Italian American

Italians love fennel, finocchio, but Americans are just getting familiar with it. It is terrific raw, and in Piedmont is dipped raw into hot oil with anchovies. It is also great served solo as a braised vegetable. I love the hint of anise flavor in it, as well as the crunchy crack under my teeth when I eat it raw as a snack. The crumbled sausages make this a very flavorful vegetable dish that can also be used to dress pasta. It can be made in advance, keeps well, and reheats well. What more could you ask of a vegetable?

Potato croquettes are not served much in Italy, except around Rome. When I first began working in Italian American restaurants, potato croquettes were always paired with a vegetable as a side dish. I grew fond of the dish, I guess, because it combines two things Americans love: mashed potatoes and fried things.

This dish exemplifies Sicilian cooking, especially in the late-summer months, when eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers are at their best. The same kind of summer-vegetable preparation also appears in French ratatouille. But the difference is that the Sicilians make it agrodolce, sweet and sour: cooking some vinegar and sugar, then tossing with the vegetables. The acidity in the vinegar hinders spoilage, and in hot New Orleans summers, this dish keeps well without refrigeration. Caponata requires a lot of preparation, but once done it keeps well in the refrigerator for up to ten days, and freezes well, so it makes sense to make a big batch. It is a very versatile dish—as an appetizer with some cheese, as a side dish, or as a delicious sandwich stuffer. Actually, it improves if left to steep for a while. I love it at room temperature with a piece of grilled meat or fish.

Italians love the chicory family of vegetables, of which escarole is a member. Escarole was one of the abundant leafy green vegetables that they could readily find in the States. Today it has fallen out of favor, but when I opened Buonavia, my first restaurant, in 1971, we were cooking escarole by the bushel. We served it in soups, braised with garlic and oil as a side dish, in salads, and for an appetizer; or we would stuff it, as in the recipe below. In Italy, stuffed greens served with beans would often have been the whole meal, not just a side.

What makes this dish truly good is the old bread soaked in milk. Not only is it flavorful and mellow, but the traditions are steeped in preserving and respecting food: waste not, want not. It makes for a great vegetarian main course. With some old bread and whatever was growing in the garden, the Italian immigrants could make a delicious meal.

Italians will stuff anything, but when it comes to a nice summer tomato, this is the recipe. It is good just out of the oven, and delicious at room temperature. Wonderful as an appetizer, a vegetable, and also a main course, this dish is popular at Italian family gatherings and festivities, and it looks great on the buffet table.

This shrimp dish is most extravagant if made with big, crunchy shrimp, but if you are price-conscious, medium-sized or even small shrimp will still be delicious. Keep in mind that the cooking time decreases as the size of the shrimp decreases. The amount of peperoncino you use to obtain the “Fra Diavolo,” or “Brother Devil,” is to your liking. Fra Diavolo sauce, originally made with lobster chunks still in the shell, is a creation of Italian immigrants in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century.

Breaded shrimp is universal, but shrimp parmigiana is distinctly Italian American. I first encountered this dish when we opened Buonavia, our first restaurant, in 1971, and Chef Dino put it on the menu. Shrimp parmigiana was a regular weekly special; people loved it, and it is still a delicious dish today.

Italians love their artichokes in a thousand ways, and stuffed with seasoned bread crumbs is a favorite. This recipe is an Italian American rendition, much richer and with more stuffing and ingredients than the one found in Italy. It was often an appetizer on the menu of Italian American restaurants in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, and most likely the first way that many Americans tasted artichokes Italian-style. And I am sure the charm of it was the discovery of how to eat this curious thistle with not much pulp but lots of flavor.

Vegetables are often used together with fish in traditional Italian cooking. This recipe is over the top and seems to have every available vegetable cooked with shrimp; to me it resembles jambalaya without the chicken and sausages, and it is great served over steamed rice or pasta.

Although this dish has all the makings of an Italian dish, everything I have read points to its being an Italian American invention, mostly likely conceived in New York. In Italy they do make a sauce with lobsters with which they dress pasta and risotto, but it is in the form of brodetto, seafood stew—lighter than the Italian American Fra Diavolo, made with onions instead of garlic, and without oregano. Here I give you a delicious version that is a combination of both.

Fried calamari is one of my favorite foods. When it is lightly floured and cooked in fresh oil, rather than in a constantly reused deep-fryer, it is spectacular. But, sadly enough, I have found it to be one of the most poorly made dishes on my travels across the United States. So, if you long for good fried calamari, make yourself a batch at home. Here is my simple recipe.

There are endless renditions of lasagna: with just cheese, with vegetables, with mushrooms, with meat. Once you have mastered the art of cooking and layering the pasta, the filling can be your choice. But here I give you the Italian American rendition, one that you make with store-bought dry pasta. The major effort here is in making the Bolognese sauce, and in the Bolognese recipe I give you on page 158, you can make the sauce in advance and freeze it, all ready for when you decide to make a lasagna.

Whenever stuffing anything, one may be tempted to overstuff. Well, the elegance in this dish is to stuff the calamari lightly. When you cook fish or meat, remember that it always tightens a bit, and if there is too much stuffing, it bursts out. So keep it light—follow the recipe.

I have had squid prepared many ways, but never in a Milanese cutlet style until Tanya and I encountered this dish on our trip to San Diego when we went to Anthony’s Fish Grotto. The calamari cutlet was a thick slab, like a veal cutlet, quite different in size from the smaller version of calamari I am accustomed to cooking on the East Coast, and yet very tender. This popular calamari may be up to 2 feet in length; the giant squid can get to approximately 43 feet; in 2003, a colossal species of squid was discovered that can be upward of 46 feet. I’m not sure which calamari was used for my Milanese at Anthony’s, but it was very good; I tested the recipe with the traditional-sized calamari, and it worked deliciously.

The Sicilians have a tradition of using bread crumbs in many of their recipes, like involtini di pesce spada, or swordfish rollatini, which are dressed with dried-oregano-seasoned bread crumbs and olive oil. It makes sense that the large Sicilian immigrant population in the States would keep up the tradition here using fillet of sole, an easier, more economical catch than swordfish, especially for the early immigrants.

Cannelloni—that delicious stuffed pasta, literally translated as “big reeds”—is always a sign of a festive occasion in Italy. This baked dish can be made in advance and serve a large group of people, and it is loved by most. What you stuff it with almost does not matter, although a meat-and-vegetable combination is the most common choice. Cannelloni was a big-hit item on menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. If you have a gathering of family and friends, as Italians often do, this is a good dish to make.

I cooked this simple dish in my first restaurant, Buonavia, which I opened in 1971. I made it with fresh lemon sole and fluke, bought directly from the fishermen on Long Island when in season. But you can make it with the fillet of any white fish. It is delicious and quick.

This dish is best when the tomatoes are fresh and ripe, but it will be almost as good with canned plum tomatoes. It makes a complete one-pot meal, including vegetables and protein. I used spinach, but escarole is a good Italian American substitute.

Chicken Tetrazzini is an American creation. The one thing we know about it for sure is that it was named after the famed Italian soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, also known as the Florentine Nightingale. She was a favorite with the San Francisco Opera audiences, and it is said that the dish was invented there, but there are some conflicting claims that the dish was created in New York, at the then Knickerbocker Hotel, where most of the Metropolitan Opera stars stayed in the early 1900s. Another confusion about Tetrazzini is whether chicken, turkey, or salmon should be used in the recipe. As far as I am concerned, any or all of these options can make a good Tetrazzini.