The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco

30 Pages·2002·0.92 MB·English

by  Bucco

Copyright © 2002 by Warner Books, Inc. and Home Box Office, a Division of
Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. All Rights Reserved. Except as
permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may
be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored
in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Text Copyright © 2002 by Warner Books, Inc.
Recipe photographs copyright © 2002 by Warner Books, Inc. The Sopranos
photographs copyright © 2002 by Home Box Office, a Division of Time Warner
Entertainment Company, L.P. All Rights Reserved.
The Sopranos, HBO and IT’S NOT TV. IT’S HBO. are service marks of Time
Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
Grand Central Publishing Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.
First eBook Edition: September 2002
ISBN: 978-0-446-54534-1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Artie Bucco
CHAPTER ONE: Cooking the Neapolitan Way
CHAPTER TWO: The Soprano family Tradition
CHAPTER THREEE: Sunday Dinner
CHAPTER FOUR: Feeding My Family
CHAPTER FIVE: Mia Cucina
CHAPTER SIX: Cooking for the Whole Famiglia
CHAPTER SEVEN: Rage, Guilt, Loneliness, and food
CHAPTER EIGHT: My nucci
CHAPTER NINE: Cibo D‘ Amore
CHAPTER TEN: Grilling—Italian Style
CHAPTER ELEVEN: If I Couldn’t Eat, I’d F**king Die
Afterword
To all of our mothers, no matter what they cook.
Acknowledgments
Many, many thanks to: David Chase, Ilene Landress, Russell Schwartz,
Sandra Bark, Michele Scicolone, Ellen Silverman, Carolyn Strauss, Miranda
Heller, Richard Oren, Martin Felli, John Ventimiglia, Federico Castelluccio and
cast and crew, Sandra Vannucchi, Nona Jones, Victoria Frazier, Chris Newman,
the gracious staff of the New Jersey Information Center, and the incomparable
assistance of Bree Conover and Felicia Lipchik. Also, I’d like to thank Ann-
Marie, Blaine, and Max for all their love and support.
—Allen Rucker
Thank you to Ilene Landress for never getting depressed with all the meetings
it took to produce this book. We already thanked our mothers, so thank you to
my grandmother, Theresa Melfi, one of the world’s great cooks and also my
father, Henry Chase who was a really good cook, pie maker, and, perhaps more
important, convinced me to eat mussels and clams. To most of my relatives
—they are good at the stove, my wife, Denise, and her mother, Simone Kelly,
where I first experienced French food, and also to my daughter, Michele with
whom we’ve had a lot of happy, delicious lunches and dinners.
—David Chase

Introduction by Artie Bucco
NUOVO VESUVIO RISTORANTE, ESSEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY
C
iao! Benvenuti alla mia cucina! To all of you, I say, “Hello, and welcome
to my kitchen!” Actually, I’m inviting you into many kitchens, many Italian-
American kitchens, and, along the way, into many Italian-American lives. If you
are one of us, either by birth or in spirit, you know that food is not just fuel for
the Italian body. Food is la gioia di vivere, zest for life. Food is family, tradition,
birth, confirmation, marriage, sickness, death—life itself A paisan without food
is like Cecilia Bartoli without a song. Why get up in the morning?
This Italian-American cookbook does not come from some loudmouth TV
chef trying to get rich off of “Risotto al Funghi” or a brainy “student” of Italian
cooking who learned it all in a weekend at a high-priced gastronomium in
California. This book of meals comes from real life, la vita reale. The recipes are
real, the people who cook them do so in real kitchens, for real families, and
many get real fat! The cuochi, or chefs, are my friends, or in some cases, me,
and they are all non-pros, except, of course, me. We live in northern New Jersey,
the true “garden” of the Garden State, and although we come from many
walkways of life and have our own private victories, defeats, and tie games, we
share a common passione for the food our forefathers and mothers brought with
them from “the old country.” This cookbook is our humble attempt to pass this
culinary blessing on to you, the reader.
Before we start to boil the water and sautÉ the garlic, a few words about
myself. I am a third-generation Italian-American chef and restaurateur. My
grandparents, Enrico and Concetta Bucco, came from the province of Avellino
in Southern Italy in 1913, leaving behind a legacy of poverty and exploitation.
But they had each other and a love that could move mountains. With uncommon
courage, they followed their dream and opened their first hole-in-the-wall
restaurant, Bucco’s Vesuvio—named after the volcano of their youth—in the
heavily Italian First Ward of Newark, New Jersey, in 1926. Their rice balls were
soon known as far away as Hackensack.
My father, Arthur, and my dear mother, Dot, followed their dream by
following the migration of second-generation Italians to the green grass of the