Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It (2 page)

Before we get into more of my Italian heritage, I want to get into yours. Italians are famous for their hospitality, and I want you to feel truly at home here, together in our little Italian book. No matter where your family is actually from, considering the Romans conquered pretty much the entire world, it’s safe to say that you’re Italian too, whether you like it or not. But you will love it, I promise!

Me on my first birthday. Can you imagine letting a baby hold a knife that big? Ah marone!

I’ve got a college degree in fashion, not food, but I think growing up in a 100 percent Italian household, speaking the language since I could talk, and eating my ma’s cooking since I could walk, more than qualifies me to dish on the deliciousness of Italian cuisine. I make my own sauce (of course!), and also my own sausage, and even wine (not to sell or anything, just to always have what we like on our table). My husband and I opened a traditional Italian restaurant in Hillside, New Jersey: Giuseppe’s Homestyle Pizzeria. My dad is there every day, helping plan the daily specials from the Old Country.

Me and my baby brother, Joey. How cute is he?

My husband and my in-laws are Italian too. My “juicy” husband, Giuseppe (most people call him Joe), was born in Italy. Both Joe’s and my parents are from the same small town in Salerno, Sala Consilina, although they didn’t become friends until they all moved to America in the 1970s. When he was three years old, Joe was actually in the hospital with his parents the day I was born, waiting to meet me; so I guess he’s been chasing me since I came out of the womb.

We had a crush on each other all through our childhoods (yes, we even “played house”), although my mother always warned me against liking him because he was a “bad boy.” He was a whole twelve years old at the time.

We’ve been married for ten years and are blessed with four beautiful children. Food is such a major part of our lives, and I’m so happy I now get to cook in the kitchen with my kids.

When we were growing up, both Joe and I had kitchen chores and had to be at the dinner table cleaned up and on time every night. Things were different back then: the man expected dinner on the table, kids quietly waiting in their seats for him, when he walked in the door. Yeah, I know there are tons of men—Joe included—who would love that to be the rule today, too. But the men used to come home at 5:30 every night. That’s right, 5:30. When’s the last time you or your man were home for dinner at that time? Joe comes home at a different time every night. I never know when to expect him. How am I supposed to have a hot dinner ready?

I do make dinner for him and my family, of course, five nights a week (Friday is family restaurant night and Saturday is date night), but I generally don’t get started until he gets home. The beauty of Italian cooking, though, is that most dishes are so simple, especially if you have certain sauces and herbs around at all times, that they can be made pretty quickly. Fresh, quick, easy, and delicious? Sign me up, right?

I’ll cook anywhere. My husband and I go over to Chris and Jacqueline Laurita’s house a lot. The men play poker while we cook. Well, let’s be honest, I cook and Jacqueline watches. I’m kidding (sort of). She makes appetizers and I’ll make the main course. Open a bottle of wine, catch up on all our gossip, it’s
the best
!

October 23, 1999- My
Shakespeare in Love
–themed wedding. Don’t you love the poet sleeves on my dress?

Jacqueline is allergic to seafood, which is fine since my husband has a tendency to let all of the crabs we catch at the Jersey Shore go when he’s had too much to drink. (There’s this little bushel with a top on it that sits in the water to keep the crabs alive and fresh, and what does Joe do? He flings the entire freakin’ crate into the ocean so hard, the top falls off, and the whole bucket swims away. He had to make the trip of shame to the grocery store that night for store-bought crabs . . . and gelatos of apology. I’d forgive anyone who brings me Gelotti’s, my favorite ice cream shop in Paterson. Well, almost anyone.)

All right, I have a confession to make. It’s been ten years since my first solo Italian meal. If you do the math, you’ll quickly figure out I haven’t been cooking since I was a kid. In fact, I didn’t know how to cook at all until I got married. I helped in the kitchen, of course, but I wasn’t allowed to touch anything important or mix things or taste and experiment, so mostly, like any kid, I did my chores in a trance. Italian mammas are famous for taking care of their families so well that their kids never want to leave. Most Italian boys go right from their ma’s house to their wife’s. Same with me and Joe. I was super excited to get married, but once it was all over and I was standing in the kitchen, preparing to make my first “married” meal, I panicked. I had no idea what to do. When you’re dating, everything you make for your guy is good. But now I felt like the bar was raised a bit. Like he was going to compare whatever I cooked him to his mom’s fabulous food.

I reached for the phone, called my own ma, and cried to her like a baby (in Italian, of course).

She actually taught me how to cook over the phone. That should tell you how easy it is to make delicious Italian food. Me, I’m not going to wait until my girls get married to teach them how to cook. I’m starting now, even though they’re tiny. They have their little jobs in the kitchen, and I just love to be around them and cook with them.

Since not everyone has a relative from the Amalfi coast to call in a cooking crisis, I decided to write this book to pass on some of our family’s tips, tricks, and traditions. It’s a love letter to my mamma. It’s a lesson plan for my kids. And it’s a “welcome to the family” for you. I’m far too young to be your mother, but I’ll be your Italian best friend—the fiery, kind of crazy one, who’s always good for a bottle of wine, a big dish of pasta, and a million laughs.

Some stereotypes are true: everyone loves an Italian girl. I’ll teach you how to embrace your inner
paesan
, how to cook like Mamma, entertain like an angel, and how to stoke the fires in your kitchen, relationships, and even the bedroom.

Allora!
Let’s get started!

I’m sorry if this dashes your dreams, but you gotta know this: the Olive Garden does not serve Italian food. They serve
American
-Italian food; and there’s a big, big difference—a difference you will see in your big, big butt if you only eat that kind of food.

Every one of our families came to America from another country at some point in time, and brought with us our cultures, traditions, languages, and, of course, food. But when it’s all thrown into that great big “melting pot,” sometimes the ingredients get more than a little muddled.

I love-love-love my country, but we’re not known for having the healthiest national foods. (God love us, but what other country serves deep-fried butter-on-a-stick?) The Americanization of Italian food has unfortunately given a lot of Italian food a bad rap for being unhealthy.

Ravioli is a perfect example. The Italians have been eating the small envelopes of pasta stuffed with herbs and meats for more than seven hundred years. It’s a cheap, easy, and nutritious food supposedly invented by sailors when they stuffed bits of their leftover dinner into balls of pasta to save it for later. Fast-forward to America and the invention of “toasted ravioli”—where a perfect ravioli is prepared, but then dipped in eggs, coated in bread crumbs, and thrown in a deep fryer full of freakin’ vegetable oil like common French fries. Now you have 50 percent more calories and more than twice the fat. (I’m sorry, Andy Cohen at Bravo, I know you grew up in St. Louis where toasted ravioli was “invented,” I know they even served it at your high school, but it’s a big fat fake! It’s not Italian food, and p.s., it’s not even “toasted”!)

And pizza?

Don’t get me started. What began in the Mediterranean as a lovely, rustic flatbread topped with local vegetables, herbs, and eventually tomato sauces morphed in America into a giant, doughy, greasy, cheese-filled monster with entire other meals like cheeseburgers and barbecued chicken thrown on top. I’m not sayin’ American (especially Chicago-style) pizza doesn’t taste good. But it’s a bastardized, belly-bulging version of what the Italians would eat.

Of course
pizza
and
ravioli
and
pasta alfredo
are all Italian words, so it’s easy to think they are Italian foods. But, if you’re in a typical American store or restaurant, they’re probably as authentic Italian as the Dolce &
c
abbana handbags sold on the corner of Fifth Avenue.

No one likes a poser. So how can you tell the difference between true Italian cuisine and a knockoff? Here’s a handy cheat sheet.

True Italian Food, or How to Spot a Knockoff

Authentic Italian cooking is healthy because it includes sautéing with olive oil, not deep-frying in vegetable oil. It uses fresh ingredients, including lots of green vegetables. And carbs are a supporting player, not the star of the show.

Just looking at a plate will give you a good idea. An Italian meal will look fresh and healthy. There will be roughly the same amount of vegetables, meat, and pasta. The sauce will be proportionate to the pasta or meat, and it will be part of the meal, not a sloppy afterthought. If you find yourself faced with mountains of pasta drowning in a creamy sauce that is congealing because it’s so fatty, with sad, soggy vegetables suffocating under the sauce and grease and oil spilling over the edges of the plate, then you’ve got yourself a faux and fatty Italian meal.

Another giveaway is the bread. Italian bread is a dainty, savory appetizer, not a bottomless basket of butter-covered bread sticks as big as a baby’s arm. The bread world is the opposite of the bedroom world: small is good; big is bad. Ignore those giant white loaves you see in the grocery store marked “Italian bread.” Not healthy. Authentic Italian bread includes
grissini
, pencil-sized sticks of crispy breads, and
bruschetta
, small slices of bread grilled and then topped with garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, and usually fresh vegetables. (I’ll teach you how to make these in Chapter 10!)

Of course, when you cook with me, you’re cooking the Old World way. But if you’re out, and you’re still not sure if you’re being served an authentic Italian meal or an American-Italian heart-attack-on-a-plate, see how you feel at the end of your dinner. True Italian food makes you feel full and energetic and satisfied (maybe, if it’s good stuff done right, even a little turned on . . .). Italians are hard workers. They eat to fuel up and then go back out into the fields. Faux Italian food makes you feel overly full, bloated, and a little mad at yourself for the indulgence. If you’ve ever had to secretly undo the top button of your pants under the tablecloth, you know what I’m talking about. No one leaves my house clutching their belly and joking about how much they shouldn’t have eaten!

I Heart Healthy Foods

Of course, you should enjoy what you eat, but your body should benefit from it as well. Another reason authentic Italian food is not just good, but also good for you, is that it naturally includes many of the “superfoods” proven to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, high cholesterol, and even depression: olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, oregano, basil, parsley, spinach, and fresh fish. In fact, doctors and nutritionists recommend you eat these things every single week. Forget those giant, gaggy supplement pills, and get healthy by cooking the Italian way!

OLIVE OIL

There’s so much to say about this amazing oil that I’m setting aside the very next chapter to rave about it. In the meantime, know that olive oil is not only delicious, it also helps your heart, fights cancer, controls your blood sugar, lowers blood pressure, prevents bone loss, stops that little pooch of belly fat from forming (swear!), and can even make you a better lover (well, that last one’s not been scientifically proven or anything, but it makes sense that if you’re healthier and skinnier then you’d be better in bed, yes?).