Cheese

The harmony of this salad is that both the radicchio and the endive are from the chicory family, sweet and slightly bitter at the same time.

This quick salad delivers a lot of flavor. The radicchio has a touch of bitterness, but the raisins bring in the sweet element, and the goat cheese the creamy complexity. It is a great appetizer, or can be a main course.

Radicchio belongs to the chicory family. Sweet and bitter at the same time, it is delicious in salads, braised alone, in risotto, and for making pasta sauces. On my recent trip to the Salinas Valley in California, I was astounded to see how radicchio prospered, and how much of it was being produced.

This is not an Italian salad at all, and you would not find it in Italy. Nevertheless, it was very popular in Italian American restaurants in the 1960s and ’70s, and has made a strong comeback today. You can find it in any deli or fast-food locale, often topped with grilled chicken, shrimp, or turkey. With all its different renditions and toppings, it is a great salad if made well. This recipe will produce a delicious, tangy Caesar salad.

Every region of Italy makes some form of these fried dough pastries called zeppole. They can be sweet or savory, with goodies embedded in the dough or stuffed after frying. Zeppole are especially prepared for St. Joseph’s Day (March 19), during Lent, for the Christmas Vigilia (Eve), and on holidays. When sweet, they are usually dusted with powdered sugar and served hot. You can find them in every Little Italy in the United States around the holidays.

Caesar salad (see following recipe) is not a traditional Italian recipe, and the grilled Caesar salad seems to be a recent phenomenon. Nino Germano, the presiding chef-owner at La Scala in Baltimore, told us how, purely by accident, he invented the grilled Caesar salad. During a busy evening in the kitchen, a cut head of young romaine lettuce fell on the grill. Nino, a frugal padrone, set it aside, and when the evening was over and it was time to have his dinner, he decided to dress that grilled romaine as he would a regular Caesar salad. And so the recipe was born.

I found the St. Louis pizza to be different from any other pizza I have had before. The crust has a texture between a cracker and shortbread, and the cheese mixture recalls the milky-velvety mozzarella cheese found in Italy. The pizza is cut into squares, which makes it easy to eat. Here is a recipe I developed after several visits to Imo’s in St. Louis, and I think it is quite close to the St. Louis original

One could call this dish pizza bread, and it is a cross between a focaccia and a pizza. In Sicily, they make a high pizza called sfincione, topped with tomatoes, oregano, and a few anchovies. It is sold in warm squares as street food from a cart. The idea for deep-dish pizza came from the early Sicilian immigrants who settled in Chicago, although the excessive toppings are not something one would find in Sicily.

This is a Cinderella dessert story. From simple leftovers—some coffee, leftover cake or cookies, an enrichment of cream or mascarpone—a prince of a dessert is born. Tiramisù is an Italian creation but its popularity in America began in San Francisco, and today it is as beloved in the United States as it is in Italy. In Italy this kind of dessert is categorized as dolce al cucchiaio (desserts to be eaten with a spoon), as is zuppa inglese. Tiramisù can be made in advance, keeps well, is great to serve big numbers, and can even be frozen and remain delicious.

This great and easy sandwich could serve you well for breakfast, lunch, or a picnic. Basically, it is scrambled eggs with onions and asparagus. I prefer thin asparagus for this dish, since I recall making it with wild asparagus that I would go and forage every spring with my grandmother. Here in the States, asparagus is farmed abundantly. Wild asparagus is more bitter than the farmed variety, but I love any fresh asparagus. I sometimes use scallions instead of onions, including two-thirds of the green part of the scallion stalks as well.

Italian cheesecake is one of the easiest Italian desserts to make, and, yes, one can add raisins, orange, or pine nuts. But I recall my grandmother’s simple version, made from goat’s-milk ricotta with minimal sugar, and it was delicious. In America, the cream-cheese version, of much smoother consistency, is common, but an Italian will willingly partake of the crumbly consistency of ricotta cheesecake, any time.

Incassare in Italian means “to put in a box,” and in this case the boxing consists of flavored ricotta in a light sponge cake, often decorated with candied fruits and chocolate. It is a dessert that, once filled and sealed, keeps well for a few days. That is why Italian American restaurants had it on the menu: low maintenance with good flavors. This versatile dessert can be filled with various flavors of ice cream, so try substituting that in place of the ricotta filling (in which case you will have to keep the cake in the freezer). Sicilian in origin, cassata is most easily found in areas of America that experienced a large influx of Sicilian immigrants, such as New Orleans.

This is a unique rendition (and spelling) of veal parmigiana that I had in Rigazzi’s, one of the oldest restaurants on The Hill in St. Louis. It exemplifies the frugality and the ingenuity of those early immigrants. Instead of expensive veal cutlets, they ground lesser, tougher cuts of veal, then shaped them and treated them like a veal cutlet; the result was delicious and tender! At Rigazzi’s, it was the special of the day when we visited.

Just down Smallman Street from our Lidia’s restaurant, I have serious sandwich competition in Primanti’s, a Pittsburgh institution. I am charmed by their incredibly oversized warm capicola sandwich stuffed with French fries and coleslaw. I am not sure where in the U.S.A. this tradition of stuffing a sandwich with French fries became Italian, but the sandwich was so tall that I could not open my mouth wide enough to get my first bite. Primanti’s started as a sandwich pushcart, manned by Joe Primanti, in the Strip in the 1930s, selling sandwiches to truck drivers. One night, a trucker wanted to check if his load of frozen potatoes were good, so Joe Primanti cooked them up. Customers began asking for them, and to expedite the service they were added to the sandwich.

The gizmo, a glorified sloppy joe or Italian grinder, is Italian America on a sub roll. This is a great sandwich to make for a picnic or a party. Just make a big pot of the filling and keep piling it on the grilled bread. The filling can be reheated and even frozen—just be sure that it is wrapped tightly, so it won’t get freezer flavor. The one I tasted was made with sausage and beef, but just crumpled sausages would be fine; even chopped turkey fits the bill.

It seems that the muffuletta sandwich originated in Sicily, set on what most likely was flatbread sprinkled with sesame seeds. And since the Sicilians were the first mass wave of immigration to the port of New Orleans, it would seem that the soft sesame-seed bread of the muffuletta is an American cousin of the bread of the pane ca’ meusa (spleen sandwich) still sold in Palermo markets today. This meatless rendition of the muffuletta was made on All Souls Day; the one with the cold cuts and salad is served on more festive days.

There are many versions of the muffuletta sandwich around New Orleans, but it seems that Central Grocery in the French Quarter is the place to go. The store is charming enough, but at the back counter, seated on a stool with a muffuletta sandwich in front of you, is where you want to be. We sat down across from a man who told us he’d had his first muffuletta sandwich here fifty years ago and came back regularly for more. Next to him were a couple who have been coming to Central Grocery to enjoy the muffuletta sandwich for more than forty years. We ordered one without any hesitation. The large hamburger bun–like bread was soaked significantly with the olive-oil dressing of the olive salad; then layers and layers of the salad and the cold cuts were added. The sandwich was cut in four and wrapped in parchment paper. It was ten in the morning, one would say time for breakfast, but the two of us savored the muffuletta sandwich as did all the other customers.

Salumeria Italiana is the place to go in the North End of Boston to buy Italian specialty foods. The store is small but meticulously furnished with some of the best of Italian imported and domestic products. For nearly five decades, the Martignetti family has upheld the time-honored tradition. It was early on a rainy morning when Tanya and I, camera and notepad in hand, paid a visit to the Salumeria. The workers were beginning to set up the products and sandwich of the day, getting ready for lunch. The resident salumiere, a timid elderly gentleman, repeatedly skirted the lens of our camera, but we did get some really good close-ups of the Salumeria panino of the day. No one was willing to share the recipe, either, so here is my rendition of what we saw and tasted; it is simple and simply delicious. Don’t miss out on visiting Paul Revere’s house, almost around the corner!