in America, was considered a luxury.

Along with so-called variety meats, like tripe and liver, game had rarely been offered in the neighborhood restaurants. Meanwhile, the new medium of television had given Americans a furry personality as lovable as Beatrix Potter’s cotton-tails. It is no exaggeration to say that chicken made Italian restaurants safe for Bugs Bunny.

Back in the Old World, rabbit or hare alla cacciatora continued to be sautéed with garlic and fresh herbs before wine and vinegar (or citrus juice) were added to deglaze the pan and create a quick, uncomplicated sauce. Tomatoes were an American addition, yet another acidic element, and one that non-Italians immediately recognized as “Italian.” Then, too, this was the beginning of an increased use of color photography in cookbooks and print advertising, particularly in womens’ magazines. Delicious as these dishes may have been without them, tomatoes made for better photos. Not until America’s Little Italy recipes began to migrate back to Europe, did tomatoes appear in Italian alla cacciatora renditions.

Other Italian-American embellishments—mushrooms—remain absent from most Italian alla cacciatora recipes. Their inclusion may well be yet another example of the immigrants’ sense of humor. Hunters whose shots were less sure might still have salvaged their days in the woods if they were successful foragers. Even if they didn’t come home with a sack full of game, they might have found some mushrooms. (Boletus edulis, which Italians call porcini, grow wild in both Italy and North America.)

Continuing our deconstruction of alla cacciatora americana, we’ve no compelling answer as to how sweet peppers found their way into the American preparation. But we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that an enthusiastic Italian-American chef thought that green bell peppers, along with white chicken and red tomato sauce, were a fine way to pay homage to his grandparents’ homeland by evoking the colors of the Italian flag, the beloved tricolore.

Ingredients:

1 3 1/2 Lb. Chicken, cut into 8 – 10 pieces
1 Cup flour, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 – 4 Tbs. Olive oil
1 Lb. White mushrooms, quartered
2 Green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and sliced into 1 in. strips
1 Medium onion, finely chopped
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 Cup dry red wine
2 Cups marinara sauce
2 – 4 Tbs. Fresh oregano, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to be passed at the table

Preparation:

Pour the seasoned flour into a paper grocery bag. Add the chicken pieces, close the bag, and shake to coat completely.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add 2 Tbs. of the olive oil. Remove the chicken pieces from the bag, shake off the excess flour, and add the chicken pieces to the pan. Sauté until brown, about 4 – 5 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate.

Return the pan to the heat. Add the mushrooms, peppers, onion, and garlic, and sauté until the onion becomes translucent, about 10 minutes.

Raise the heat to high, and add the wine. Cook for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Reduce the heat to a simmer and mix in the marinara sauce.

Return the chicken pieces to the sauté pan, spooning the sauce over them. Add the oregano. Simmer until the chicken is tender, about 20 minutes.

Transfer the chicken to a platter. Cook the sauce until slightly thickened, about 3 minutes. Ladle the sauce over the chicken. Garnish with the parsley and serve family-style, passing the Parmesan separately at the table. Traditionally, this would be served with a side of pasta.

Serves four.

^1. Additional information on post-Risorgiamento Italy can be found in an excellent book by Hasia Diner; Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration; Harvard University Press, 2001.

^2. For further discussion of Italian chicken consumption, see Part IV of our Introduction.

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 when 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

Caterina de’ Medici, circa 1559

We can lay the credit (or blame) for spinach—and all the so-called “Florentine” preparations that have become part of Italian-American cuisine—on a petulant teenage bride from Tuscany, Caterina de’ Medici. As the fourteen year-old future Queen of France, she probably used the same leader-of-the-pack tactics of any princess with a following to get her courtiers to don high heeled shoes, use forks and to try spinach. Historical sources indicate that Caterina’s none-too-happy French subjects spoke of her in less-than-complimentary tones as “that @#$%^$ Florentine.” Meanwhile, the chefs who had come along as part of her trousseau seemed to know which side their brioche was buttered on; they began referring to any dish based on a bed of spinach as à la Florentine.

Italians in general, and Florentines in particular, are fond of spinach, but they save the proper Italian term alla Fiorentina for specific dishes of tripe, grilled Porterhouse steak, and schiacciatta—a uniquely Tuscan flat-bread studded with grapes. You’ll find no Pollo alla Fiorentina in a trattoria in Florence (unless there is a menu turistica and the chef is from Hoboken or Providence).

Chicken Florentine seems to have originated uptown in white-tablecloth, French-influenced restaurants. Eventually, it migrated to the cozier neighborhood restaurants where it is solidly ensconced even today. But it didn’t just pop up, intact, on the local restaurants’ menus.

Spinach, from the point of view of a commercial kitchen, is a nuisance. It doesn’t travel well, arrives gritty, and needs a lot of preparation. In the French-style restaurant uptown, a stagiaire, or rookie cook, was assigned the task of washing, removing the tough stems, and then chopping a few bushel baskets of fresh spinach during each of his shifts. This was not possible for Mom and Pop back in Little Italy. So serving dishes alla Florentine[sic] didn’t become practical for neighborhood restaurants until food conglomerates began to do the washing, processing, canning—and later, freezing. Then, it was a simple matter for a cook to take a portion of industrially-prepped spinach and sauté it briefly in garlic and olive oil to become a bed for Chicken Florentine. We think the Medicis, who knew a thing or two about conglomerates, would have been pleased.

Ingredients:

4 Boneless chicken breasts
1 cup flour, seasoned with salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 Eggs lightly beaten and seasoned with salt & freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Cup white wine
Juice of one lemon
2 Lbs. Fresh spinach, washed, drained and chopped or 2 10-oz. packages frozen spinach, thawed, drained, and chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Place the seasoned flour in one shallow-sided dish and the eggs in another.

Dredge the chicken breasts in the seasoned flour, then in the egg mixture, and then in the flour again. Reserve on a plate.

Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Add half the garlic and sauté for about 1 minute, being careful not to let the garlic burn. Add the chicken breasts and cook for about 2 minutes per side, or until they begin to turn white around the edges. Remove from the pan and reserve on a plate, covering them with aluminum foil.

Raise the heat to high, and add the white wine and lemon juice to the pan, stirring with a wooden spoon to get up any bits of chicken that have caramelized on the bottom of the pan. Boil for 2 – 3 minutes to evaporate the alcohol, and to reduce the liquid by approximately 20%. Turn off the heat, and return the chicken to the pan. Cover to keep warm.

Heat another sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Add the remainder of the garlic and sauté for about a minute, again, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add the spinach, season with salt and pepper, and sauté until wilted and thoroughly heated through.

To Serve:

Place a mound of spinach on each of four dinner plates. Lean one of the chicken breasts up against each mound, top with the lemon-wine sauce, and garnish with the chopped parsley.

Serves four.

Verdicchio Grapes

By the 1980′s and early ’90′s, neighborhood Italian restaurants found that their patrons, many of whom had ventured into uptown oases of northern Italian cuisine, were seeking lighter fare. Dishes swimming in the traditional red sauce began to face stiff competition from combinations like Chicken with Ziti and Broccoli—a dish with Neapolitan antecedents. It was during this time that Italian-American chefs began to exploit the possibilities of skinless, boneless chicken breasts. Frequently substituted for veal scallopini, the uniform breasts were already portion-sized and far less expensive than veal.

Both the economy and neutral taste of the mass-marketed chicken breasts allowed them to become a sort of blank canvas on which both home cooks and restaurant chefs sought to create their masterpieces, those “signature” dishes. New names sprang up on menus, in local newspaper food columns, on the back of boxes of pasta… Pollo al Limone, chicken with white wine and lemon juice, could take on myriad new identities with the addition of mushrooms or sun-dried tomatoes or artichoke hearts… And if you were gilding the lily and wanted to use all three luxury ingredients and a little white wine? Eccolo! Chicken Verdicchio!

In the case of naming this preparation, we can’t help wondering if someone simply thought “Verdicchio” sounded appropriately mellifluous and sophisticated or if Verdicchio happened to be the only white wine a particular chef had on hand when all the ingredients first came together.

Would Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, or Trebbiano serve as well here? We think so, but since this varietal grape gave the recipe its name, we’ll let Verdicchio stand.

Ingredients:

4 Boneless chicken breasts
1 Cup flour
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs. Olive oil
1 Lb. White mushrooms, sliced
½ Cup sun-dried tomatoes (see Note)
1 9 Oz. package frozen artichokes, thawed and halved
1 Cup Verdicchio (or other dry white wine)
Juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

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 inch. Season the breasts on both sides with salt and pepper, and reserve on a plate.

Pour the flour into a shallow-sided dish and season with salt and pepper. Dredge the chicken breasts, shaking off the excess, and reserve.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the olive oil. Cook the chicken breasts for approximately 2 minutes per side, or until the edges have begun to turn white. Remove from the pan and reserve on a plate, covering them loosely with aluminum foil.

Add the mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and artichokes to the pan. Season with salt and pepper, and sauté until the mushrooms have begun to release some of their liquid, about 5 minutes.

Raise the heat to high, and add the wine. Boil for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol.

Add the lemon juice, lower the heat to medium low, return the chicken breasts to the pan, and simmer for 10 minutes.

To Serve:

Place one chicken breast on each of four dinner plates, spoon some of the sauce over each breast, and garnish with the chopped parsley. Most of the neighborhood restaurants of the day would have served Chicken Verdicchio over linguine.

Serves four.

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Gathering recipes for the first edition of Almost Italian, we included over twenty different Italian-American preparations for chicken.

Given European Italians’ relative indifference to their own poultry, we were surprised. As we’ve already written, the chickens the immigrants had known back home were small, sinewy birds, better suited for egg production or the soup pot than for Chicken alla Cacciatora.

But Italians new to America quickly took to an inexpensive source of protein. Back in Calabria in 1910, a man might have eaten chicken once or twice a year, but here in America even on his $10.00 per week wages, he could afford to provide his family with chicken every week.

Assuring a supply of both eggs and meat, the urban immigrants built poultry coops on tenement rooftops, while those who moved to rural areas could raise larger flocks.

The immigrants’ early recipes followed the old treatments they knew for dealing with tough fowl—stewing and braising the whole bird, more for the stock than for the meat. But as Italians settled into America where chicken was meatier, more tender, and much more plentiful, they developed new recipes. Birds were cut into portion-sized pieces as with Chicken alla Cacciatora. With more birds, there were more livers, giblets, and necks to be gathered for those long-simmered sauces Italians enjoyed over pasta.

Veal had never been as popular here as in Italy, and when it was available, it was still expensive. But Italian cooks discovered that less expensive chicken breasts could be pounded and sautéed as cutlets—or rolled around other ingredients like cheese and spinach. Restaurant menus printed after World War II feature Chicken Francese, a breaded chicken breast, sautéed in butter and finished with a sauce of butter, lemon juice, and white wine.

Chicken Francese was so well received that chefs soon began turning out all manner of dishes involving chicken breasts. By the late 1970’s food writers Craig Claiborne and Florence Fabricant were busy informing eager New York Times readers about the latest neighborhood restaurant to offer Chicken Marco Polo, Chicken Saltimbocca, Chicken Margherita, and Chicken Marsala.

Of course it would have been unthinkable to discard the legs, thighs, and wings, and these continued to go into stews and braises, as well as new recipes like Chicken alla Contadina, and Chicken Scarpariello.

For the next few weeks, Almost Italian will focus on chicken recipes. While we’ve already presented a few chicken dishes from the Italian-American repertoire, we still have a lot of ground to cover. From ubiquitous dishes like Chicken Parmesan to regional American favorites like Chicken Vesuvio and relative newcomers like Chicken Fra Diavolo, we’ll be looking at the vast array of Italian-American chicken recipes. Stay tuned and send us your comments.

Chicken Francese

In 1891, Italian cookery writer Pellegrino Artusi published several recipes (including one for gooseberries) served, alla Francese ‘in the style of the French.’ The description refers to dredging an item in beaten eggs and flour before sautéeing.

Ingredients:

4 Skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1 Cup flour
1/4 Cup olive oil
1/2 Cup dry white wine
1 Cup chicken stock
Juice of 1/2 lemon
4 Tbs. flat-leaf Italian Parsley

Preparation:

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

Pour the flour 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 each chicken breast into the eggs, covering both sides. Remove and drain for a moment, then dredge each breast in the flour and reserve on a plate.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the oil. Add the chicken breasts and sauté until the breasts begin to turn white around the edges (Approximately 2 – 3 minutes per side). If necessary, do this step in batches. Don’t crowd the pan.

Remove the breasts and reserve on a plate, covering them loosely with aluminum foil.

Raise the heat to high, and add the wine. Boil for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol, and to reduce, stirring with a wooden spoon to loosen any bits of chicken that have caramelized on the bottom of the pan.

Add the chicken stock, the lemon juice, and the lemon zest, and boil for approximately 5 minutes until the sauce is reduced to approximately 2/3 cup. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the burner.

Add the reserved chicken breasts, basting them with the sauce as they reheat.

To Serve:

Place one chicken breast on each of four dinner plates. Spoon the sauce over each one, and garnish with the chopped parsley.

Serves four

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No other dish in the Italian-American repertoire evokes images of Italian street festivals the way Sausage and Peppers does. It may be the middle of January, but the combination of spicy grilled sausages with wilted peppers and caramelized onions never fails to conjure hot summer nights, Neapolitan ballads, and nonne in house-dresses sitting on the open fire-escapes of brownstones. No matter when or where you serve Sausage and Peppers, the meal never fails to turn into a party.

Most Italians in the first waves of immigration had been too poor to have eaten much sausage in Italy. Early records of the immigrant communities include recollections such as one southern Italian’s first tasting pork when he joined a lumber camp in Maine.

Nevertheless, contadini would have been pressed into service on the day their padrone decided to butcher a pig. The padrone may well have rewarded his staff, allowing them small portions of meat to take home. Religious holidays in Italy were also opportunities for the well-off to extend some largesse to their workers and servants, who were sometimes allotted meat for festive meals.

New Italian immigrants who may have had sausage-making skills saved their money and dreamed of the day when they might open macellerie, butcher shops, in a world where meat was an everyday commodity. In the meantime, they may have convinced established German-American butchers to add a bit of fennel seed or dried basil to a batch of sausage stuffing.

Among the Italians who realized their dreams, Eduardo Faicco established his first shop on in Greenwich Village in 1900. G. Esposito & Sons started the Jersey Pork Store in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn in 1920. John Landi, one of Esposito’s early employees, subsequently opened Landi’s Brooklyn Pork Store in 1928. All three shops continue to thrive today. The latter two stores have adapted to the American scene with something unimaginable four generations ago: they have Websites. Such sites seem to portend a vigorous virtual life for the Little Italys, extending their real estate into cyberspace.

We’re not certain where the irresistible pairing of Sausage and Peppers first occurred, but our research confirms that southern Italian immigrants were celebrating their “marriage” before Prohibition at the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Italian Harlem.

The first Italian-American sausages were probably grilled over an open fire. The 1950′s saw panel trucks equipped with propane stoves for roadside diners—what mobile cooks still use at construction sites and factory parking lots. Liquid propane, the cooking fuel of today’s street festival griddles, didn’t find its way into practical use for gas-powered grills until the 1960′s.

Outdoor grilling imbues the sausages with the spirit of summer, but the dish is also delicious and easily made indoors—in a single skillet.

Ingredients:

8 Links sweet or hot Italian sausages (or a combination of the two)
2 Tbs. Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
4 Red or Green bell peppers, seeded and cut lengthwise into half-inch strips
2 Medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
3 Tbs. Coarsely chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley

Preparation:

Parcook the sausages in enough water to cover, for approximately 8 minutes. Drain and reserve.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat, then add the olive oil. Add the sausages and cook, turning occasionally until they begin to brown. Add the garlic, peppers and onions, stirring and shaking the pan to coat them with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally until the peppers are wilted; approximately fifteen minutes.

To Serve:

Divide among four plates and garnish with the parsley.

Serves four.

We first saw Chicken Scarpariello, chicken shoemaker’s style, in 1984, on the menu of a red sauce joint in the North End of Boston. A little Web surfing turned up Craig Claiborne’s article on the dish in The New York Times (April, 1971). In an Italian context, this combination appears to be unique to Italian-American cuisine and without a credible antecedent back in the old country.

Even so, nothing appeared especially mysterious… yet we knew of no other Italian dish that paired chicken and sausage. After what amounted to real sleuthing, we did find Pollo con Salsicie, Chicken with Sausages in a 1919 volume published in New York: The Italian Cookbook, The Art of Eating Well, compiled by Mrs. Maria Gentile. As culinary historians, we’ve learned that recipes rarely spring up fully developed overnight; rather, they evolve.

We and many other commentators on the development of an Italian-American cuisine have written about the early 20th century phenomenon of men designated as “stay-at-home” cooks. Italian men, leaving their families behind in Italy while they sought work in America, often banded together, either in tenements or work camps. Pooling resources to stretch their budgets, they would chose one man to shop and cook for the rest of them.

An Italian “fraternity cook” might never have learned the subtle applications of herbs and spices that would have been passed down from Nonna to granddaughter. Furthermore, in American mill towns populated by other ethnic groups, ingredients like dried oregano and fennel seed may have been difficult to acquire. Nonetheless, there were other devices a cook could use to give his meals the flavor of home. Even a piece of kielbasa or andouille would have had the tastes of pork, garlic, black pepper, and perhaps anise, that could approximate Italian seasoning. And if there were indeed an Italian butcher, well, there would have been Italian sausages laced with fennel seed and red pepper flakes.

While the Italian male cooks may have lacked kitchen finesse, they knew from back home that a tiny bit of pancetta or salami could flavorfully enrich an entire pot of beans. Sausage, fatty and seasoned, stood in—not only for the cooking fat of a cured pork product—but also for the spices and herbs used in the Mezzogiorno. It is ironic that meat, the most precious ingredient back in Italy, could have replaced what would have been the cheapest elements of a meal: the home-grown or foraged seasonings.

And it’s easy to comprehend how wine came into the dish. Even in America, those early chickens would have been tough birds that benefited from the tenderizing effect of a little vino. And vino was readily available, no matter what the immigrant’s financial condition. The pungent peppers, a New World fruit that had gone from South and Central America to the Mediterranean and back, were very likely home-pickled in vinegar, in an earthenware crock. The salt, acidity, and heat from the pickling liquid added yet another dimension to braised chicken already seasoned by sausages.

Various sources theorize about the origins of the name of the dish. Is it “shoemaker-style” because a cobbler might have eaten this dish or because the dish was “cobbled together” from ingredients common to a poor man’s larder? Pino Luongo suggests that the name is derived from scarpetta, a piece of bread that would have been used to soak up the wonderful sauce.

Most intriguing is a comment by the late Pierre Franey, writing about Shoemaker’s Chicken in The New York Times (1977).

We’ve found confirmation of this slang usage in The Urban Dictionary:

We feel differently: that the name implies a true compliment. Scarpariello, may well have been a testament to the resourcefulness of immigrant cooks who achieved such seductive flavor from so few ingredients.

Ingredients:

2 – 3 Tbs. Olive oil
4 Links Italian sausage (about 1 lb)
2 ½ — 3 Lb. Frying chicken cut into 8 pieces (or 8 chicken thighs, skin-on)
1 Medium yellow onion, finely diced
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and sliced thinly
1/2 tsp. peperoncini (hot red pepper flakes)
1 Cup dry white wine
2/3 Cup pickling liquid from the cherry peppers
6 to 8 pickled hot cherry peppers–seeded and coarsely chopped
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat, then add just enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Add the sausages and sauté, regulating the heat to reduce spattering. Turn regularly until they’ve browned; about 8 minutes. Remove and reserve.

Add the chicken pieces to the sauté pan and cook, turning occasionally, until the pieces are golden brown all over; about 15 minutes. Remove the chicken pieces from the pan and reserve on a plate, covering them with aluminum foil.

Add the onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes; sauté until the onion has wilted.

Raise the heat to high, and add the wine. Boil for about 2 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon to loosen any bits of chicken and sausage that have caramelized on the bottom of the pan.

Lower the heat to a simmer and add the pickling liquid, the cherry peppers, the oregano, and parsley. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary. Simmer for four or five minutes to concentrate the sauce.

While the liquid is simmering, cut the sausages into rounds. Return the sausages and chicken to the pan, and allow to simmer for about 12 minutes. Grate the lemon rind. Add the rind and lemon juice to the pan and simmer for another minute or two.

To Serve:

Remove the chicken and sausage pieces to a platter; cover with the sauce and garnish with the remaining parsley. Many neighborhood restaurants serve Chicken Scarpariello as main dish, without a “side order” of pasta. You may follow their lead, but have plenty of good crusty bread on hand to be sure diners can mop up the delectable sauce.

Serves four

We began our presentation of this new edition of Almost Italian online in September 2007. Since then, most of our posts have discussed dishes that Italian-Americans served to a primarily non-Italian clientele in neighborhood restaurants.

Photo courtesy of Sugieeee

That clientele was primarily non-Italian because the actual residents of the Little Italy neighborhoods saw no reason to pay for food they would themselves cook at home. But as neighborhood restaurants flourished, an equally vibrant but somewhat different cuisine was simultaneously developing in the tenement apartments of the new immigrants.

Sundays were particularly important to Italian-Americans. No matter what Papa did for a living during the week, it was, in most cases, hard, physical labor. So Sunday was literally a day of rest.

Regardless of whether or not they went to church, Italian families nearly always gathered at home in reverential celebration of the abundance they had found in America. As NYU professor Hasia Diner emphasizes it was ironic that Italian “immigrants had to leave home to eat the food of home.”^1.

That a newly-arrived Italian could earn ten dollars a week as a brick-layer or dockworker was empowerment, opportunity beyond anything that had been available to him back in Sicily or Apulia. He could earn a living wage and not only house his family, but feed them well. And in the early 20^th century, that meant he could afford to feed them meat.

Oral and written histories are replete with recollections of the immigrants’ amazement at the availability and affordability of meat. That a family in America could afford once a week what might have been indulged in once or twice a year back in Italy (during a religious feast or wedding), was cause for jubilation.

Long after the hunger that propelled Italians to the New World had been appeased and first-generation Italian-Americans had moved off on their own, they continued to gather at “Mom’s house” for a Sunday afternoon meal any non-Italian would call a “feast.” This classic repast would include several types of meat braised in tomato sauce. For a first course, Mama would appropriate some of the sauce to serve over pasta. The meats would follow, accompanied by salad and bread.

Exhorting her family to Mangia, mangia, “Eat, eat!” it was always a woman, usually La Nonna, the matriarch, who came to symbolize the warmth and expansive generosity of Italian-American culture. Grandmothers, daughters, and daughters-in-law presided over kitchens and dining rooms in America. For many of these women, it was their transformation of ingredients here in the New World that gave them economic and social power. Italian women who had learned to cook—in Italy or America, from their stints as domestics in more affluent homes or from members of their own families—gained status as they created meals of abbondanza e nostalgia, evoking a homeland that had denied them the food they so proudly served here.

Following World War II, returning veterans, including many maturing first-generation Italian-Americans, joined the migration to the suburbs. Taking with them what had now become “old family recipes,” the new suburbanites assured that “Mom’s Sunday Gravy” became as much of a staple in North Jersey and on Long Island as it had been around the cramped apartment kitchen tables on Mulberry Street.

Just as food sustained strong family ties between generations of Italian-Americans, it has also maintained urban Little Italys. Like the stereotypical Nonna, with her pot of basil on the fire-escape, many a pasta or salume supplier has proved just as reluctant to leave the familiar, the core neighborhoods where immigrants first used food as the primary tool with which to form their identity as Italian-Americans.

^1. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration by Hasia R. Diner; Harvard University Press, 2003.

Sunday Gravy

Ingredients:

3 – 4 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
6 Garlic cloves peeled
1 Lb. Piece of boneless beef such as eye of the round, or shoulder steak
1 Lb. Piece of boneless Pork shoulder
3 Tbs. Tomato paste
1/2 Cup dry red wine
3 28 oz. cans Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1 Lb. Hot or sweet Italian sausages (or a combination)
1 Recipe for Italian Meatballs
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Fresh oregano, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Fresh basil, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large, heavy-bottomed casserole or Dutch oven over medium heat, then add the garlic. (Don’t allow the garlic to brown.) Add the meat, turning frequently to brown on both sides. As the meat is browned, remove it and reserve. If necessary, brown the meat in batches.

Combine the tomato paste and wine and add to the pot. Raise the heat to high. Stirring constantly, boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol. Add the tomatoes and their juices, breaking up the tomatoes with the back of a fork as they go in. As the sauce begins to bubble, lower the heat so the tomatoes simmer gently. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary. Stir in the oregano, basil, and parsley.

Return the beef and pork to the pot. Partially cover the pot and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for two hours, or until the meat begins to fall apart. Add the sausages and meatballs, and simmer gently for another hour.

Remove the meat from the sauce, and place in a large bowl, or on a platter. Cover loosely with aluminum foil.

To Serve:

Serve the sauce over pasta—typically penne, ziti, or rigatoni. Allow 1/4 Lb. dry pasta per person. Serve the meat as a separate course with salad and bread.

Serves 10 – 12

There’s nothing “almost” about Pasta con Broccoli; it really is Italian, long enjoyed in homes throughout southern Italy.

But here, in America, the combination Pasta con Broccoli e Pollo became popular in the 1970′s–just when Italian-American chefs were beginning to delve into northern Italian cuisines. With the addition of sautéed chicken breasts, Chicken Ziti Broccoli (as it came to be known) was an example of an Italian dish prepared without tomato sauce, and thus, it passed muster for inclusion on “Northern” Italian-American menus.

Today, neighborhood Italian restaurants serve Pasta with Broccoli—along with chicken, hickory-smoked chicken, turkey, Rock Cornish game hen, and even mesquite-grilled chicken.

Fusion notwithstanding, it’s pretty good stuff; and I have to admit, it’s a delicious interpretation of a southern Italian stand-by. The following recipe includes all the flavor notes of the Italian original, adjusted for the inclusion of the ultimate American convenience protein: boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Even with garlic, this dish is subtle. In pairings like this, you’ll be rewarded for using the best ingredients, because, without a long-simmered sauce, each ingredient must stand on its own.

Americans are used to seeing supermarket broccoli year ’round. However, it’s a crop that likes cool, though not freezing, weather. Depending on where it’s grown, American broccoli is at its best between September and late May.

Ingredients:

2 Skinless, boneless chicken breasts (approximately 1 Lb., trimmed of any fat)
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 Head broccoli (approximately 1 1/4 Lbs.) cut into florets, stems peeled and cut into 1 in. chunks
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 Lb. Ziti or Penne
2 Tbs. Extra virgin olive oil
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbs. Capers, rinsed and drained—or 1/4 Tsp. freshly grated nutmeg (see Note)
1/2 tsp. Red pepper flakes
Grated rind of 1/2 lemon
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley chopped
Additional olive oil
Freshly grated Parmesan

Preparation:

Cut the breasts in half, then lengthwise into strips about 1 in. wide. Season the strips with salt and pepper.

Bring at least 6 quarts of salted water to a boil, then add the broccoli pieces. Cook for approximately 3 minutes. Scoop out the broccoli with a slotted spoon or small strainer and drain, reserving the cooking liquid.

Bring the reserved cooking liquid back to a boil, then add the pasta. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the pasta has reached the al dente state. Drain in a colander, reserving approximately 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add the oil. Add the chicken breasts, and cook, stirring, for 2 — 3 minutes, or until the pieces begin to turn white at the edges. Add the garlic; stir and cook briefly, perhaps another minute. Don’t let the garlic brown. Add the pepperoncino flakes and capers. Stir over heat for 1 minute.

Add the broccoli, lemon rind, and pasta to the pan; season with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low; add the parsley and toss well to combine. Cook the mixture for 1 — 2 minutes. Add a few tablespoons of the pasta-cooking water, if needed.

Off the heat, drizzle with additional olive oil.

To Serve:

Divide the mixture equally among four dinner plates and serve with the Parmesan passed separately.

Serves four.