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

New Year’s Day—even beyond the implementation of all manner of resolutions—is a time to do something, or more specifically, to eat something that will bring luck for the coming year. For Italians, that means lentils with sausages.

The lentils are said to symbolize coins which the diner can hope to amass in the coming year. And for poor Italian peasants and laborers, the sausage once represented opulence.

Most southern Italians eat cotechino sausage on New Year’s Day. Lavishly spiced with coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, this is a fresh pork sausage that includes those proverbial everything-but-the-squeal portions of a pig. Cotechino may very well have been the inspiration for Winston Churchill’s remark that anyone interested in laws and sausages should never watch them being made.

Italians north of Rome eat a sausage similar to cotechino, but butchers stuff the meat into a pig’s foot and call it Zampone.

Unable to buy a cotechino locally, in time for our New Year’s dinner, we hardly felt deprived. The sausages we did serve may have come from a Tampa Bay area supermarket chain, Sweet Bay, but we consider them the equal of the very best sausages we’ve ever had—in Italy and from artisan butchers in New England. In fact, we’ve written before about our fantasy of a kindly old Italian fellow dressed in a threadbare grey cardigan sweater going to Sweet Bay’s corporate kitchens once or twice a week to supervise the making of the sausage.

Our lentils, cooked separately with bay leaves, garlic, and orange peel, finished in the pan with the sausages, were delicious. But with or without sausages, lentils carry the main message. So we hope all our readers have a happy, healthy year. May you and your loved ones share the abbondanza we wish for you in 2008.

Photograph courtesy of Francesca Folinazzo

A lot of you will be traveling this week. As you sit in airline terminals and wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic, whatever you do to get to Nonna’s house, please jot down a few questions for your family. I’m asking you to do this in the hope that I can fill in some gaps in my own family’s culinary history.

My Sicilian grandfather was only fourteen years old, his brothers and sister not yet teenagers, when they arrived at Ellis Island in 1904. They all became fluent English speakers while continuing to speak, read, and write in Sicilian dialect, even though they were mere children when they left the society in which Sicilian had been their only language.

One question I have is how their acquisition of Sicilian continued to the sophisticated level required for their professional careers.

My maternal great-grandparents had had little formal schooling, but their boys were lucky enough to go to good schools and continue their educations—but only in English. One graduated from West Point, another became a physician, another had his own insurance agency.

How they kept and polished their Sicilian is a mystery to me. And they did indeed keep their Sicilian. Well into their careers, they served a largely immigrant population in Middletown, Connecticut. It’s a particular mystery to me how my great uncle explained—in polished Sicilian diaect—appendicitis or gall bladder disease to semi-literate Sicilian patients during the Depression, let alone discuss their treatment options.

And it’s just as much a puzzle as to how my grandfather, the son of a cobbler, came to learn his repertoire of Sicilian recipes. Cultural codes back in Sicily certainly would have kept a young boy out of the kitchen in 1904, and once in America, he went away to a church-run boarding school. Yet somewhere, somehow, he did learn to cook the traditional dishes, to the extent that he taught them to his own wife, my grandmother. I just don’t know when he learned them or from whom. But surely, my family’s case is not unique.

I’d love to hear stories and speculation on this from other Italian-Americans. Alas, I’ve no one left in my own family to interview.

It’s easy enough to ascertain how certain traditional Italian recipes morphed into Italian-American dishes; that’s what the Almost Italian project is about. But how did the original recipes arrive intact? We need to ask how they made the trip from Italy to America in the first place, especially since we already know that many of the immigrants were so poor in Italy they couldn’t have afforded to cook them back home.

So start making YOUR lists. The questions you pose could prove to be lifesavers during those awkward Thanksgiving moments when talk turns to Hillary Clinton, ethanol, or immigration reform. When your aunt starts asking about your little nose-ring or latest tattoo, or someone has just spilled an especially dark Zinfandel on the lace tablecloth, you’ll be glad you can divert everyone’s attention with:

So, do you think Zio Beppo’s sausages, the ones he cured in the trunk of his ’68 Impala, were more Calabrese or Abruzzese?

Is it true that cousin Tony sold his sister’s collection of Mass cards on Ebay?

When it comes to family history, there are many truths…share some of yours, right here, on Almost Italian.

My editor Holly, and I wish you a very happy Giorno di Ringraziamento, Happy Thanksgiving.

Photo courtesy of Beelama

Sometime in the 1940′s or ’50′s, garlic bread became one of the signature components of an Italian-American restaurant meal. Unfortunately, the version I remember most vividly was a hapless mixture of margarine and garlic powder slathered on a French baguette.

That lackluster example aside, non-Italians reminiscing about the period confirm that it was not only spaghetti with meatballs that drew them into the neighborhood restaurants; it was the prospect of garlic bread.

American GIs who had served in Europe came home with a taste for artisanal bread unlike the mass-market products of the US. The closest approximation of what they’d come to enjoy was to be found in Little Italy restaurants. In addition, first and second generation Italian-Americans who’d been posted to Italy had encountered the bread of their forebears—toasted as crostini or grilled as bruschetta, both flavored with olive oil and garlic.

While it would have been too labor-intensive for the typical family-run restaurant to offer freshly toasted slices of bread to every diner, one mid-century technological innovation—aluminum foil—made it practical to prepare multiple loaves of seasoned bread and to warm them as needed. It may put aluminum foil in perspective to note that when it debuted, the Swanson TV dinner, sold and served in molded aluminum foil, created as much buzz as tail-fins on Cadillacs.

By 1949, aluminum foil had become a popular method for wrapping food that would be refrigerated or frozen until it was cooked (or reheated). Italian-American restaurant cooks quickly put this new material to good use, enclosing a long loaf of dense Italian bread, that had been split lengthwise so the cut surface could be brushed with garlic and olive oil and then heated in the oven. The seductive fragrance, rising from the “garlic bread” as it was delivered from kitchen to hungry patrons in the dining room, made it an instant success. Furthermore, in most establishments, this treat was served without additional charge. Here was yet another delicious element of “foreign intrigue” that was of entirely American-Italian invention.

Even if they have a track-record of having been produced with less-than-the-best-ingredients, many Almost-Italian standards have honest origins and deserve to be made with the best ingredients available.

Garlic Bread

Use a large, crusty loaf of bread. (We prefer those with denser textures.)

This would be a time to splurge a bit by treating yourself to the same extra virgin olive oil you’ve been using for your salad dressings.

Ingredients:

1 large loaf Italian bread (at least 1 pound)
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbs. Freshly grated Parmesan
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Mix the garlic with the olive oil and allow the mixture to macerate for 1/2 hour at room temperature. In a separate bowl, combine the Parmesan, oregano, and parsley.

Split the bread lengthwise, and brush the cut surfaces with the garlic/oil mixture. Sprinkle both surfaces with the herbs.

Put the two halves back together, wrap the loaf in aluminum foil, and place it on a sheet pan. Bake for around 10 minutes.

To Serve:

Carefully unwrap the loaf and, using a serrated knife, cut into thick slices. Serve at once.

Serves six

Shrimp Scampi is a relative newcomer to the menus at neighborhood Italian restaurants—probably because it represents the first significant departure from recipes based on tomato sauce. According to the culinary research published on the Food Timeline, “The earliest reference to shrimp scampi in The New York Times is a restaurant advertisement published May 9, 1956 for The Tenakill Restaurant in Englewood NJ.”

Until I began looking into the origins of the dish, it hadn’t occurred to me that scampi, in the Italo-American lexicon, refers as much to the method of preparation as it does to the main ingredient. The word scampi didn’t appear in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary until 1925. At the time, it was defined as the plural form of the Italian word, scampo, “a large shrimp or prawn” and “a dish of shrimp or prawns grilled or sautéed in oil or butter and garlic.”

Away from the Gulf Coast, significant numbers of shrimp dishes didn’t show up on menus until Prohibition, and then, mostly in dainty shrimp salads and the Shrimp Cocktails of our previous post. After WWII, Shrimp Scampi began to appear on the menus of metropolitan, “Continental” restaurants. This was also the period when American French restaurants began to add “Italian” specialties to their offerings. Dishes like Chicken Tetrazzini and Spaghetti Bolognaise (note the French spelling) would appear cheek-by-jowl with Duck a l’Orange and Sole Meunière.

For generations, Italians have enjoyed the simple classic, gamberi alla casalinga, home-style shrimp. The dish is a simple combination of shrimp, sautéed in olive oil with garlic, red pepper flakes, and lemon juice. Shrimp Scampi includes butter and white wine.

I have a theory about how these last two defining ingredients got into the dish we call Shrimp Scampi: I believe a restaurant chef in America became aware of Gamberi alla Casalinga, and in the process of trying to Frenchify it for an upscale clientele, added the wine and butter. From that elevation, Shrimp Scampi crept back to the Little Italy communities, where it has established a comfortable and permanent residence—more often than not on a bed of linguine.

As we like to say whenever we cannot offer irrefutable proof, Se non e vero, e ben trovato. If it isn’t true, it makes a good story.

Shrimp Scampi

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Lbs. shrimp (16- 20 count), shelled and deveined
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Unsalted butter
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
½ Cup dry white wine
Juice of 1/2 lemon
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 Tbs. Grated lemon zest
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Season the shrimp on both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, then add the butter. When the bubbles have begun to subside, add the shrimp. Cook, without moving them, for 1 minute. Add the garlic and cook for about 1 minute longer. Turn the shrimp over and cook for 2 minutes more, or until they begin to turn pink. Transfer the shrimp to a bowl.

Return the skillet to the heat and pour in the wine and lemon juice. Boil the liquid to evaporate the alcohol and to reduce the sauce, about 2 – 3 minutes. Scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Stir the lemon zest and the first 4 Tbs. of parsley into the sauce. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Pour the sauce over the shrimp, and toss to combine.

To Serve:

Divide the shrimp among 4 plates or arrange on a platter and serve, garnished with the remaining parsley.

Neighborhood Italian restaurants would very likely serve this over a pound of linguine. I prefer to serve it as-is, with a salad and plenty of crusty bread as a vehicle for the sauce.

Serves four

Photo courtesy of WP ClipArt dot Com

Not every dish on Italian-American restaurant menus can claim lineage back to the old country. Born here, without known Italian antecedents, Shrimp Cocktail has held a prominent place for decades—on antipasto menus of American banquet halls and neighborhood Italian restaurants.

While the early 20th century origins of the concoction are well documented in numerous culinary tracts, the connection to Italians is not, though it can be easily inferred.

During the late 1800′s, the Port of New Orleans was second only to Ellis Island as a point of arrival for Italian—and particularly Sicilian—immigrants. In 1910, more than three quarters of the population of the city’s French Quarter was actually Italian. During this period, the French Quarter acquired the nicknames “Little Sicily,” and “Little Palermo.”

The association of Gulf Coast shrimp and the gastronomically indulgent residents of New Orleans is common knowledge. Newly arrived Italians, many of whom worked on the docks, would have been aware of their city’s attention to food, shellfish in particular. And it’s highly likely that they would have been aware of New Orleanians enjoying a dish turn-of-the-century menus listed as Shrimps in Tomato Catsup.

As to why shrimp were ever served as a ‘cocktail,’ we need to consider Prohibition and the temporary end of alcoholic cocktails, as they had been known. It appears that some of the fancier restaurants sought to fill their equally fancy stemware with something other than martinis and champagne. Restaurateurs began presenting legal commodities—shellfish or macerated fruit—in martini glasses, and, with a bit of tongue in cheek, these offerings were called ‘cocktails.’

From elegant restaurants, the shrimp cocktails found their way to less exclusive venues and eventually to the neighborhood red-sauce restaurants. After WW II, when supper clubs offering dinner and a floor-show drew both Italians and non-Italians, the serving of a chilled, elevated glass of shrimp became a sophisticated prelude to the otherwise immutable pastas and main courses alla Parmigiana.

Even now, when Americans can choose from sushi, ceviche, and even the crudo of la nuova cucina Italiana, the refined minimalism of pink shrimp curling over the edge of a martini glass recalls an age of national self-assurance and optimism.

Shrimp Cocktail

Ingredients:

20 shell-on (21 to 25 count) shrimp in their shells (five shrimp per person)

For the brine:

1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 cups ice

For the cocktail sauce:

1 Can(14 1/2-ounce) diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 Cup ketchup
4 Tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Few grindings fresh black pepper
Grated rind of 1/2 lemon
Hot sauce to taste (Tabasco is the traditional hot sauce. I prefer Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce)
Lemon wedges

Preparation: (at least an hour before serving)

Prepare the brine: Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water and set aside.

Using a pair of scissors or a serrated knife, make an incision down the outer curve of each shrimp. Remove the black intestinal tract and discard. Rinse shrimp under cool water but leave their shells intact.

Place cleaned shrimp into a bowl with brine and refrigerate them for 20 to 25 minutes.

While the shrimp are brining, whisk together tomatoes, ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and lemon rind, in a non-reactive bowl. Add hot sauce to taste and refrigerate the sauce until ready to serve.

Remove shrimp from the brine. In a large saucepan with a lid, bring an inch of water to simmering. Place a steamer basket in the pan and arrange the shrimp in one layer on the basket. Place the lid on the pan. After 2 minutes, turn the shrimp over so they cook evenly.

After approximately five minutes or when all the shrimp have turned pink, remove from heat and shock them in bowl of ice to stop the cooking. Allow the shrimp to cool to room temperature. Peel the shrimp, leaving the tails intact. Refrigerate until serving time.

To Serve:

Arrange the chilled shrimp around the edge of chilled Martini or Margarita glasses, placing sauce in a pool in the center of each glass.

Serves four.

What do stone quarries, carnations, and stuffed mushrooms have in common? On the surface, nothing. But as I dig into the history of Italian-American food, I find some very surprising connections…

In the early 20^th century, J.B. Swayne was a commercial grower of carnations in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Seeking a greater return from his hothouses, he experimented with a new crop, the mushroom agaricus bisporus, beneath his raised carnation beds.

Acknowledged as the father of modern commercial mushroom cultivation, Mr. Swayne provided employment to numerous Italian immigrants, who then went on to start their own mushroom farms and ultimately take control of the industry. (Even now, three-quarters of commercial mushroom growers in Chester County, PA, are of Italian descent.)

Stone masonry and quarry work had brought many Italians to Chester County as they built lavish homes for clients like the DuPonts in nearby Wilmington, Delaware. Leaving behind the coal mines of western Pennsylvania, other Italians had been drawn to the arduous, but far safer, occupation of floriculture. Most of these Italians had come to America from rural areas and were inveterate foragers. When introduced to mushroom cultivation, they were immediately taken with the idea of growing a foodstuff that had previously been available only as a whim of nature.

Chester County—close to Philadelphia, Wilmington, and the rail-lines that led to other major American cities—became the center of this new agribusiness. But how did the mushrooms wind up, stuffed, on the menus of the neighborhood Italian restaurants in Boston, New York, and Chicago? I have some theories, but first here are two things I do know:

1) While southern Italians wouldn’t have known much about the noble porcini (boletus edulis) from the north of Italy, they had surely foraged some variety of fungus on their own turf.

2) Later in the 20^th century, as white linen began to replace checked tablecloths, Italian restaurateurs in New York were attentive to the French menus at places like Delmonico’s and Maxim’s, which listed a particular appetizer: champignons farcis.

Southern Italians certainly knew how to stuff vegetables like peppers and tomatoes. But one garden delight abundant in Italy was not so readily available to them in America: zucchini flowers. Even poor contadini and giornaliere back in Italy had been able to enjoy stuffed zucchini blooms. Since many Italian immigrants and the first generation lived in America’s cities, they had fewer places to grow their own produce.

Frugality often inspires gastronomic ingenuity. Presented with an ample supply of white button mushrooms, I think Italian-Americans simply exercised the license and imagination of good translators. Lacking zucchini blossoms, they put their time-honored stuffing—breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, olive oil and Parmesan—into mushroom caps.

Sausage very likely found its way into the stuffing following World War II, when meat rationing was lifted. Many Italians made their own sausages anyway, and substituting sausage for the breadcrumbs was a statement of affluence.

By the 1950′s, antipasti were firmly entrenched on Italian-American menus, and creative chefs reveled in the ebullience of the post-War economy. They began stuffing mushrooms with ever-more expensive ingredients, such as crab meat. Large social gatherings like wedding receptions were made all the more festive by the presentation of a lavish antipasto buffet before a sit-down, multi-course dinner. Appetizer courses often included mushrooms with two or three different stuffings. Once again, in the spirit of Italian-American hospitality and celebration, excess was seen as a virtue.

Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients:

24 large (2 inch-diameter) white mushrooms, stems removed and finely chopped
1/2 Cup Italian-style dried bread crumbs (see Note)
1/2 Cup freshly grated Parmesan
2 Garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400° F.

Mix the chopped mushroom stems, bread crumbs, Parmesan, garlic, parsley, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium bowl to blend.

Coat a sheet pan with approximately 1 Tbs. of olive oil. Spoon the filling into the mushroom cavities and arrange on the baking sheet, stem side up. (Recipe can be completed to this point earlier in the day. Refrigerate, loosely covered.)

Drizzle remaining oil over the filling in each mushroom. Bake in the center of the oven until the mushrooms are tender and the filling is heated through and golden on top, about 25 minutes. Serve immediately.

Serves 6.

Mushrooms Stuffed with Sausage

Ingredients:

24 large (2 inch-diameter) white mushrooms, stems removed and finely chopped
1 Lb. sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing
1/2 Cup Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3/4 Cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes (peperoncino)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Cup unseasoned bread crumbs (see Note)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400° F.

Mix the chopped mushroom stems, sausage, parsley, garlic, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan, and the peperoncino together in a mixing bowl. Use your hands to break up the sausage, and to combine the ingredients. Add approximately 2 Tbs. of Olive oil and mix one last time to combine.

Put the bread crumbs in another bowl, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and add 1/4 cup of the Parmesan.

Oil the bottom of a sheet pan, or a shallow baking dish large enough to hold all the mushrooms in a single layer. Arrange the mushrooms in the pan, with the stem side facing upward. Season the insides with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.

Stuff each mushroom with a rounded spoonful of the sausage stuffing and sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. (Recipe can be completed to this point earlier in the day. Refrigerate, loosely covered.)

Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes until the stuffing is browned and the mushrooms are soft. Serve immediately.

Serves 6.

Mushrooms Stuffed With Crab Meat

Ingredients:

18 large (2 inch-diameter) white mushrooms, stems removed and finely chopped
7 Oz. crab meat
2 – 4 Scallions, including green tops, finely chopped
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, chopped
1 Tbs. Anisette liqueur (optional)
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1/4 Cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/3 Cup high-quality mayonnaise
3 Tbs. additional Parmesan

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

In a medium bowl, combine chopped mushroom stems, crab meat, scallions, oregano, and optional anisette. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Fold in the Parmesan, and mayonnaise until well combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or until ready to use.

Fill the mushroom caps with rounded teaspoonfuls of filling, and place them in a shallow baking dish or a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle tops with the remaining Parmesan, then bake in the center of the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately

Serves six.

Photo courtesy of Bruce Turner & Claire Moore, Austin, TX

The antipasto platter became part of the Italian-American repertoire following World War II. Americans who had served in Allied Forces’ operations in Italy had learned the pleasures of that little snack before the pasta. In Italy, that may have been as simple as a small bowl of olives, some pickled vegetables, or a few slices of salume, cured meats.

By the late 1940′s, the vegetables and condiments that Italians had been “putting up” at home were being produced by Italian-American manufacturers like Progresso, Mancini, Alessi, and Sclafani. No longer did one have to depend upon Nonna’s basement filled with crocks of brine and vinegar-preserved delicacies. For Italian and non-Italian alike, it had become easy to assemble plates of olives, canned beans, marinated artichoke hearts and mushrooms, roasted peppers, salume, and cheeses.

The expansive post-war mood and the celebration of consumption further encouraged Italian-American home and restaurant cooks to combine ingredients in new ways. Components that would have been savored separately in Italy began to appear together, to make up an entire first course.

The colorful antipasto platter became one more charming feature of the neighborhood restaurants, yet another demonstration of the abundance of the Italian table. In homes, antipasti became the Sunday afternoon accompaniments to that new past-time, watching television. No matter where it appeared— retirement dinners, testimonials, and wedding receptions at Elks Clubs all over America—the antipasto spread was an informal way to welcome guests and to ease them into the proper frame of mind to enjoy the parade of food that lay ahead.

Ingredients:
(Quantities are approximate)

Pantry Items

1 15 Oz. jar, artichoke hearts in oil, drained well and quartered (if necessary)
1 14 Oz. can, marinated mushrooms, drained
1 16 Oz. jar, roasted red peppers, drained and sliced into 1 in. strips
6 – 8 bottled Peperoncini
6 – 12 Flat anchovy filets (optional)

Deli Items

1/3 Lb. Sharp provolone, sliced
1/3 Lb. Fontina, sliced
12 Bocconcini or Cilegie di Mozzarella (bite-sized balls of mozzarella)
1/4 Lb. Genoa salami, sliced
1/4 Lb. Sopresatta, sliced
1/4 Lb. Mortadella, sliced
1/4 Lb. Capocola, sliced
1/2 Lb. Salt-cured Sicilian black olives

Garnish

4 Hard-cooked eggs, quartered lengthwise
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 Lemon, cut into 6 wedges
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, chopped

Preparation:

Place a small bowl of olives at the center of a large platter.

Arrange the slices of cheese, roasted peppers, and cold cuts on the platter. I like to overlap them around the edge of the plate. Note: depending on your taste and the size of your platter, you can either leave meat slices flat, or form them into rolls.

Drain the juices and oil from the mushrooms and artichoke hearts. (You can reserve the marinade for another use.)

Pile the mushrooms, artichoke hearts, peperoncini, and mozzarella balls around the olive bowl. Squeeze the juice from a wedge of lemon over the mushrooms and artichoke hearts.

Garnish the arrangement with the hard-boiled eggs, the remaining lemon wedges, and (optional) anchovies. Sprinkle the platter with chopped parsley.

Serves six

During the halcyon days of supper clubs, clams on the half-shell were dressed up as Clams Casino and Clams Oreganata, appetizers that became popular with the dinner-show crowd. Dishes like Pasta with Clam Sauce and Clams Possilipo had already become fixtures on the menus of nearly all neighborhood restaurants, but the supper clubs served their clams as starters rather than as entrees.

Dining Out in the Fifties

Over time, neighborhood Italian-American restaurateurs took a lesson from their uptown brethren and began offering separate antipasti courses on their menus. While this generated larger dinner checks for patrons and, thus, greater revenue for restaurants, it really was a natural extension of Italian home dining. Families often ate “just a little something” while the pasta water was coming to a boil.

The more upscale Italian-American restaurants went a step further, dividing their menus into separate pasta courses and entrees, but neighborhood places continued to serve their main dishes on a bed of pasta or with pasta as a side dish.

By the 1970′s, cookbook authors like Marcella Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, and Ada Boni were making us aware of the tenacious regionality of Italian food and cooking. American chefs riding the Northern Italian wave began serving dishes cooked with butter! Suddenly, everything North of Rome was “in.” Sine qua non ingredients like balsamic vinegar and sun-dried tomatoes defined a new class of Italian restaurants. Gnocchi, polenta and risotto supplanted pasta on many new menus. Restaurateurs from Tuscany and other northern provinces, notably Sirio Maccioni and Pino Luongo, presented Americans with a more refined version of Italian food.

But through all these changes, the neighborhood restaurants continued to serve their chicken Parmesan, shrimp scampi, and pasta with red sauce, as though unaware of the phenomenon taking place around them. Gradually, more of them replaced their red-and-white tablecloths with white linens. Rough wines in raffia-clad bottles were pushed aside by more carefully crafted Italian imports as more Americans began to appreciate and order wine. Antipasti had boosted profits, but vintage Barolos and Chiantis made even greater contributions to the bottom line. Yet even with these refinements, the spirit in which Italian food was prepared remained the same.

Despite encroachment from adjacent neighborhoods, dwindling Italian populations, and rising real estate prices, the urban neighborhood restaurants continue to thrive. Their culinary legacy is now more than a century in the making. Most tellingly, their clientele remains largely unchanged—students, artists, tourists, businesspeople, lovers, potential lovers creating a first-date memory, neighborhood regulars… and ever fewer who remember Nonna presiding over the dining room saying, Mangia, mangia!

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