​Mixing Southern Italian foodways – mostly Southern Italian foodways – with the ingredients and abundance of meats on hand and the need to make money, restaurants created dishes that are as much or more American than Italian, with some going on to become well-loved regional specialties over the decades, specialties that might seem a little odd to outsiders, at least to an outsider like me.  Even if seeming unusual, I do enjoy some of these.
 
Chicken Riggies – Utica, New York – This odd name doesn’t immediately signal any connection to an Italian-themed preparation, and doesn’t seem very appetizing, regardless. “Riggies” here means rigatoni.  It’s a heaty pasta dish featuring sauteed chicken breast, sweet and hot peppers, onion, heavy cream and tomatoes over rigatoni.  A chef named Bobby Hazelton is credited with creating the dish at the Clinton House restaurant in the village of Clinton, which was taken by one of his cooks to the Chesterfield in nearby Utica where it first appeared on a menu in 1982.  It’s popularity in area where Italian-American flavors are a mainstay ensured it became a specialty of that part of upstate New York.

Cincinnati Chili, Two-Way (to Five-Way) – Cincinnati – It's not the chili that's Italian but the spaghetti here.  Invented by immigrant restaurateurs from Macedonia in the early 1920s incorporating a regional love of chili along with the Americans’ affection for spaghetti, this is take on chili can include a bazaar’s worth of spices in addition to cumin and chili powder: cinnamon, allspice, cloves, paprika, turmeric, coriander, nutmeg, and oregano. And also Worcestershire sauce and unsweetened chocolate, all mixed into ground beef that has not been browned.  As someone who grew up with Texas chili, I find the slightly sweet and certainly very different-tasting Cincinnati chili rather unappealing; pouring a lot of it over spaghetti, even more so.  That’s called two-way.  It goes all the way to five-way with warmed red kidney beans taken from a can, diced onions, and then topped with thinly shredded cheddar cheese with the chili and spaghetti at the bottom.
 
Joe’s Special – San Francisco – The famed, nearly namesake dish of Original Joe’s restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach – not New Joe’s – can be thought of an Italian-American take on the frittata.  At least my father and his father called it the frittata when he lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and frequented the restaurant.  It is actually a mess of scrambled eggs with garlic, sauteed onions, mushrooms, ground beef, chopped spinach.  The popularity of this dish has remained very regional, just the Bay Area for some reason though it is quite versatile, working well for breakfast, lunch and dinner and reputedly is welcome when suffering from a hangover, plus pairing well with a cold light beer for any of those meals.  It’s easy to make at home, too, and quite tasty, if one of the ugliest Italian-American dishes around.

Johnny Marzetti – Columbus, Ohio – This is a hearty baked casserole of ground beef, cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta dish that is probably as much middle American as it is Italian-rooted.  It’s seemingly disappeared entirely from restaurants in the city associated with it, though.  The name has been associated with a long-shuttered restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, Marzetti’s, with Johnny Marzetti, being the brother-in-law of the owner.  But, the connection between the dish and the restaurant might have only started after the proprietor Teresa Marzetti’s death in 1972.  No menu from the Marzetti’s restaurants over many decades has the dish.  A recipe for a broadly similar preparation and the name Johnny Marzetti appeared in a Columbus newspaper in 1916.  And there are comparable dishes in nearby states bearing different names, as those in the Mideast and Midwest love their casseroles.  Teresa Marzetti’s restaurant has received some actual renown that you might have noticed in the supermarket aisles: the T. Marzetti salad dressings that began with a Marzetti restaurant in the 1950s.

Pepperoni Roll – West Virginia – A yeasted and shelf-stable roll filled with sticks of pepperoni sausage that was probably first made by the wives of Italian coal miners looking to provide a food that could be easily carried to and eaten in cramped worksites, the pepperoni roll had its commercial start with Giuseppe Argiro at the Country Club Bakery in the town of Fairmount in the 1920s or 1930s.  There are versions filled with peperoni slices and ground pepperoni, too.

Spiedies – Taking its name from the Italian word for skewer, this sandwich specialty of Binghamton, New York features marinated cubes of meat – usually chicken or pork these days for the traditional versions – grilled over an open flame to develop a nice caramelization on the exterior that are then placed into a big, crusty Italian-style roll.  Spiedies have been around since the 1920s, when the meat was just lamb, and the popular Italian dressing-like marinade has been available commercially since 1951.  An example of a hyper-local item, these were completely unknown in Ithaca just fifty miles away when I lived for a couple of years.

Toasted Ravioli – St. Louis – Deep-fried ravioli that is sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese and served with a side of marinara sauce for dipping is a St. Louis specialty that has slowly grown in popularity beyond the Gateway Arch and that works well at casual Italian-American restaurants and for a bar snack.  It was the result of an accident in the 1950s at a restaurant called Angelo Oldani's on the Hill, the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis, when a new cook, a German, thought that the boiling oil was meant for the ravioli and dropped in the pasta.  The deep-frying made for a different, if still enjoyable dish, especially when paired with some grated cheese and a tomato sauce.

Utica Greens – Utica, New York – This is the second dish from Utica, which is only about 60,000 folks, but a large number of Italian-Americans, and the basis for this was a commonly planted vegetable in the gardens of the southern Italian immigrants and their descendants, escarole.  This is even from the same restaurant that put Chicken Riggies on the menu, Chesterfield.  Called Greens Morrelle there and its successor establishment, it was named for the chef who invented them in 1988.  It’s Utica Greens elsewhere: escarole with fried prosciutto, hot cherry peppers, grated Romano cheese and seasoned bread crumbs, a regional favorite that hasn’t spread very far.

Pepperoni rolls from Barney's Bakery in Weirton, West Virginia

In a review of an Italian restaurant a few years ago, the doyenne of local food writers raved that "the house-made pastas here are so good, so springily al dente..."  Not the correct choice of words; not the "springily," which my spell-checker flagged, but "al dente."  The mistake is forgivable, as most food writers - and most everyone - are quick to use "al dente" when describing pasta whether or not the pasta is actually al dente.

Concerning the attributes of house-made, or freshly made pasta - pasta fresca in Italian - the words "al dente" are never correct.  "You cannot do fresh pasta al dente!" screamed the longtime, Italian-bred chef at San Francisco's famed Fior d'Italia some years ago on a Travel Channel show, Pasta Paradises.  And a cookbook on the subject, Pasta Fresca, similarly related that "fresh pasta will not have the al dente quality of dried pasta, but instead will be meltingly tender to the bite."  It is the commercially made dried pasta - pasta secca - made with hard wheat flour like the familiar spaghetti, linguine and penne found in supermarkets is what can be - and, according to Italians, should be cooked al dente.  This is the toothsome texture, neither too hard and certainly not mushy, but a bit chewy.

There is a caveat or two.  Freshly made pasta using hard wheat flour is a tradition in parts of southern Italy like the orecchiette in Puglia that can be cooked al dente.  It is quite rare here, as soft wheat flour - such as all-purpose - requires much less effort to make into pasta by hand.  You might find some pastas made in this age-old fashion at restaurants, but it is very much an exception.  Also, hard wheat flour is found in the egg pastas imported from Italy that are often used as a substitute, as I'm apt to make, for fresh pasta.  These are typically packaged as little nests or balls of pasta.  By law in Italy any packaged dry pasta has to use hard wheat flour even if that type flour might be traditional for that style of pasta.

I think that the biggest reason "al dente" is thrown about is that its use signals that the diner knows the subject.  Knows pasta, like how catchwords and -phrases are quickly thrown about by most of us.  The words "pasta" and "al dente" just go together when talking about food, whether or not they should go together for that particular preparation.  Americans typically like their pasta like spaghetti cooked to a much softer consistency than al dente.  That might not be an issue.  It just shouldn't be called "al dente" and that phrase should be used much more sparingly.

Spaghetti alle vongole in Sorrento, cooked nicely al dente

Always taking the brief restaurant reviews in Texas Monthly with a grain or two of salt, I wasn’t too surprised to find in an otherwise positive review published last month for Tonight & Tomorrow in the recently refurbished La Colombe d’Or on Montrose a demerit like this: “Less successful was the bucatini, an undercooked pasta that heirloom tomatoes and pistou could not save.”

I immediately understood the phrase “undercooked pasta” as meaning that the pasta was cooked al dente or, more likely, even beyond that.  The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink defines it as being “somewhat chewy, neither hard nor mushy.”  In one of her cookbooks Lidia Bastianich describes that “al dente is a sensation of slight resistance, generated by the pressure of chewing.”  Cooking dried pasta – only dried pasta can be cooked al dente – to a soft, near-resistance-free consistency, not al dente, is what the vast majority of Americans do.  This is why the box of DeCecco linguine in my pantry gives two different instructions for boiling – “Cooking Time: 12 Min / Al Dente: 10 Min.”

The owner of Perbacco, the longstanding Italian eatery in a corner of the Pennzoil Building downtown that does pasta well, made it a point to complain to me once how Americans like their pasta overcooked.  He didn’t seem too happy about it, but for me, I don’t see it as really a problem unless the pasta gets mushy or loses some of its flavor being too soft.  Let people cook it how they like it.  And Americans largely like their pasta fairly soft; Italians like their pasta more toothsome, al dente.  Though Italians might disagree, I believe it’s mostly a matter of preference.

And I believe that pasta cooked al dente is certainly not undercooked.

​Italian cuisine encompasses a lot of things, but pasta might be the most emblematic.  In a recent issue of the Italian Gambero Rosso electronic magazine, Cristina Bowerman, the Michelin-starred chef of Glass Hosteria in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood answers the question of what Italian cuisine is to her with: “…if there is a characterizing trait, I think of pasta, in particular dry pasta…And in cooking, in the texture and sensitivity with which we handle the pasta we distinguish ourselves, it defines us.”  The product is not the freshly made soft pasta that many restaurants tout, but the commercial product you can purchase in the supermarket.
 
Despite her non-Italian surname, Bowerman is a native of Puglia in southwestern Italy.  She lived over a decade in the U.S., in California and Austin, Texas; her English faculty, in addition to her restaurant prominence and knowledge, has made her a frequent presence on American food shows on Italy in recent years.
 
In somewhat of a corollary to her assertion, dry pasta is both the Italian item that is most cooked by Americans and resonates most as Italian.  Of course, the way we cook pasta in America is different than is done in Italy, usually with exuberance, fewer or no rules, and typically much more sauce.  Pasta can be delicious in Italian, or not.

​A few months ago I came across a quote in the Wall Street Journal from a well-regarded chef and restaurateur Douglass Williams of MIDA in South Boston: "No other food appeals to as many people, as easily, as Italian. It doesn't matter where you're from, when you sit down to pizza or pasta, you get it." 
 
There is a lot of truth to that, and the sentiment probably applies to diners in most of the world.  Italian is popular.  Italian-themed food, whether or not it is tethered closely to Italy, is seemingly more approachable – and maybe enjoyable – than other cuisines.  Pizza has been part of nearly all this country’s dining habits for decades and pasta even longer.  Plus, the inevitable splash of tomato sauce or the greasy fingers from the pizza helps ensure that many of the dining experiences are fun, appealing, or at least can’t be taken to seriously.

Probably the best ravioli dish I've ever had, in Parma.

​Pizza originated in Italy, to be sure, but it is not originally Italian.  This is because pizza is specifically Neapolitan in origin.  It’s from Naples, the big, chaotic and historic port city in southern Italy, and pizza actually spread more quickly throughout the U.S. than it did elsewhere in Italy, as odd as that may seem.  Pizza initially traveled with the immigrants from Naples and its environs, of whom there were many to the U.S.  To note, the Sicilian pizza is also fair part the pizza landscape here.  Arriving later, it was derived from the sfincione served in Palermo, a type of spongy focaccia, but that’s for another tale.
 
A brief history of pizza in America until it become popular
 
One of the most important events in the gustatory history of the country seems to have begun officially in 1905 when Gennaro Lombardi, a native of Naples, opened the first licensed pizzeria in America in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Lombardi’s.  He had been making versions of this strictly Neapolitan fast food at the bakery in which he worked, which was also being done elsewhere, at least in his neighborhood.  The New York Tribune noted a couple of years earlier in 1903 in Little Italy that “apparently the Italian has invented a kind of pie. The ‘pomidore pizza,’ or tomato pie.”  These pizza pies were just the province of these Neapolitans; in Italy at the time, it was not found outside of the vicinity of Naples. “There are only two places in New York where you can get real, genuine Neapolitan pizze. One is on Spring Street and one on Grand. The rest are Americanized substitutes,” reported an informed source, “the Dago,” in a Sun piece in the summer of 1905.
 
These pizzas first found an audience with those recently arrived Neapolitans and quickly spread to all the Italians living in the neighborhood.  Pizza has proven to be a very easy sell over the years.  In the 1920s and 1930s Lombardi’s former employees, all Neapolitans, opened pizzerias in Brooklyn, East Harlem and uptown Manhattan that would be destined to become icons in their own right.  But, pizzas were really an ethnic, mostly Italian, specialty until after the Second World War, even in New York City.   Also in the 1920s, pizzerias were opened by Neapolitan immigrants in the Italian neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut, Trenton, and Boston.  Philadelphia and Chicago were two of the few other cities with Neapolitan pizzaioli and pizza before the Depression. 
 
Pizza spread throughout the country after the Second World War, as it began to be served well beyond the Italian neighborhoods.  Starting and growing in areas with virtually no competition from pizzerias with Italian antecedents, several regional, national and international pizza companies got their start in the mid-1950s to 1960: Shakey’s in Sacramento in 1954 – the name referencing one of its malaria-damaged owners – Pizza Hut in Wichita and Pizza Inn in Dallas in 1958, Little Caesar’s in suburban Detroit in 1959, and Domino’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1960.  Commercially made gas and electric pizza ovens, along with large mixers for the dough introduced in the mid-1950s, helped make the creation of the pizzas easier, far less dependent on a seasoned pizza-maker. American business know-how helped even more.  The franchise system increased the number of branches and market presence quickly.  Even if far from the best pizzas around – the pies usually featured doughier and blander crusts and lower-quality toppings – these pizza chains have been greatly enjoyed by millions over the years.  Not incidentally, with tremendous insight, or luck, Pizza Hut, Dominos and Pizza Inn first opened right near colleges and universities whose enrollment grew tremendously from the 1950s on, something that these chain pizza joints rode to continued and continuing success.
 
An even briefer history of pizza in Italy outside of Naples
 
“Pizza, which was unknown in north Italy before the war” recounted cookbook author Marcella Hazan in her memoir Amacord.  Pizzas was difficult to find anywhere outside of the Naples region through the 1950s. Even in southern Italy beyond the greater Naples area, it was not be found.  A family friend from Reggio Calabria, the city at the toe of the boot, did not have her first pizza until she arrived in New York in the late 1950s.  She said that Naples was the only place in Italy to get pizza then.
 
It came to those other cities with transplanted Neapolitans who traveled north to find work in the industrial boom after the war.  For example, in Hazan’s northern region, Parma, a well-to-do and university city, got its first pizzeria in 1960 started by a person from Salerno, south of Naples.  Though now popular throughout Italy, pizza has taken hold the most in a city closer to Naples, Rome, which has developed a couple distinctive versions.  The first was pizza tonda, a round pizza with a blistered cracker-thin crust that grew out of the Neapolitan versions.  Then came pizza al taglio, a long rectangular pizza without Neapolitan antecedents, which is more like a focaccia and sold mostly in take-away places.  It has become synonymous with Roman pizza outside of Rome.  The Eternal City also currently boasts some excellent pizzerias making version similar to those in Naples.    
 
It is true what Carol Helotsky wrote in her book Pizza - A Global History: “Pizza went from being strictly Neapolitan to being Italian-American and then becoming Italian,” though I’d clarify, adding that it became American after Italian-American.

Brandi in Naples, the birthplace of the margherita pizza, and the home of the best margherita pizza I've ever eaten.

​Some years ago, a longtime friend who is an avid cook, asked me if my family had a good recipe for meat sauce.  I responded no, a little surprised with the question, as I think that we had it at home when I was a kid, though I don’t have any memories of it.  And, these days, it’s not something that I make very often at all.  But, meat sauce with spaghetti used to be seen on just about every Italian-themed restaurant menu in this country and is still to be found.  It can be quite satisfying if done well, to be sure. 
 
This Italian-American meat sauce is distinct from the famed and delicious ragù Bolognese that’s typically served with wide strands of freshly made pasta and originally comes from Bologna, the capital of the rich-food region of Emilia-Romagna.  The main reason is that hardly any of the Italian immigrants came here from that area.  Also, it’s made differently than what is called meat sauce.  True ragù Bolognese was almost unknown on restaurant menus until the mid-1970s with the introduction of “Northern” Italian cooking to the U.S. that included Marcella Hazan’s inaugural cookbook.  This had a terrific recipe for the dish, which gained a lot of traction among adventurous home cooks.  Meat sauce is also not what Italian-Americans often call “gravy” or “Sunday gravy,” a very long-cooked sauce featuring several types of meat that comes from the Naples area.
 
Prompted by my friend’s query, I did some research into the origin of the Italian-American meat sauce.  From what I found and as far as I can tell, it is typically just ground beef sauteed until done with a little onion or garlic, or both, and then added to a cooked tomato sauce.  It is easy with tomato sauce on hand, better homemade even pulled from the freezer on a weekday night.
 
Something much tastier is a preparation that my brother and his wife have been making for years.  Soon after it was published in 2000, my brother and I had copies of The Italian-American Cookbook by John Mariani, the longtime food and restaurant writer, and his wife Galina, a book that seemed to fit quite well how we liked to eat and cook.  John Mariani happened to be part of the small group along with me on a gastronomic trip to Pavia near Milan in late 2019.  I had to quickly tell him that my brother and sister-in-law were big fans Galina’s Meat Sauce (page 126-127) – as I was of their efforts – though they ended up modifying the recipe in his cookbook.  He seemed quite pleased, though I couldn’t tell if he minded the desire for changes to it.  Mariani mentioned that the meat sauce was entirely Galina’s creation, bay leaves weren’t part of his mother’s Neapolitan-rooted cooking, and has been a favorite of his and his sons for years.  I can see why.
 
The adjustments that Gene and Cara made gave the sauce a little more complexity and richness.  They added milk, additional dried spices – fennel, parsley and thyme – replaced the water with wine, seasoned the ground beef when it was cooking separately, omitted the  sugar, and simmered the sauce for three hours instead of forty-five minutes.  It was now not too unlike a ragù Bolognese, if with still the familiar Italian-American taste.  You might want to give this a try when you have a few hours to cook.
 
Cara’s and Gene’s version of Galina’s Meat Sauce – Not the most elegant name, but I couldn’t come up with anything better.
 
Ingredients
 
Olive oil – 1 cup
Yellow Onions – 3, chopped
Carrots – 2, grated
Celery stalk – 1, finely chopped
Garlic cloves – 6, minced
Ground Beef – 2 pounds; alternatively, 1 pound each of ground beef and ground Italian sausage
Milk – 1 cup
Red Wine, dry – 1 cup
Peeled Tomatoes – 3 28-ounces cans
Tomato Paste – 1 6-ounce can
Bay Leaves – 3
Oregano, dried – 2 teaspoons
Fennel, dried – ¼ teaspoon
Thyme, dried – ¼ teaspoon
Parsley, dried – 1 teaspoon
Salt – 5 teaspoons
Black Pepper – 1 teaspoon
 
Directions

1. In a large stockpot, heat over medium heat a little more than ½ cup of olive oil.  When sufficiently hot, add the onions then carrots and celery and cook until these have lightly browned, about 10 minutes.
2. In a separate large sauté pan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil on high heat then add the ground beef.  Add about 1 teaspoon of the salt and ½ teaspoon of the pepper and stir in thoroughly.  After about 5 minutes add the milk and cook for a few more minutes until a fair portion of the milk has evaporated.
3. In the stockpot with the vegetables, add the garlic then add 2 teaspoons of the salt and ¼ teaspoon of the pepper and cook for 2 more minutes.
4. Add the ground beef into the stockpot. 
5. In the stockpot add the bay leaves, oregano and the other dried spices, tomato paste, cans of tomatoes with its liquids and the red wine.  Stir well, crushing the tomatoes.  Season with the remaining 2 teaspoons of salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
6. Raise heat to high and bring to a boil.  Lower the temperature to low and cook for 3 hours.
7. Serve with pasta, with grated Parmigiano, or use in a lasagna.

 
I’ve made this sauce, albeit without the fennel seeds, which I don’t usually have.  It was still excellent.
 
It is better the next day as the Marianis mention, and it freezes very well, too.

The very well-used cookbook

OK, “magical” is too strong of a word, but this wine was really good, and good in an unexpected way, something completely different from what I had experienced with this varietal.  Among the two-plus cases of wine from Italy I was shipped several months ago by a PR person whom I had met on a wine trip there some years ago was a Moscato from Sicily, Moscà from Barone Sergio.  I wasn’t familiar with any Moscatos from Sicily, or the producer, but the varietal, called Moscato di Noto there, is the same Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains that is used famously in Asti and in every region in Italy under several different names.
                      
So, the grape was the same as the well-known Moscato d’Asti, with which I had become much better acquainted a couple of years before on a trip to Piedmont that was sponsored, in part, by the Moscato d’Asti consortium.  Moscato d’Asti are aromatic, lightly sparkling wines – frizzante in Italian – that courtesy of a stuck fermentation, are vinified to a low alcohol amount of alcohol, 4.5% and 6.5%.  Often tasting of honeysuckle, pear, lemon, and orange, Moscato d’Asti wines are somewhat sweet, with a high amount of residual sugar, 120 to 130 g/l, which is a lot.  But, due to the considerable acidity that helps makes for wines that are rather balanced, if still sweet. These wines can be terrific, a far cry from the cheap, overly sweet, unbalanced and simple replications of Moscato d’Asti from Australia, California and elsewhere in Italy.
 
This Sicilian Moscato from Barone Sergio was something unlike these Moscatos from Asti.  Not entirely unlike, as it had flavors such as the citrus and honeysuckle recognizably Moscato-esque, but it is a still wine and one that is 13%.  I found it nicely aromatic, dry, balanced, with a medium body and firm structure, and very enjoyable with food with a touch of spice.  Delicious, even, and a type of wine that I would like to consume on a regular basis.  Its uniqueness was another reminder of the wonderful diversity that exists among Italian wines today, a wonderful diversity of very well-made wines. 
 
Barone Sergio Moscà is distributed by Artisanal Cellar in this country, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to get to my part of it in southeast Texas.  Something that I’ll have to keep looking for.

​There is no family recipe of tomato sauce – or gravy – in my immediate family.  This is because my Italian heritage is limited to my great-grandfather from the Marche region in central Italy and my great-grandmother whose parents were from Tuscany and Venice.  These are all areas that don’t have a tomato sauce with pasta tradition, at least the familiar ways that Italian-Americans and Americans love.  So, no Riccetti family sauce.
 
Long having an interest in perfecting a tasty long-cooked pasta sauce recipe, I recently queried a few of my Riccetti cousins, who all live in the Chicago area.  My cousin Celeste responded with her go-to recipe, one that she calls a marinara sauce.  It’s cooked for just an hour, before the possible onset of any possible astringency.  The result is something between the 20- to 30-minute simmered quickly cooked tomato sauces I have been cooking often in recent years and the hours-long sauce that many and many restaurants make.  I have made this a couple of times now and it has been terrific, both with DOP-certified whole peeled tomatoes and the cheapest ones sold at the supermarket.  The vibrancy evident in most decent quality canned tomatoes remains in the finished sauce while also having some depth and complexity.  I’ve just paired the sauce with pasta so far, but Celeste mentioned that used it with veal braciole for Christmas to very good effect.
 
Of possible interest, the recipe has a strong Sicilian influence: the use of tomato paste, the addition of sugar, the combining of both garlic and onion at its base, and the use of oregano for something other than saucing pizza (or making a pizzaiolo sauce).  Celeste’s mother, my Aunt Josephine, is Sicilian-American, so it is expected.  For tomato sauces for a while, I’ve been using mostly those rooted in Naples that use fewer ingredients along with one from Marcella Hazan, but this one will be getting much more my attention going forward.
 
Tomatoes, peeled – 28-ounce can, crushed
Tomato paste – 6-ounce can
Water – 1 cup or so, more if desiring a thinner sauce
Onion, medium-sized – 1, finely chopped
Garlic – 3 cloves, finely chopped
Parsley, fresh – 1 teaspoon, finely chopped
Oregano, dried – 1 teaspoon
Salt –  1 teaspoon
Black pepper – ½ teaspoon
Sugar – 2 teaspoons
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon olive oil
Basil, fresh – 2 tablespoons, chopped

1. Sweat onion, garlic and parsley in the olive oil.
2. Add the tomato paste, stir in well and cook for 30 seconds.
3. Add the crushed tomatoes and water to create the desired thickness
4. Add the salt, pepper, oregano, and sugar.
5. Simmer for 1 hour.  No more.
6. After sauce has been cooked, add the chopped basil.

 
I made a couple of small adjustments when I’ve prepared the sauce.  For years, I’ve been in the habit of cooking onions down somewhat first when these are part of a recipe.  I also used a food mill to remove the stems of the tomatoes and provide a smooth consistency for the sauce.

It seems for a while now that supermarkets and big liquor stores have aggressively featured panettone: palettes of them in at least a dozen different brands and a number of sizes.  Panettone is the Italian tall, dome-shaped cake that makes its appearance before Christmas.  Originally from Milan, it is popular throughout much of Italy during the Christmas season, at least the lands north of Rome.  Somewhat like an Italian version of fruitcake, if much tastier, it is sold throughout the world, and makes for a pleasant dessert or a semi-sweet accompaniment to coffee or something stronger.
 
Panettone is actually a little more versatile than you might expect.  This is good to know if you end up with plenty of it left after Christmas and tired of eating it with coffee or a liqueur, tempted to toss out the remainder of the often substantially sized box.  At an Italian Expo event some years ago, a chef who had worked in Milan served an amazingly simple sandwich from his restaurant’s booth.  It was mascarpone slathered between a couple of slices from a panettone.  It was very good, and extremely easy to replicate at home, and affordable.  An inexpensive one kilo (two-pound-plus) panettone can be had for $10 or so.  If good quality mascarpone is tough to find at your nearby grocers, you might substitute brie or cream cheese, though I can’t vouch that the results will be as tasty.
 
Another use was suggested to me by famed restaurateur Piero Selvaggio of Valentino a while back, especially for somewhat past-prime panettone.  It makes the base for terrific French toast.  Or, more accurately, that might be Milanese toast.


A slice of panettone at Cascina Vittoria in Certosa di Pavia last year.  It was a lot better than anything that you can find here.

​Michelin’s restaurant guides have provided a wonderful and reliable source of dining suggestions for me for years, mostly in Europe but also domestically, in Chicago.  Though I didn’t get to employ any of the guides this year, there is something that I learned during my last trip overseas about a year ago that you should be aware when using a Michelin guide to plan a visit to an restaurant anointed with a star or more.  I wish I would have known this some time ago.  
 
A couple of years ago, my family was dined at Parizzi, reputed to be the best restaurant in Parma, and accolated with a Michelin star.  That star was a reason to visit.  As with all restaurants with stars, La Guide Michelin Italia gave a list of dishes.  For Parizzi, it was a salad with smoked pork, veal tips, and tartare di cavallo, horse tartare.  I remembered the salad as the recommended starter and ordered that instead of the tartare, then the veal tips.  When visiting Michelin-starred places, I have always ordered the dishes that were named in the guide if still offered.  I always assumed that these were the restaurant’s best preparations or the most highly recommended.  Though I really wanted the horse tartare – a sometime-seen specialty of the area – but thought the salad was what was really advised by the guide.  Only one starter could be ordered.  And, I was mollified by my brother sitting next to me who ordered the tartare, saying that he would split it with me.  He loved it.  Quite a lot, in fact, and forwarded maybe only half a forkful. 
 
Really, no matter, though, as my salad and the rest of the food was terrific.  The meal was fantastic, overall, the best during my two week trip to Italy.
 
Last fall, I was on a gastronomic trip to Pavia, south of Milan.  One of the fellow travelers was the longtime, acclaimed food and restaurant writer John Mariani.  He mentioned a tidbit or two about the Michelin guides.  Compiled by understaffed group of reviewers who were unlikely to visit an establishment more than just once: that the dishes that are listed for the starred entries are simply just the dishes that the reviewer had.  These were not necessarily the restaurant’s best dishes, just the ones that were sampled, and probably enjoyed. 
 
It would have been nice to know that – I find the conveyance of the information in the Michelin guides about particular places as rather parsimonious and even Delphic – and in Parma I could have had a full order of delicious horse tartare all to myself.

The tortelli d'erbette at Parizzi with plenty of grated Parmigiano

​Yesterday evening, as part of the Week of Italian Cuisine, a worldwide program of the Italian government for promoting Italian cuisine and food products, the Italian consulate in Houston hosted a virtual dinner to honor the 200th anniversary of the birth of Pellegrino Artusi, the author of Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.  First published in 1891, a scant two decades after the country of Italy was fully unified, Arusi’s work has resonated as “the symbol of Italian cuisine” – if mostly featuring the cooking of Tuscany and Romagna, with a number of regions completely ignored including most of the South.  It was a start to quantify and celebrate some of the amazing diversity and quality found in the disparate cuisines of Italy.  That Artusi’s work is still cherished by many Italian cooks to this day and taught in cooking schools there was quite impressive to learn from the event. 
 
The virtual dinner was created by Amalfi restaurant, which serves some of the very best Italian food in the state of Texas.  Chef and owner Giancarlo Ferrara has long done wonderful work cooking dishes both rooted in his native Salerno area south of Naples, and those from other cuisines he has cooked over the years.  Ferrara and team did a terrific job with the several courses, a difficult task for roughly thirty dinners to be cooked and packed then eaten several hours and at another site after preparation and delivery.  Amalfi’s dishes ranged from Gnocchi alla Romana, Vitello Tonnato with sides of roast vegetables, and a dessert of Apple Strudel were the courses.  Apple Strudel in Italy?  Yes, it is actually popular in Friuli near the northeastern edge of Italy, which was once under the control of the Austrian Empire, and there are plentiful apples.
 
The strudel was excellent last night, featuring a delicate crust, tender and flavor apples and nicely complemented with small sides of caramel and whipped cream.  I couldn’t help but quickly finishing it though I thought I was fun from the previous courses.  Below is the recipe from Artusi, some previous pastry skills are helpful.  Amalfi also seemingly sauteed the apple slices and added pine nuts for its version, which worked quite well.
 
Grande Strudel di Mele [Great Apple Strudel]
 
For the pastry dough:
 
Flour –  250 grams
Warm milk
Butter – About the size of a walnut
Egg – 1
Salt – Pinch
 
For the filling:
 
Apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced – 500 grams
Butter, melted – 100 grams, plus some more for brushing the dough.
Sugar – 85 grams
Currants, dried – 85 grams
Lemon zest – 1 lemon
Cinnamon, ground – 2 or 3 pinches
 
Steps:
 

1. Make a rather firm dough with he flour, warm milk, butter, egg and pinch of salt.
2. Let the dough rest a little before rolling it out as thin as that used for taglierini noodles.
3. Cover the sheet of dough with a layer of the peeled, cored and thinly sliced apples.
4. Scatter the currants, lemon zest, cinnamon, sugar and then the 100 grams of melted butter over the layer of sliced apples.
5. Reserve a little of the melted butter for use later.
6. Roll up the dough with the filling to form the shape of a cylinder.
7. Brush the leftover melted butter on the dough.
8. Place the strudel in a greased copper baking pan and bake until done.

 
Adapted from Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino.

The famed, nearly namesake dish of Original Joe’s in San Francisco can be thought of an Italian-American take on the frittata.  My father called it the frittata when he lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and frequented the restaurant.  The popularity of this dish has remained regional for some reason, though it is very versatile, working well for breakfast, lunch and dinner and reputedly is welcome when suffering from a hangover, plus pairing well with a cold light beer for any of those meals. 
 
It’s easy to make at home and quite tasty, if one of the ugliest Italian-American dishes around.
 
Serves 2
 
Olive oil – 2 tablespoons
Onion – ⅔ cup, chopped
Ground beef, chuck – ½ pound
Spinach, frozen – ¾ cup, thawed, somewhat dried, and finely chopped
Oregano, dried – ⅛ teaspoon
Basil, dried – ⅛ teaspoon
Salt – to taste
Black pepper – to taste
Eggs – 3
Parmigiano-Reggiano – ¼ cup, grated
 
1. Heat the oil in a pan. Add the onion and cook over medium-high heat, stirring from time to time, until it just starts to brown.
2. Add the meat, stirring, until no longer pink.
3. Add the spinach to the pan.
4. Add the oregano, basil, salt and pepper.
5. Break the eggs into a bowl and mix well. Add to the skillet and scramble with the beef mixture.
6. When eggs are cook, remove from heat.
7. Sprinkle with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve.
 
Option – Sauté sliced cremini mushrooms in butter or olive oil to adorn the dish, similar to what is done at the restaurant these days.

The as it is at Original Joe's, which is housed at the once longtime home of Fior d'Italia.  Photo by Cullen328 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78734433

At a recent virtual wine dinner at Roma in Houston, befitting the wines from a top Barbera producer in Piedmont, the first course, the antipasto, was veal tonnato.  It was easily my favorite of the three courses that night.  Veal tonnato is a classic cold veal dish in a tuna sauce usually served as a starter, which I have long really enjoyed.  For those unfamiliar with the preparation, veal and tuna might seem an odd combination, but it is actually a wonderful pairing.  If you enjoy canned tuna, in a mild form, and mayonnaise, you will like veal tonnato.  Served chilled or almost room temperature, it works well during summertime.

With the often very warm weather throughout much of the year, veal tonnato would be a welcome sight nearly year round at many Italian restaurants in Houston, but it is rarely found.  There isn’t much veal on Houston Italian restaurant menus, for one.  And, veal in tuna sauce might seem a little obscure to many.  Not only here; veal tonnato has not really found too often on Italian menus around the country.  Looking at around 650 Italian restaurant menus over the years, veal tonnato showed up on just 4% of them.  The dish is a specialty of eastern Piedmont and that’s also found in the adjacent region south of Milan.  The cuisine of that area, lauded in Italy, hasn’t been found at too many restaurants here.  It’s shame that it’s tough to find when heading out.  You might need to make it yourself:
 
Veal:
 
Veal round or shoulder – 1 ¾ pound
Carrot
Onion
Celery stalk
White wine vinegar – 1 tablespoon
Olive Oil – 1 tablespoon
Salt – 1 teaspoon
 
Sauce:
 
Canned tuna, drained – 7 ounces
Anchovy filets, drained – 3
Capers, drained and rinsed – 2 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon for garnishing
Egg yolks, hard-boiled – 2
Olive oil – 3 tablespoons
Lemon – 1
 
Cook the veal:

1. Tie the veal with string.  
2. Add the veal, carrot, onion, celery stalk, vinegar and olive oil to the pan.
3. Add enough water to a deep pan to cover the veal, add the salt and bring to a boil.
4. Cover the pan and simmer over a low heat until the veal is tender, about two hours.
5. Turn off the heat and allow the veal to cool in the stock.

 
Make the sauce:

1. Put the tuna, anchovy, capers and hard-boiled egg yolks into a food processer and process for about 30 seconds.
2. Add in the olive oil, the juice of the lemon and about 3 tablespoons of the stock from cooking the veal and then turn on the food processors for about 15 seconds more.  The sauce should have the consistency of freshly made mayonnaise.
3. Untie the veal and slice fairly thinly.  Spoon the sauce over the veal.  Garnish with the remaining capers.  Refrigerate for at least a few hours before serving.

 
Adapted from The Silver Spoon cookbook.
 

A more artistic version of veal tonnato at a restaurant at the Enoclub restaurant in Alba, Piedmont a couple of years ago. Maybe a little bit blurry because of all the wine.

​I was on a webinar the other day about how restaurateurs are rethinking the fine dining model during the disruption caused by the pandemic.  One of the panelists was the owner of the Il Gattopardo Group of Neapolitan-rooted restaurants in New York and the chairman of the Gruppo Italiano, which promotes authentic Italian food products and dining, Gianfranco Sorrentino.  He made an assertion that struck a chord: “Nothing can replace the experience of dining at a busy Italian restaurant.”  Something that is not currently available in New York, or here.
 
Though I have greatly enjoyed busy, quality restaurants of all stripes over the years, maybe there is something special about busy Italian – and also Italian-American  – ​restaurants at dinnertime: the oft-gracious and gregarious owners and staff, that there is wine at every table, the greater volubility, and the seeming pleasure of the patrons, maybe more so than at other types of restaurants.
 
The comment made me think of some of the more memorable or enjoyable times at a “busy Italian restaurant” over the years.  Grotto in Houston, during its glory days in its original location in the early 1990s when it garnered some national attention, was a go-to first date place for me for years with its usually excellent, vibrant Americanized Italian fare that drew on owner Tony Vallone’s familial ties to the Naples area in always bustling, festive setting aided by slightly bawdy murals and in an atmosphere that I found eminently comfortable. It also drew plentiful numbers of patrons with a lot more money and taste than I had at the time, leading me to believe I knew more than I did about dining Italian-style.
 
Without the same type of style, though as busy, or busier, was Cunetto House of Pasta in St. Louis where I traveled for work later that decade.  It was packed each of the few times I went, usually having to wait with an appropriately stiff drink or two in the homey, somewhat tacky (or just Midwestern) bar area before proceeding to the dining room that was invariably filled with pasty and plus-sized St. Louisans to fill up on wonderfully over-sauced and tasty plates of Italian-American pastas or tender, succulent pieces of veal along with the din of diners doing the same, happily. 
 
Il Latini in Florence was recommended by the owners of the pensione where I stayed along with a couple friends and it initially seemed that it might have been a tourist trap as we waited in with other visitors in a queue for a table, but the food and experience were terrific – excellent versions of the robust Tuscan classics including an entire roasted rabbit on a spit that evening and well-made, too-easy-to-drink vino rosso della casa served in fun 1 ½-liter fiaschi – and all for a comparative song.  There is a reason why it has long been a Bib Gourmand selection in the Michelin guide, and a wise detour for a couple of hours of gastronomic fun while in Florence.
 
Maybe a year or two after that initial visit to Il Latini, my brother and I were in New Orleans for a pre-wedding celebration for our other brother.  That first evening we ended up at the very popular Eleven 79, a Creole-accented Italian-American that shuttered a few years ago.  The visit to a prime table in the middle of a very crowded, boisterous dining room, courtesy of a connected local, was prefaced by an arguably obscene number of drinks, in typical New Orleans tourist fashion, and possibly helped in the enjoyment of the crawfish bisque and tender, excellent veal scallops cooked with spinach.
 
On a first night in another city some years later, Sorrento, La Basilica was the busy Italian restaurant that my family and I visited to great luck.  Sitting in one of the numerous tables in a small piazza adjacent to the restaurant, both the Neapolitan classics, especially the pastas and preparations with local shellfish, and the atmosphere, were excellent.  The wine, beginning with a top-notch Prosecco from the Cartizze region and then a fair amount of local Fiano and Greco white wines, aided it all.
 
The most recent of the most enjoyable visits to a busy Italian restaurant was to the least Italian of these.  It was a couple of summers ago, again with my family, to Franceschetta 58 in Modena, the sibling to the high-flying Osteria Francescana, which had just been named the best restaurant in the world for a second time.  Its cuisine, somewhat reflective of its staff, was wide-ranging and not necessarily all Italian.  No matter, it was in Italy and a lot fun.  And, I had a really tasty pasta dish – Abruzzese-style chitarra spaghetti with bread crumbs and an anchovy sauce – in any case.  The visit was particularly memorable, in large part, because we nearly didn’t eat there at all, arriving late in the lunch hour without a reservation and with ten people.  Initially turned away, the very accommodating front of the house folks, eventually found room for us, scattered in several tables in the small dining room.  The closeness of tables and the conviviality of the guests from around much of the globe and the waitstaff made for a memorable visit complemented by interesting, mostly all delicious fare.
 
These are first of the visits that come to mind.  Yes, there does seem to be something about “a busy Italian restaurant.”

Paccheri with local seafood at La Basilica in Sorrento