Ciao Amici,
I send you and yours my good thoughts and prayers during these challenging days.

One of the comforts I’ve been grateful for lately has been recipes from my maternal line and from cooks I’ve met over many delicious years of traveling in Italy. Along with great flavors, they’ve wrapped me up in beautiful, rich memories, that connect me to Italy’s abundant heart and soul.

I’ve collected some of my favorite Italy adventures into my latest book, Hungry for Italy. It’s a chance to immerse yourself in the flavors of the Bel Paese, with stories that range from stirring risotto in Milan, to harvesting olives in Tuscany, and tasting the best sweets in Sicily. AND simple recipes are included to recreate these experiences at home.

A few days ago, I made Classic Spaghetti and Meatballs, my mother’s recipe. Here’s my story about my meatball memories that opens the book, and her recipe. Enjoy and Buon Appetito!

Excerpt from my new book…

Available on Kindle or Print – CLICK HERE

Preface

My First Kitchen

“Get married, have a few kids, get a life,
practice your meatballs”—Prizzi’s Honor

There was no such thing as cooking lessons in the kitchen I grew up in at the Jersey Shore. The kitchen was my mother’s headquarters, where she followed in the footsteps of her mother, an immigrant from southern Italy. Delicious meals were made with no cookbooks, no measuring cups, not much fuss. I was the middle child of four, just hanging around, passing the time with Mommy on Saturday mornings while she did what she always did to start the weekend: make tomato sauce and meatballs.

A sign on the wall, in corny Colonial style lettering announced: “Bless This Mess.” A big window over the sink faced east, sun flooded in through yellow ruffled curtains, bouncing off the bread box, harvest gold appliances, spotlighting Mommy at the stove stirring sauce with a wooden spoon. In winter she wore a knee-length emerald green velour robe, in summer there was a rotation of floral shifts. She was petite and curvy—a woman forever referred to by outsiders as “cute”, which constantly annoyed her.

Inside the family, we got to experience the not-cute side of Mommy, that erupted during cleaning. Along with the smell of Lemon Pledge came cursing­­­­—sometimes in abbreviations, as in “G-D-S-O-B vacuum!” other times in southern Italian dialect, as in “Va fa Napoli,” which translates to “Go to Napoli,” or the nice way to say “Go F*** yourself.”

But there was no cursing when Mommy cooked sauce and meatballs. Cooking bought a profound calm to her, as she proceeded slowly, gracefully going along with the many interruptions. There was the buzz of the clothes dryer, a neighbor popping in, one of us kids nagging for an afternoon lift to the mall. Along with this came a heavenly progression of smells—first nose-tingling garlic simmering in olive oil, then that warm, comforting, rich sauce that wafted all the way to the bedrooms upstairs. Through it all was music—Judy Garland records that added drama, as Judy crooned about The Trolley, Chicago, and most memorably Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I don’t remember the first time I rolled up a meatball in that kitchen. It must have been DNA taking over, pulling me into the maternal line that stretched back through generations of Italian cooks. I do remember I loved being in that kitchen. There was the most obvious attraction: it was the place where the best food on earth was made. But there was also something stronger going on, a Magic Spell, which whispered: Under the Bless This Mess sign All is Okay . . . Che sara, sara.

In the midst of the Great Confusions of Life this Magic Spell made the kitchen my oasis. I was a fretful kid and there was much that worried me—air raid drills, nightmares of purgatory fires, and haunting concerns over my school permanent record, which for the rest of my days would tell how naughty I was on that class trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art—when I took the lead and pulled my gang of girlfriends away from the chaperone to point and snicker at the naked statues.

So I hung around that kitchen, where all was safe and delicious, discovering the joys of cooking and eating my mother’s southern Italian repertoire—from meatballs to lasagna to chicken cacciatore. Meanwhile, came the greatest discovery of all: the kitchen was where the best stuff happened.

It’s where I got my first look at the world of grown-ups: Daddy shaking up whiskey sours and pinching Mommy’s bottom as she reached into the oven for baked ziti. Where I eavesdropped to hear whispered details of Aunt Tuddy’s gall bladder surgery: They gutted her like a fish!  In years to come it was surprisingly romantic—where I snuck a boyfriend home one night and got kissed up against the fridge.

It was the arena of high dramas: Where my older brother would torture me with Indian arm burns, where I’d pull my sister’s hair to steal her pony tail holder, where my mother would wail, “I should have sent you kids to Catholic school, that’d straighten you out!” Where my father lost it one night and threw a whole pot roast across the table.

It was the rehearsal room—where the linoleum got scuffed from practicing tap dances for the high school musical, where birthday candles were lit before the cake was carried with song to the dining room.

All of this—life’s comedies and tragedies unfolding in my kitchen under the Bless This Mess sign!

That first kitchen made me who I am. I’m the one who gravitates to kitchens at parties, knowing I’ll find the best conversations there. I’m the one who melts over a surprise smooch while I’m stirring up a sauce. Struggling with writing, I move the laptop to the kitchen table to loosen up. When I’m crazed about anything at all, I head to the kitchen to rattle those pots and pans, knowing how slowing down, sliding into the cooking process, gets me on the right track, puts me under that Magic Spell.

What better place to bask in that Magic Spell than Italy, the source of it all? Each time I enter a kitchen in Italy, I feel its power. Just like my first kitchen, there are no cookbooks or measuring cups. If any fuss is made, it comes spontaneously over the joy of the moment—that olives have just been pressed, tomatoes just picked, or a guest has arrived. Nothing ever goes as planned, yet everything comes together to make music, a song as alluring as Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Better yet, in Italy, the Magic Spell of the kitchen radiates beyond that one room. In a church in Rome, I listen to signoras whispering about the braciole they’re making for dinner. As I bike through orchards in Puglia and stop to take pictures, a farmer fills my bike’s basket with cherries. Everywhere I go, the abundant heart of Italy opens, feeding not only my belly, but my restless soul. It’s the warmth of the natives, the astonishing art and landscapes, and the fascinating history that blends with Italian food to satisfy all hungers and create absolute bliss.

And such varieties of bliss! “Italian food doesn’t really exist,” said my favorite cookbook author, the late great Marcella Hazan. In other words, every location prides itself on their specialties, which precisely reflect the geography, traditions, and seasons. The result is an infinite array of choices—from sweet cassata cake of Sicily, to delicately flavored fish in Venice, and the best pizza on earth in Naples.

I’ve sighed, gasped, thrown my hands up to thank the holy heavens, and even wept over the deliciousness of the food I’ve tasted in Italy. With such a beautiful backdrop and the wonderful Italians who lift my spirits, it’s one big Bless This Mess kitchen.

So come along with me on this culinary adventure up and down the boot, where I’ve thrown myself in to fully exploring regional specialties. Whether you’re inspired to daydream, head to your kitchen, or hop a plane to get in on bell’Italia’s Magic Spell, I wish you Buon Viaggio and Buon Appetito!

Mommy’s Tomato Sauce and Meatballs
Meatballs

2 pound mixture of chopped beef, pork, and veal
¼ cup breadcrumbs – she always used Progresso Italian Style
1 clove chopped garlic
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 egg
Salt and Pepper
2 tablespoons lard (This was in olden times; you can use olive oil if you prefer.)

In a large bowl, mix the chopped meat, breadcrumbs, garlic, salt, pepper, and parsley, then mix in the egg. Shape into golf ball-sized balls. On medium-high, heat the lard in a pan and then add the meatballs. Brown on all sides by jiggling the pan. 

Ragu (Tomato Sauce)

2 28-ounce cans imported Italian peeled tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 clove whole garlic, slightly smashed
Pinch of dried oregano
Salt and Pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley or basil, optional

In a large pot, sauté garlic with olive oil over medium heat until garlic is golden. Add tomato paste and oregano, cooking and stirring until blended. Using a hand cranked vegetable mill*, puree the tomatoes over the pot to remove the seeds. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the browned meatballs. Simmer for 3 hours, stirring every 20 minutes, making sure to scrape the sauce that’s condensed on the sides of the pot back into the pot. Add parsley or basil, if desired, during last ½ hour of cooking. Remove garlic clove before serving over pasta of your choice.

*This seed removal step keeps the sauce from becoming bitter, but you may skip it and mash the tomatoes in the pot with a potato masher or wooden spoon instead. Just don’t tell my mother you did it this way!

AND sharing Italian food is one of my life’s greatest joys. Even during Social Distancing, it was so wonderful to drop off dinner on my neighbor’s porch (with rubber gloves), run back to my kitchen table where the spaghetti was still steaming, and unite (through Facetime) over Italian tradition…surely my Mamma, my Nana, and all those before her were smiling down upon us…

For more recipes and adventures,
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