Italian American

In America, meat was plentiful, and combining good veal shanks with lots of vegetables and herbs and simmering it for hours results in fork-tender meat nestled in a complex and savory sauce. Osso buco, literally translated as “a bone with a hole,” is a dish that originated in Milan. A favorite then, it still outsells many other meat choices on the menu at Becco, Lidia’s KC, and Lidia’s Pittsburgh. Serve this dish with an espresso spoon—or, even better, a marrow spoon—so that your guests can scoop out the marrow as the ultimate delicacy.

Broccoli rabe, the leafy bitter almond-flavored vegetable consumed by the Italians for centuries, has found its way into American hearts. It is great just braised with olive oil and garlic; it makes an excellent soup; it is also delicious stuffed and as a flavoring in some crunchy Italian bread. But I love it with pasta, and not with just any pasta—I love it with orecchiette (little earlobes). Rapini, as it is called in Italy, is a plant in the mustard family that grew wild, especially in southern Italy. In America, the largest producer is Andy Boy, a company founded by Stephen and Andrew D’Arrigo, emigrants from Sicily, who officially named the rapini “broccoli rabe.” They knew that the vegetable that was part of their family table in Italy would make it to the American table.

Pasta with spring vegetables—or, for that matter, any vegetables—has always been a staple of Italian cuisine. But Sirio Maccioni, the renowned Italian restaurateur who has owned Le Cirque for decades, claims to be the one to baptize it primavera in 1974. Along with Romeo Salta, and the Giambelli brothers, Sirio was at the lead in bringing the fine Italian dining experience to New York. Sirio runs a restaurant that is French by name but serves pasta primavera.

If there is one dish that I can affirm is Italian American, this is it. It has all the pedigree of being Italian, though it was definitely born in America. This is one of those few recipes that crossed the Atlantic in the other direction, and the Italians in Italy have been enjoying it as well. The first references we find to vodka sauce are from the early 1980s.

The braciola, stuffed beef rolled and braised, was and still is part of the Sunday pasta sauce tradition in many Italian American homes across America. If you travel through the Italian communities around America today and ask people, “What dish do you remember eating at home on Sunday?,” the answer is often pasta with braciole and meatballs. Meat was far more available in America than back home in Italy, and adding it to a tomato sauce enhanced the ritual Sunday meal, when the whole family was assembled around the table. A braciola is easy to make: once you have gathered all the ingredients and rolled them into a thin beef slice, it cooks in the tomato sauce for several hours, rendering a delicious pasta sauce to coat some rigatoni and fork-tender braciole to eat with braised escarole and olive-oil-mashed potatoes.

I had this dish at Del’s Bar & Ristorante DelPizzo, on Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh, the local restaurant that caters to the neighborhood crowd, not too far from our restaurant Lidia’s on Smallman Street. This velvety combination of tomato and cream sauce is good on any pasta. The day we were there, it was offered with shells. But I think it is even better served with fettuccine.

What is important to remember about this dish is that the steak and the sauce never cook together. That way, all the meat juices remain in the steak; if you were to cook them together, the juices would seep out. Meanwhile, the pepper-and-mushroom sauce remains bright and fresh with the flavor of the tomatoes and vegetables.

This is a recipe that everybody loves, easy to make and exemplary of Italian home cooking. Its roots are most likely somewhere with the shepherd community of the Apennines. Traditionally, it includes pasta, ricotta, and some meat in a casing, like sausage or salami. The other ingredients are delicious contemporary additions.

Fettuccine Alfredo began as regular fettuccine al burro until the Roman restaurateur Alfredo di Lelio enriched it with a double and a triple dose of butter for his pregnant wife, who could not keep anything down. The dish was so delicious he kept it on the menu of his restaurant, Alfredo alla Scrofa, in Rome. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had it during their 1920 honeymoon trip to Rome, loved it, brought the recipe back, and served it to their friends when they returned to Hollywood. And so another Italian came to America. Fettuccine Alfredo has most certainly been eaten more in the States than in Italy since then. The dish is used as the base for many different versions, topped with shrimp, broccoli, asparagus, and more. Since butter separates readily when heated, cream is added to make the sauce creamier. In this version, I also add a few leaves of sage, since sage and butter are a marriage made in heaven.

One would think that meatloaf is very American, but its origins are actually in a German colonial dish of minced pork mixed with cornmeal. Italians serve it a lot as well, and in this rendition the cultures blend deliciously with the addition of a pestata, a paste of carrots, celery, and onions. Not only does the meatloaf taste delicious, but it is foolproof, moist every time. The leftovers reheat as if just cooked, and Italians love to serve it with roasted potato wedges.

Spaghetti carbonara has humble roots in the Apennine hills of central Italy, not far from Rome, and was the shepherds’ favorite as they roamed the hilly pastures following the movement of flocks, a practice known as the transumanza. They carried with them some bacon, and made the cheese as they went along. Eggs were used only if available; of course they render the dish richer and creamier, but it is delicious with or without them. Of all of the pasta recipes that I have served in my restaurants throughout the years (starting with Buonavia in 1971, to today’s Felidia, Becco, Lidia’s KC, and Lidia’s Pittsburgh), spaghetti carbonara is definitely the crowd pleaser. It has some of the flavors loved most by Americans: bacon, eggs, cheese, and of course pasta. I’ve added some chopped scallions for freshness; I hope you like it.

Peppers are a New World product, but they rapidly took hold in Italian soil, especially in the regions of Calabria, Basilicata, and Sicily, in southern Italy. Most of the early immigrants came from these regions and, missing many of their traditional products, found a friend in the peppers they found in America and used them abundantly. Peppers are used much more in Italian American cooking than in Italian cooking, and can be found in recipes such as sausage and peppers, peppers frittata, chicken cacciatore with peppers, veal and peppers, and, as it would follow, lamb with peppers. A sturdy two-foot pepper plant yields an abundant quantity of peppers, and was a favorite planting in the small backyard gardens of Italian immigrants.

As the impoverished residents of Amatrice moved to Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this recipe came along with them; today it is as Roman as the Colosseum, but you would never know it. Throughout America, 99 percent of Italian restaurants have this tubular-spaghetti dish on their menus, so it might as well be American now. You can use garlic here instead of onions, as the original recipe calls for. But unless your amatriciana contains guanciale (cured pig jowl), you are not even close to the original. Since pig jowl is not found in every corner store, making the dish with bacon or pancetta will yield delicious results as well. In this recipe I used onions, as in most of the American amatriciana recipes, but the bay leaves are my addition. The precursor to amatriciana sauce is sugo alla gricia, which does not contain tomatoes. The dish seems to have roots before the discovery of the New World; tomatoes came back from there to Italy. The gricia sauce contains guanciale, coarsely ground black pepper, and grated pecorino cheese to dress the pasta. This dish is still made today and is very popular in and around Rome, where it is called pasta alla gricia.

I am sure all of you have had some version of sausage and peppers, but this one is easy to make, and the sausages remain juicy. The idea is to cook the sausages and vegetables separately, and then combine them at the end. Even though sausage and peppers seem to be quintessentially Italian, peppers are a New World food and were introduced to Italy only after the discovery of the Americas. Italians quickly made them their own and incorporated them on their table. So, when they came to America as immigrants, peppers were abundant and used with excess in many of the Italian American dishes. They are now ubiquitous at every Italian street fair.

The important thing is that pesto is a raw sauce and should not be cooked when dressing the pasta. Just toss the hot pasta with a little of its cooking water and the pesto. Stir well, add some cheese, and dinner is ready.

This is one of those one pot meals that bring spice and a lot of flavor to the table. It is a traditional method of cooking and combining ingredients, especially in southern Italy, and many restaurants have it on their menus, especially those in the Little Italys across America. This method of adding the cherry peppers, potatoes, and vinegar can be used with chicken or rabbit, too. The spice gives the dish its “capricious” name.

Pork meat, which is nutritional and economical, is used a lot in Italy. Using the tenderloin for this dish guarantees a tender result, but one can use boneless shoulder or leg meat instead, cutting it into thin slices. You can also make this dish with chicken breast or boneless chicken legs. The sun-dried tomatoes bring a lot of flavor to the dish; I use them whole, or sometimes purée them in a processor and spread the paste on the meat, but in this recipe I slice them.

Spinach and walnuts go well together and make a great pesto to dress pasta. This recipe is ideal for a quick meal; sometimes I like to add a few tablespoons of fresh ricotta to the pasta.

Rollatini are a popular dish in Italy. They can be made with chicken, veal, or pork, and the stuffing can be just about anything you like, but do include cheese. The delight of rollatini is the oozing cheese when you cut into them. So, whatever you do, do not skimp on the cheese. This dish was very popular on the menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. Fontina has great melting qualities; when it is not readily available, Muenster cheese is often substituted.