italian

Today’s Sandwich: “The Antipasto” (Homemade)

by Jillian Bedell April 25, 2013

Today’s sandwich is “The Antipasto.” It combines Genoa salami, spicy pepperoni, sliced provolone, pepperoncini peppers, sun dried tomatoes, an artichoke and olive tapenade, and anchovy mayonnaise on thick slices of Italian bread. Notes: On the holidays of my childhood, we would gather around bedsheet-covered card tables with my mothers aunts, uncles, cousins, their kids, my [...]

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Today’s Sandwich: Hot & Spicy Italian Drip Beef (Homemade)

by Malcolm Bedell March 15, 2013

Today’s sandwich is the “Hot & Spicy Italian Drip Beef.” It combines hot shredded beef and spicy peppers on a toasted sub roll with melted provolone cheese and a sidecar of spicy au jus for dipping. Notes: This is one of the easiest recipes you’re ever going to read. It’s not even really a recipe. [...]

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Pepperoni Stromboli

by Jillian Bedell February 26, 2013

There’s a black and white photo hanging in our hallway, a family snapshot, of an anniversary party from the 1950′s. In it, my mother was a little girl in fancy dress, my grandparents smiling young parents, and my great-grandmother Anna and great-grandfather Gaetano in the center, married fifty years, stout, stern and proud. There were [...]

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Ricotta and Chicken Sausage Stuffed Shells

by Jillian Bedell February 21, 2013

I miss my Josephine dearly. She and I were good friends, in the end, and I spoke to her on the phone many times a week. I still think to call her all the time when I’m driving, to tell her of the antics Violet and I are up to and hear her raspy old [...]

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Calabrese-Style Rigatoni with Spicy Pork Ragu

by Jillian Bedell February 8, 2013

Once upon a time in Brooklyn, there was an Italian restaurant called Sam’s. This was old-school, red sauce Brooklyn, and Sam’s was the flickering candle of an era that was then beginning to end. Chianti bottles on every table, salamis hanging from the ceiling, broken English immigrants eating family meal in a dim back room. [...]

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Gnudi in Sage Butter with Fresh Tomatoes

by Jillian Bedell December 27, 2012

Gnudi, pronounced “Nudee”, is a ricotta-based dumpling, a sort of ravioli in the buff. Hence, gnudi – it means naked! I clothed these fat little bastards in a sage butter sauce and at the last second added a healthy spoonful of garlicky tomato bruschetta topping that my mother-in-law made for Christmas Eve. Just what the [...]

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Josephine’s Italian-Style Stuffed Artichokes

by Jillian Bedell December 21, 2012

My grandmother never taught me how to make her famous stuffed artichokes. I had to rely on over-the-phone oral tradition – a conversation with my favorite aunt – with a little assistance from the internet, to be sure I was following along correctly. I was actually astounded to find that recipes exist for what I [...]

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Escarole Soup

by Jillian Bedell September 28, 2012

With apologies to my dear, departed Josephine, this is the best escarole soup ever made. And she has no one to blame but herself. I would have happily used her recipe, doing my best to master her method and technique. One Christmas when I was in my late twenties I gave my grandmother a scrapbook/journal [...]

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Stuffed Tomatoes

by Jillian Bedell July 18, 2012

Tradition. (tradition!) I feel like it’s my duty to institute and instill rituals for our family. I am the keeper of the kitchen, the archivist, the dishwasher. Some nights my husband is the better craftman, but I have become the official cake and muffin baker, and I take out the garbage. I remember distinctly many meals shared [...]

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Veal Osso Buco

by Jillian Bedell April 23, 2012

Osso Buco is all about the marrow. To paraphrase Thoreau, “…live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,…” The name refers to the hole of the bone, which is where the essence lies. Be certain to take some sort of implement to extract the good stuff and smear it on the polenta or [...]

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