"Cucina Rustica" & "Patsy's [NYC Restaurant] Cookbook" - Pasta with Sausage and Fennel Sauce and Pasta Bolognese - Christmas Eve 2017

Date I made these recipes:  December 24, 2017 - Christmas Eve

Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place & Evan Kleiman

Published by William Morrow & Company, Inc.

ISBN: 0-688-16063-8; copyright 1990

Recipe: “Little Ears” Pasta with Sausage and Fennel (Orecchiette con Salsicce e Finnocchio) – p. 188-189

Patsy’s Cookbook – Classic Recipes From a New York City Landmark Restaurant by Sal J. Scognamillo; Foreword by Nancy Sinatra

Published by Clarkson Potter Publishers

ISBN: 0-609-60954-8; copyright 2002

Recipe:  Penne Bolognese – p. 109

As is usual and customary, I made once again a pasta dish for our Christmas Eve repast.  Normally, I make spaghetti and meatballs but from time to time, I’ve made a pasta sauce just to mix things up a little.  Either way, pasta and sauce of some kind is a family custom, so I set to work to find some recipes.

Reader, I found two.  When I presented these two options to my husband, and asked him to choose one, he said “Why don’t we make both?  We can always freeze the leftovers.”

For the record, we do not “freeze” in this house unless by “freeze” you mean how we are feeling right now after coming in from outside where the current temperature is -5.  This is “up” from our starting temperature of -15 below.  My feet feel like blocks of ice.  (It’s also New Year’s Eve and this is just a great way to ring in the new year, is it not?)

Anyway, as usual, and especially when I’m looking at Italian cookbooks, I got sidetracked as so many dishes sounded fantastic.  Here’s a look at Cucina Rustica’s Table of Contents: 

• Menus
• The Italian Kitchen
• Antipasti
• Insalate (Salads)
• Zuppe e Minestre (Soups)
• Pasta
• Risotto
• Polenta
• Contorni (Vegetables)
• Pesce e Frutti di Mare (Fish and Shellfish)
• Pollame e Carne (Poultry and Meat)
• Dolci (Desserts)

 For many Italian-American families, Christmas Eve is the “Feast of the Seven Fishes.”  My family never observed this, and I don’t either, so I didn’t spend much time with that chapter.  The same cannot be said though, for the soup section as I do enjoy soup, especially when the weather is cold.  I toyed briefly, with making my own recipe for Italian Wedding Soup but that recipe wasn’t in this cookbook.

Many of the poultry, meat, vegetable and dessert selections would have been fabulous on any other day but this one and so I soldiered on to the pasta section. Let me be clear that the “pasta on Christmas Eve” edict wasn’t really a family rule per se, it’s just that we started having spaghetti on Christmas Eve when I was very young and I saw no reason to deviate.

Although the pasta section covered all the bases from “Fast Spaghetti” [Sauce] on p. 152, to “Sardinian Clam Sauce” on p. 171, I settled on the sausage and fennel sauce because I like sausage, I like fennel, and I like them together!

Some of you though, may not like fennel because it tastes – slightly - of anise which is to say, licorice. Do not be fooled into thinking you’re going to be eating black candy licorice though, because fennel licorice is no where near the tangy, yet sweet candy confection.  It’s a subtle taste and it marries well with sausage.  This recipe gives you the option to add cream to the broth-based sauce and what the heck, it’s a holiday, right?  We indulged.

By the way, this book’s authors, Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman wrote also Cucina Fresca and Pasta Fresca just in case you’re in a mood to get your pasta on!

Then there’s Pasty’s Cookbook which is a “commemorative” cookbook from the famous NYC restaurant, a place so small that it is always booked, and those bookings are for the beautiful people, i.e. celebrities. In fact, the back cover is filled with quotes from some of Patsy’s most famous patrons:  Nancy Sinatra (who ate there with her dad, Frank), Tony Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and Michael Feinstein.  (I have an awful feeling that many of you reading this are saying “Who?” but Google them and educate yourselves because these people were big deals “back in the day.”)

Given that all of us little people have a snowball’s chance in hell of eating at Patsy’s, it was nice of them to publish this cookbook, so we can all sample what might have been.

Patsy’s Table of Contents is similar to but smaller than Cucina Rustica:

• Appetizers
• Salads and Vegetables
• Soups
• Pasta, Risotto, and Sauces
• Chicken
• Meats
• Fish and Shellfish
• Desserts

 There’s also a small section for Frank Sinatra’s Favorites which I thought was hilarious, but the guy ate there a lot, so why not, right?  The book contains several stories about family and friends and also many photos.  I love cookbooks like this as I feel like I’m looking at a family album.

Once again, I focused my search on pasta dishes and the one that caught my eye was yet another meat sauce, this time Bolognese.  Bolognese is a hearty meat sauce which is why I was hesitant to make both it and the sausage and fennel sauce, but protein is a good thing, so we went for it.  Whereas the sausage and fennel sauce had cream (optional, but we added it anyway), this one called for 2 tablespoons of butter and of course I obliged.  It would be rude not to, plus, butter is often a key ingredient in the Bolognese sauce and I was not about to leave out a key ingredient. (Patsy’s noted that cream is traditional also, but they opted for butter.)

Each of these sauces takes little time to make which was great and you can save yourself a whole lot of time with the pasta by choosing one kind (I used ziti) and running with it instead of making both orecchiette and penne.  In fact, the two pastas remind me of a hilarious moment in Venice while on my honeymoon 26 years ago.  We stayed in a small pensione run by two older sisters who were almost dead-ringers for my twin great-aunts, Angelina and Catherine who hailed from Sicily. At any rate, these sisters also ran a small restaurant and when we went downstairs for dinner one night, I ordered spaghetti and Andy ordered rigatoni.

The sister who took our order then shuffled back to the kitchen and moments later, we heard them both yelling (in Italian).  Our order-taking sister came back out, looked at us and said “Due (pronounced “do-ay” spaghetti or due rigatoni,” which translated means “Two [orders of] spaghetti or two of rigatoni,” and not one of each!

We cracked up laughing because reader, we were the only people in the restaurant at that moment!  Those sisters were not going to mess around by cooking two different pastas, and I didn’t either:  I split the difference by making ziti and that was the end of that!

This concludes our Italian-centric Christmas Eve dinner discussion.  You can make these recipes at any time, but I think they are best appreciated on a holiday in the cold, bleak midwinter.

Little Ears [Pasta] with Sausage and Fennel (Orecchiette con Salsicce e Finocchio) – serves 4 to 6

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

½ medium onion, peeled and minced

2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

10 ounces sweet Italian sausage, casings removed, crumbled

10 fresh basil leaves, cut into julienne

5 sprigs fresh oregano, leaves only

½ cup chicken broth

½ cup young red wine

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

½ cup cream (optional)

1 pound imported orecchiette

Grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese for the table

Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized skillet.  Add the onion and gently sauté over low heat until it wilts.  Add the fennel and continue cooking until both fennel and onion are soft.  Turn up the heat and add the garlic to the skillet.

Sauté garlic briefly just until it turns opaque and releases its characteristic aroma.  Add the sausage and brown over high heat.  When no trace of pink remains in the sausage, add the basil, oregano, chicken broth, red wine, and salt and pepper to taste.  Turn down the heat to medium and cook sauce until the liquids reduce and the flavors are well blended.  Add the cream, if desired, and cook just until it reduces slightly, about 5 minutes.

Cook the orecchiette in abundant boiling salted water until al dente.  Drain the pasta thoroughly and transfer to the skillet with the sauce.  Cook briefly over moderate heat, stirring well.  Serve immediately in a large shallow serving bowl topped with plenty of grated cheese of your choice.

Pasta Bolognese – Serves 4 to 6

6 medium white mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

¼ cup olive oil

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

½ pound finely ground lean beef

1 16-ounce can plum tomatoes, with juice

2 bay leaves

¼ cup Cabernet Sauvignon

¼ cup beef broth

Pinch of oregano

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

4 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

1 pound penne (or spiral pasta), cooked al dente

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the mushrooms, and blanch for 2 minutes.  Drain, chop fine, and reserve.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high flame and sauté the onions for 3 to 4 minutes, or until lightly browned.  Add the blanched mushrooms, garlic, and ground beef, and continue to cook and stir for 7 to 8 minutes, until the meat is browned.  Coarsely chop the tomatoes and add with their juice, the bay leaves, wine, broth, and oregano.  Bring to a boil, reduce the hat to low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves.  Add the butter and parsley and season with salt and pepper.  Sprinkle and stir in the Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve over the cooked pasta.

"The Wiseguy Cookbook - My Favorite Recipes From My Life As a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run" by Henry Hill - Sunday Gravy with Aunt Milly's Meatballs and Aunt Nina's Caponatina (eggplant) appetizer - Christmas Eve 2016

Date I made this recipe:  December 24, 2016 – Christmas Eve

The Wiseguy Cookbook – My Favorite Recipes From My Life as A Goodfella to Cooking on the Run (Recipes You Can't Refuse – From America's Most Famous Wiseguy) by Henry Hill and Priscilla David; foreword by Nicholas Pileggi

Published by New American Library

ISBN: 0-451-20706-8; © 2002

Recipes:  Aunt Nina's Caponatina (a/k/a Caponata, an eggplant appetizer) – p. 32-33; Sunday Gravy [Meat Sauce] – p. 33-34; Milly's Meatballs [Brooklyn, 1950] – p. 38-39; Basic Tomato Sauce – p. 13-14

In case you didn't know, a "wiseguy" is a person who belongs to the Mafia or is a smartass.  Sometimes they are one in the same thing.

One of my father's frequent sayings was "What are you, a wiseguy?"  I'm pretty sure he meant the later definition seeing as how he often directed it at me or my brother or other younger family members when we were smarting off.  But given that he was 100% Sicilian American, he might have also been talking about a wiseguy as in a member of the Mob.

That's a stretch though – kind of.  Not that dad was in the Mob (perish the thought!) but he was born and raised on the east coast, your unofficial HQ for all things mafioso.  And his aunt, my great-aunt, Antoinette, used to joke all the time that she was the "Godfather's godmother."

So we're sticking with "wiseguy" as in "smartass."

"Henry Hill" though, was a wiseguy as in mobster, and possibly a wiseguy as in smartass, and this cookbook tells about his life on the run (from the law) where the real punishment was lack of access to his favorite Italian foodstuffs.

I have to tell you, that would get to me as well.  I mean, to not have pasta or sauce is a sacrilege.  To be without the other accoutrements such as meatballs or sausage or Italian cookies would render me useless.  And so I feel this man's pain! 

The Wiseguy cookbook is a good read as Henry tells us all about trying to cook while in prison and later, the Witness Protection Program.  His life of crime was chronicled in the book Wiseguy:  Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi (who wrote the cookbook's foreword) and this book became the basis for the movie, Goodfellas.  Actor Ray Liotta played Henry's character.  And so now, of course, I want to watch the movie again just to pull it all together. And to check out the food of course, because there are some great food scenes.

And there are also some great recipes in this book and I say "great" without having tried them all because I can pretty much tell by the ingredients that many of these dishes could have graced my family's table with just a few tweaks here and there.  And of course, my family dishes are the best and if you say otherwise, I may have to take you out and I do not mean to a restaurant, capisce?

Henry divided this book into two sections:  Section One:  Brooklyn and the Mob, and Section Two:  On the Run (in Omaha, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Seattle and Washington State and California – man the guy got around!)  And stories, like the one I'm telling you, accompany the recipes and I swear to you, a lot of them sound like my family stories save for the part about being in the mob and all.

Now there were many, many things I could have made from this book but I was on a mission and that was to find a pasta recipe to serve up on Christmas Eve.  It was tradition in my immediate family to make spaghetti and meatballs before going to Christmas Eve mass and even though my parents are gone, I still carry on the pasta tradition in my house.  In the years where we weren't allowed to eat meat, we skipped the meatballs.  Some years (early on) we even had to fast which was ridiculous.  I mean mass goes long on any given Sunday and ridiculously long on Christmas Eve, and does the Lord really mean for us to pass out from hunger?  No.

This year, I decided to keep things simple and make the recipe for "Sunday Gravy," otherwise known as sauce, and to be clear that means "red sauce."  There is no other kind of sauce if you are southern Italian or Sicilian. "White" is not a sauce, it's a....something else.

Now plenty of east coast Italians refer to their red sauce as "Sunday Gravy" but I don't know why that is.  Maybe it's a translation thing?  And then there's your "macaroni" which is how most Italians referred to the vehicle for the sauce, that morphed overnight into the slightly more snotty "pasta, this the result of the homemade pasta craze of the 90's.  I have only ever made homemade "pasta" in cooking classes.  If boxed pasta was good enough for my family, it was good enough for me.  (Back in the day, we were always "Buitoni" brand people and failing that, Creamette® which was everywhere—still is!)

So "pasta" + "Sunday Gravy"/red sauce was the dish of the day.  Although I'm including the cookbook's recipe for a basic tomato sauce, I made my family's version to which I  added meatballs and Italian sausage.  I decided to give Henry Hill's meatball recipe a try and it was quite good, but I purchased the sausage rather than try my hand at grinding my own meat and adding my own seasoning.  Tis the season to draw the line on a few things in the interest of time.

On a side note, there is another Christmas Eve tradition mostly enjoyed by your east coast Italians called the Feast of the Seven Fishes.  Since we couldn't get our hands on a lot of fish or seafood where I grew up, we never "observed" this feast.  And I don't think my extended family on the east coast did, either.  As you might have surmised, seven separate fish dishes are made and eaten on Christmas Eve.  Given that we are only a two-person household, and I am not that fond of fish, I have never had the urge to make seven fish dishes because I'm picturing leftovers for days and that will simply not do. (And we all know the classic rule, right:  Thou shalt not reheat fish in the microwave, particularly at the office, or there will be consequences.)

And so Sunday Gravy and pasta in four parts:  make the sauce, make the meatballs, make the gravy, boil the pasta – piece of cake.  Well, except there are always little hiccups and this time, the hiccup was otherwise known as a "meatball."

The meatball recipe calls for you to fry the meatballs but I haven't fried a meatball in who knows how long, preferring instead to bake them (or sometimes put them in the sauce to "poach").  And so I decided to bake these and then I thought myself to be some kind of genius for using a mini-cupcake pan for the meatballs as the size was just perfect. Normally, I just put them on a baking sheet and have at it.

So I put the meatball mixture into the pans, turned on the oven, set the timer and almost over-baked them; the word "crunchy" comes to mind.  Well, crap, now what?

So channeling The Grinch, I decided "I must save these meatballs, but how?"

I'll tell you how:  you "reconstitute" the meatballs by giving them a broth bath. I used chicken broth as I had that on hand but you could use beef as well.  Lucky for me, I decided to make the meatballs the night before so I put the meatballs and broth in the refrigerator and the next day they were perfect.

So that's the whole Sunday Sauce/Meatball thing and now let's talk about a bonus recipe - Aunt Nina's Caponatina.  To clarify, this is not my Aunt Nina as I don't have an Aunt Nina, and "caponatina" is a diminutive of the word caponata which is an eggplant appetizer that I love.

This recipe promises to come close to the Progresso brand caponata my family grew up eating.  And it was good attempt to be sure, but believe it or not, the canned caponata won the day.

I think it comes down to this:  the eggplant was a bit too crunchy in the homemade version, and the Progresso brand was slightly sweeter and this is necessary to offset the tartness of the red wine vinegar.

In all likelihood, the sweetness is what caused us to inhale this stuff the minute my mom put it out on a tray table, along with other snacks, during Christmas week.  We inhaled this stuff such that mom finally figured out to stock up rather than deal with the proverbial "Is there any more?"  "No?"  "Waaaaaaaaaaa."

During the early years of my childhood, Progresso's caponata was included in a care package my grandma put together during our summertime visits, along with canned tomatoes, boxes of dry pasta and Stella Doro cookies and biscotti.  The trunk of our car always rode ridiculously low to the ground on the way back from New Jersey but it was worth it, save for the times the muffler fell off (almost annually and almost always in Pennsylvania on our way home) in which case, dad had to unpack all those heavy bags to get at a coat hanger to rig up the muffler until we got to a gas station.  I feel like Facebook with its "Like" and "Share" if this ever happened to your family (the muffler falling off, that is). (Every time this happened, my dad, of course, just about went ballistic, but every year thereafter on our road trip back east, he would laugh when my brother and I commented, upon seeing the "Pennsylvania Welcomes You" sign,"It's about time for the muffler to fall off, don't you think?")

So anyway, now that I have this homemade recipe under my belt, I'm going to recommend that you find some way to slow-cook the eggplant so that it's very soft, almost mushy.  This might be as easy as cooking it longer on the stovetop but you're going to have to play with the liquid ratio so it doesn't dry out. And I would probably not peel the eggplant because it seems to me that Progresso didn't although I could be wrong.  I also think you need to add more cooking time to the celery and onions so that they too, become very soft. Finally, instead of regular sugar, substitute brown sugar as I think it brings the flavor closer to that of the canned product.

So that's the word on Henry Hill and his recipes and this cookbook.  Had I the time, I could certainly eat my way through the rest of the book as his recipes are making me both hungry and nostalgic.   My dad always called us to the table with an "A mangia" (Basically, "let's eat") where we inhaled our "spaghets" (dad's term) and our caponata and life was good.

PS—It looks like Progresso no longer makes caponata and damn it all, why not?  And two years ago, Jane Parker, an A&P grocery store brand, discontinued it's fabulous fruitcake.  To quote my mother, "What is this world coming to!"

Sunday Gravy (Meat Sauce) – serves 8-10 generously

6 cups Basic Tomato Sauce (p. 13 or below)

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 hot sausages or 2 hot and 2 mild (about ½ pound)

1 recipe Milly's Meatballs (p. 38 or below)

2 pounds cooked pasta of your choice

Begin preparing Basic Tomato Sauce. While it is simmering, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan.  Poke holes in the sausages with a fork and put in the pan.  Cook on low to medium heat, turning occasionally until lightly brown, about 8-10 minutes.  You don't have to cook them all the way through because they'll cook more in the sauce.  Drain on paper towels.  Cut in half and add to tomato sauce.  While sauce simmers, prepare meatballs.

When meatballs are browned, spoon them carefully into the sauce.  Continue simmering until meatballs are cooked through, about 10-15 minutes.  Adjust seasoning.  Serve family style over pasta in a large bowl.  Have plenty of bread to sop up the sauce.

Basic Tomato Sauce  – Makes 3 cups of sauce (enough sauce for 4-6 people) (Ann's Note:  I made my own family's recipe.  If you don't want to make it, a basic store-bought tomato basil sauce will do)

6-8 cloves garlic, minced or thinly sliced (about 2 tablespoons)

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup chopped brown or white onions or shallots

2 28-ounce cans peeled plum tomatoes with basil, drained, reserving juice

12 large basil leaves, torn in large pieces, or 1 tablespoon dried

¼ cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley, or 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon dried parsley

½ teaspoon each salt and pepper

In a large skillet or medium-large wide pot, cook garlic briefly in olive oil over medium-low heat.  Do not brown, or it will get bitter.  If using optional onions, cook them 3-5 minutes in olive oil, then add garlic and cook 1 minute.  Add the juice from the canned tomatoes to stop the garlic cooking.  Crush tomatoes with your hands or chop well no a cutting board and add to the pan.  Add basil, parsley, and ¼ teaspoon each of the salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, stir thoroughly once, then reduce heat to a low simmer.  As the acid from the tomatoes flows to the top, skim it off every 10-15 minutes.  Sauce is ready in half an hour, but cook up to 1 hour if you want it thicker. Check for seasoning and add the rest of the salt and pepper, if desired.

Milly's Meatballs [Brooklyn, 1950] – serves 6

1 ½ pounds ground beef + ½ pound ground pork – OR – 1 pound ground beef + ¾ pound ground veal + ¼ pound ground pork

2 eggs

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

1 tablespoon minced fresh basil

¼ cup chopped white or brown onions or shallots

3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

¼ cup grated fresh Romano or Parmesan cheese

½ cup dried, seasoned bread crumbs (Ann's Note:  if you only have plain breadcrumbs, add a bit of the following to it to make "seasoned" crumbs – garlic salt, dried parsley, dried basil, dried oregano and/or a bit of Italian seasoning spice mix)

½ teaspoon each salt and pepper (to taste)

2 tablespoons chopped canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, or Basic Tomato Sauce (optional)

3 tablespoons olive oil (or more if needed)

Combine ground meats in a large bowl and mix together well with your hands.  Add in eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.  Add in all other ingredients except tomatoes or sauce and olive oil, and combine to form a mixture that is soft but still sticks together.  If meatballs are too hard or dry, add chopped tomatoes or sauce.

Heat olive oil in frying pan.  Place a small bowl of water and a plate near meatball mixture.  While oil is heating, roll approximately 3 tablespoons of meatball mixture at a time into walnut-size balls in palm of hand, adding a small amount of water if they don't roll well.  Place each completed ball on the plate.  Continue forming until all meatballs are done (you can place them on top of each other like a tower).  Test the oil temperature – a drop of water should sizzle when it hits the oil.  Fry meatballs in batches, turning until browned on all sides and cooked through.  Drain on paper towels.  Can be served plain, as main dish in any tomato sauce, on an Italian roll with Parmesan, provolone, or mozzarella as a sandwich, or sliced and put on pizza.

Variations:

1. Add ½ cup golden raisins.  This is from Tommy DiSimone's father.  This makes a sweet meatball.  Ann's Note: Sicilian meatballs often contain raisins although nobody in my family does that.
2. Add ¼ cup chopped pine nuts. Toast them lightly if you want, but keep in mind they'll also get cooked when the meatballs do.

Ann's Note:  to fry or not to fry, that is the question.  I used to fry my meatballs and then quit doing that in favor of baking them as it's far less messy.  As I mentioned above, I baked them at either 400 or 425 (I can't recall), for either 20 or 25 minutes (I can't recall that either!).  But since I almost incinerated them, check for doneness after 15 minutes.

Aunt Nina's Caponatina – makes about 3 cups (Ann's Note:  even a half recipe made quite a bit of "caponata")

2 tablespoons salt

2 medium eggplants (about 1 pound each)

½ cup olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped fine (about 1 cup)

3 stalks celery, thinly sliced (about 1 ½ cups)

½ cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons sugar (Ann's Note:  I recommend brown sugar)

2-3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

¾ cup tomato puree

¼ cup chopped pitted black olives

½ cup capers

Fill a large bowl two-thirds full of water, add salt, and stir to dissolve.  Peel and slice eggplant into ½-inch slices.  Place slices in  the bowl and let soak for 1-2 hours (weight them with a pan or plate so they stay in the water).  Drain off the liquid and pat dry with paper towels.  Cut slices into ½-inch thick cubes.

Heat ¼ of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Fry eggplant 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, and drain on paper towels.  Cook, stirring occasionally over low to medium heat until soft, approximately 10 minutes.  Add wine and cook until wine has almost evaporated.  Return eggplant to pan.

Dissolve sugar in the red wine vinegar and pour over eggplant.  Add tomato puree, olives, and capers; stir and add salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer over low heat 5 minutes, until well-blended.  Cool to room temperature and serve.

Refrigerated, this will last up to two weeks.  If it's not gobbled up sooner.

Ann's Notes:  The jury is still out on whether or not pre-soaking the eggplant in a salt bath makes any difference in cooking but I was a good solider and followed the directive.  I can't say it made any difference though, as it still took a long time to soften and I did not achieve the nearly-mush texture I wanted (or was used to).  The vegetables (onions and celery) also need more time.  They need to be just on the shy side of "soft."  And as I already mentioned, were I to make this again, I think I would use brown sugar instead of regular as it more closely approximates the Progresso brand I know and love.

"Southern Italian Cooking" - Baked Bisceglie Pasta (similar to lasagna) for Christmas Eve

Date I made this recipe:  December 24, 2015 – Christmas Eve

Southern Italian Cooking:  Family Recipes from The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Jo Bettoja

Published by:  Bantam Books

ISBN:  0-553-07287-0

From my mother's cookbook collection.  This was given to her by my dad for their anniversary in 1993.

Recipe:  Baked Bisceglie Pasta (a lasagna made with rigatoni instead of lasagna sheets) – p. 232-233

At the risk of repeating myself, my family has always had a pasta dinner for Christmas Even and no way was I breaking that chain this year.  And that's despite the fact that I had Italian food the night before at a local Italian restaurant with my brother and sister-in-law who were in town visiting.  For the record, there is no such thing as too much Italian food.

Given our family tradition, it was rather nice to see my mother's handwriting in the front of the book indicating that this was an anniversary present from my dad.  The holidays are always just a little bit off because they aren't here to celebrate with us anymore so it's important to me that I continue on with our Italian fare.

Because the holidays are so busy – and this year especially with my brother and sister-in-law visiting – I am glad I made the sauce and the meatballs for this dish a week in advance and then just froze them until I needed them.  I even bought the mortadella on a whim one day a while back and when I saw that it was needed for this recipe, I froze that as well.  Mortadella is basically Italian bologna and I love it although I don't get it too often.  Maybe this was a sign?

This dish is a basic lasagna but made with rigatoni.  The layers for this dish are comprised of sauce made with meat and prosciutto; mozzarella; chopped mortadella and tiny meatballs.  I know some Italian families wouldn't dream of making a lasagna without meatballs but we were not one of those families.  And the meatballs were only okay – a little too soft for my taste but hey, you mix them in with the other layers and they were fine.  If I made this again though, I think I'd use my own family meatball recipe.

And speaking of the recipes, there were many, many good recipes from which to choose in this book, highlighting the various regions of southern Italy as well as Sicily.  Swordfish and other fish are extremely popular in Sicily but we never, ever had that when we visited my Sicilian grandmother who lived in New Jersey.  It might have been that its popularity never reached as far as the US or it might have been because it was harder to find in US oceanic waters than in Sicily but regardless, never once did it grace our table.  Other Sicilian dishes though, like caponata, were family favorites. There's a recipe in this book for caponata using artichokes which is not something we were used to but it sounded delicious.  There are also lots of dishes using oranges and lemons and eggplant, all of which are found in southern Italy and Sicily in abundance.

For my menu, I kept it simple and just made the pasta.  And even though I made and froze a few ingredients, I still had my hands full making the pasta, dicing the cheese and the mortadella and just generally getting organized.  And we loved the dish save for one thing:  it got too browned on top.  The recipe doesn't say to cover the dish but you should or else you'll suffer the same fate as we did. 

I should also mention that at the same time I was making this dish, I was also cooking a pork stew with tomatoes, olives and fennel from a Martha Stewart cookbook to serve the next day.  I may not be a Chopped-quality chef, but damned if I can't handle making two dishes at the same time!

The note for this recipe says that this dish is part of a dinner to celebrate the Feast of the Three Saints.  I must say that despite having attended Catholic grade school, I had no idea that there was a feast day for this (although heaven knows, we celebrated every other feast day known to man), nor did I know the three saints for whom this day is celebrated. 

Enter Wikipedia.  According to Wiki, the three saints are Alfio, Filadelpho and Cirino.  (Never heard of them.)  According to Catholic legend, these three brothers were persecuted by the Romans (pre-Christianity) after refusing to worship pagan gods, were killed and were recognized as martyrs/saints.  Who knew?  I have no idea why this particular dish commemorates their feast day but the author said so and so there you have it. It's never a good idea to go up against a fellow paisano!

Even though the Three Saints Feast Day does not fall on Christmas (competing with the birth of Christ is never a good idea), it sounded like a good Christmas Eve dinner so I made it and so should you.

Buon Vigilia di Natale!  (Happy Christmas Eve)

Baked Bisceglie Pasta (Bisceglie is a region in southern Italy) – serves 8 to 10

For the ragu:

¼ cup olive oil

1 small celery stalk, finely chopped

1 medium carrot, finely chopped

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1-1/2 ounces prosciutto (I think slice), finely chopped

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

½ pound ground beef

½ cup dry white wine

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 quart tomato puree

For the meatballs:

½ pound ground beef

½ cup freshly grated pecorino cheese

2 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs

6 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

2 eggs

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

¼ cup olive oil
To assemble the dish:

1 pound rigatoni

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1/3 cpound mortadella, finely chopped

¾ pound mozzarella cheese, finely chopped (about 2-3/4 cups)

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Make the ragu:  Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, preferably terra-cotta.  (Ann's Note:  Oh, darn, I'm all out of terra-cotta saucepans!)  Add the vegetables, prosciutto, salt and pepper.  Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables begin to brown.  Add the ground beef and brown, about 10 minutes.  Add the wine and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the tomato paste, mixing well, and the tomato puree.  Bring back to a boil and simmer, covered, for 1 hour, stirring every now and then.  Season with salt and pepper.  (The ragu can be prepared the day before.)  (Ann's Note:  I made it at least a week in advance and froze it.)

Make the meatballs:  Mix together the meat, pecorino, bread crumbs, parsley, and eggs.  Season with salt and pepper.  Make ¾-inch meatballs.  Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the meatballs in 2 batches over moderately high heat.  Drain on paper towels.  Reserve.  Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400.

Cook the rigatoni in boiling salted water until al dente.  Drain and dress with half the Parmesan.  Add 1 cup of the ragu and mix.

Assemble the dish:  Put 2 or 3 tablespoons of the ragu on the bottom of the prepared dish.  Put one third of the pasta over the ragu, then half the mortadella, half the meatballs, a third of the ragu, and a third of the Parmesan.  Grind pepper over the top.  Make another layer of one third rigatoni and the remaining mortadella, mozzarella, and meatballs.  Spoon over another third of the ragu and sprinkle with another third of the Parmesan.  Add another grinding of pepper.  Spread the remaining pasta, ragu, and Parmesan on top.  Bake for 45 minutes.*  Let the pasta rest at least 15 minutes before serving.

*Ann's Note:  The instructions do not say to cover with foil while baking but you must otherwise your top pasta layer will be overly brown.  If you want, you can probably remove it for the final 15 minutes.