Two years into my residency as a New York Eater, I officially declared a boycott on Restaurant Week and most prix fixe menus. I was tired of being served one too many subpar options, too many basic dishes that weren’t showing off the true talents of the restaurant I was sitting in. Why was I shelling out $35 for a dumbed-down piece of seared salmon when I could be ordering a more satisfying app and entree for the same price off the real menu? I didn’t see the deal.
So it was an unexpected (but happy) blow to my jaded snobbery to discover the most compelling reason to have lunch at A Voce—apart from the phenomenal fresh housemade pastas—is that they don’t play around with their prix fixe menu.
For the past year or so, the restaurant has instituted a daily $29 three-course lunch special, an actual well-thought-out menu rather than the cheap-to-serve stuff like a boring green salad and a chicken entree. Chef Missy Robbins changes it up every so often, highlighting different regions of Italy depending on the area’s iconic cuisine and the time of year she’s serving it—hearty dishes from the Piedmont in the winter, lighter seafood-based fare from Sardinia or the Veneto in warmer weather. >> Read on to discover the menu standouts at A Voce. >>
Who else hates New Year’s Eve? Anyone? I never could figure out what I was supposed to be doing on this, the most Amateur of Amateur Nights. Times Square was never an option, dinner out was always an overpriced snooze, and staying at home to cook a romantic meal just resulted in overwhelming levels of drunkenness as I tried one mixed drink experiment after another. Bad news all around.
So we started hunkering down at our friend Bryan’s house in Boston six years ago and it’s worked out incredibly well. It’s such a great compromise: All I have to do is cook lots of food, I don’t have to drive anywhere, and the party just happens around me with a rotating, crazy, always amusing cast of regular characters. After the first year’s ad hoc affair where I cooked a few random appetizers and munchies, we started assigning ethnic themes to the party food. As the crowds grew from seven to now more than 70 people, we of course couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the tradition got a little more elaborate every time.
In 2005, Bryan decided we should attempt paella, despite having way-too-small skillets incapable of holding enough rice to feed 20 people. (A nor’easter at the last minute left us with a lot of leftovers anyway.) In 2006, the Chinese Year of the Pig—Bryan’s favorite animal—gave us inspiration for a few Asian courses. In 2007, Bryan and his boyfriend LeeMichael’s gut-renovation condo in the South End necessitated a few trips to IKEA, so we hosted a Swedish-themed party influenced by the frugal retailer. Last year, in honor of Bryan and LeeMichael’s upcoming wedding, we celebrated the food of the Netherlands, the first country to legalize gay marriage.
Even before the first Dutch oliebollen and oudejaarspot were set on the table in 2008, I made an executive decision to take a year off from obscure culinary challenges. 2009 would be simple and delicious: an Italian feast. Having an entire year to prepare and a massive library of recipes from which to choose, I couldn’t resist going a little nuts (so much for simplicity) and make as much as I could from scratch—breads, pastas, sauces, ricotta. Had I thought of it earlier, I would have even tried homemade mozzarella for the first time. >> Read on to see the full menu of Italian specialties >>
This past weekend, I went home to western Pennsylvania, and as is tradition, the family spent a few hours poking around the eater’s paradise that is the PIttsburgh Strip District. The name implies something X-rated, but apart from the almost obscene number of people clogging the sidewalks of a 12-block strip of Penn Avenue, there’s an almost wholesome love for the city and all its attendant quirks. Century-old food stores like Wholey’s Fish Market, Stamoolis Brothers, Pennsylvania Macaroni, and newcomers like Mon Aimee Chocolat are punctuated by rows of vendors selling all imaginable pieces of Pittsburgh sports fan gear (“On Ice or Grass, We’ll Kick Your Ass”), street food stalls with scallion pancakes, tables laden with pizzelle and cannoli, and the occasional panhandler playing “Here We Go Steelers” on a flute.
As the line for a pre-game Primanti’s sandwich (the official sandwich of the ‘Burgh) grew longer than Shake Shack’s, we snuck around the corner for a meal that was just as hearty and gut-busting at the cafe behind the 16-year old Enrico Biscotti Company, run by the loquacious Larry Lagattuta. Waiting for a table to open up, we shot the breeze with Larry and perused the old, well-used cookbooks like Carol Field’s The Italian Baker lining the ramp to the slim but high-ceilinged garage that houses the cafe.
Though the menu changes daily, there’s always pizza straight from the brick oven and “sangaweeches” made with the same housemade pizza dough. And no matter what you order, you’re going to be served a hunk of yeasty and fragrant Italian bread with crunchy crusts and soft, tearable insides.
I narrowed my choice down to spicy sausage and peppers over farfalle, and the family table was quickly covered with beans and greens (kale and cannellini beans dripping with garlic and olive oil), stuffed peppers with beef, pork, and veal, homemade lasagna, and more bread. It wasn’t on the menu that day, but Larry also makes a mean pasta fagiole — order a big bowl along with the house bread, and you’ll have enough energy for watching three hours of Steel Curtain defense across the river at Heinz Field.
Grabbing a few of the justly-celebrated handmade biscotti at the eponymous bakery on the way out is always recommended. And if you’re in Pittsburgh and want a better introduction to yeast than my thoughts on dough and bread machines, Enrico’s hosts a monthly bread-making class. Other seasonal events like holiday cookie and biscotti-making sessions, First Friday dinners with family-style BYOB meals, and movie nights/wine dinners with local Pittsburgh businesses also pop up regularly. Please, do us all a favor and forget the Olive Garden. This is family cooking at its best.
Enrico Biscotti Company, 2022 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh. 412-281-2602.
I don’t remember my grandmother ever using a cookbook, yet she kept a small shelf of them handy for new ideas. There was one in particular that had an appealing green and red striped spine and had been beaten-up and weathered for as long as I can remember. When she passed away it was one of a few things I wanted to keep as a reminder of her. The book, The Talisman Italian Cookbook, was the 1965 English translation of Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), by Ada Boni. I now keep it in my kitchen, but I admit that I haven’t cracked it open since taking it home.
Ada Boni wrote Il Talismano in 1929, after years of collecting diverse recipes from Italy’s various regions for Preziosa, a ladies’ magazine she founded in 1915. The book contained more than 2,000 recipes and was hugely influential, not to mention the first serious compendium of Italian cooking written for Italian housewives. The 1965 version I have was translated into English for American audiences, complete with advertisement pages for Ronzoni.
First, the intro:
Thirty years ago, Ada Boni set out to become Italy’s own Fannie Farmer. A top fashion editor, Mme. Boni wanted to write a cook book like Fanny’s, summing up the cookery of her native land. So she put aside her blue-pencil momentarily, donned a simple housewife’s apron and began collecting recipes. She wound up with an 866 page cook book called “Il Talismano.”
If your head hasn’t already exploded from the efficient way a book of 866 pages was just trivialized, note two interesting signs of the time. First, Boni is given the title Madame, since French cooking was in vogue in 1965. (Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961.) Second, instead of rightfully labeling Boni a food writer, they referred to her as a “top fashion editor” since Italy was best known to Americans as a fashion capital. Otherwise, the foreword discusses Italy’s “widespread poverty” and its ”lack of success as a ‘great’ nation.”
The 1965 translation augmented, changed, and often eliminated Boni’s original recipes in order to tailor them to American tastes and the availabilty of ingredients. Today, it seems funny that mozzarella and ricottahad to be explained when one can buy a microwaveable paniniat gas stations across the country. (Hell, spellcheck doesn’t even highlight them!) The imprimatur, if you will, of French cooking is seen throughout the book. Ragù is ragoût, prosciutto is mixed into a soufflé, and potatoes are done au gratin. There’s even a frog leg fricassée. It don’t get Frenchier than that.
The translator Matilde Pei wrote many of the recipe titles in an overly literal way. Swordfish Pudding sounds like she ran it through an online translator and Beef Tongue with Sweet-Sour Sauce reads like a disjointed title on a Chinese take-out menu. (And do you ever wonder why the printer or the sign guy never offers any friendly grammatical assistance? I do.) Boni’s preparation instructions are simple but unfortunately her good work was very much lost in translation. Here’s an example from a recipe titled Fresh Sardines Tongue Style.
Cut heads off sardines, split open on one side and bone. Marinate in vinegar and salt 24 hours. Dry, flour, and fry in hot olive oil. Serves 4.
Wow, who’s hungry?
There are some virtues here. The Talisman helped move Italian cooking out of the pizzeria and into the home. If not for the Talisman, would Batali have had an audience for his lardo? Would Rachael Ray be so liberal with the EVOO? Once Italian food became more deeply embedded in the American consciousness, Italian cuisine, Italian-Americans, and Italy really started to get some respect. And you know how we Italians feel about respect!
Tonight, I will slide the Talisman back into its spot on the bookshelf and simply enjoy having this artifact from Nana’s kitchen in mine.
I can’t tell you how many times I have vowed to start bringing my lunch to work and failed. Seriously, it’s like New Years Eve mixed with Groundhog Day. I never make it more than a week before I get sick of sandwiches, my Tupperware smells like tomato sauce, or my attempt at a healthy salad leaves me with a sense of existential lack and I’m forced to eat a cupcake to make it all better. Our staff caf isn’t great, but it’s way better than most and they always serve a starch, a vegetable, and a meat or fish. It’s hard to hit all those notes with a packed lunch.
A lovely solution is what I’m now going to coin the “This and That Lunch.” Last week, the good people at Gustiamo invited me to lunch at their warehouse and office in the Bronx. As lunchtime approached, the staff pulled a table into the center of the room, set it with real plates, utensils, and water glasses, and put out a spread composed of leftovers from home, brought by everyone. There was some swiss chard served straight from the Tupperware, homemade bread, a couple of slices of warmed-up pepperoni pizza, roast chicken, a few lamb chops, and a mixed-greens salad. Given that we were also in a warehouse of imported Italian foods, they had a bottle of gorgeous Tuscan olive oil for the salad, as well as delicious caponata that could make even Casey like eggplant. It was warm, communal, relaxing, nutritionally balanced, and economical.
Now I know that taking lunch is not something that many office workers make a priority, at least here in New Yorkistan, where taking a lunch hour is perceived as something special if not indulgent. But consider that if you could get just 2 or 3 of your colleagues to sit down together for a This and That Lunch, you could be eating a fully balanced meal without cracking open your wallet. Also, think of the environmental benefits of using real flatware and utensils! (I feel shame when I think of how many plastic forks I’ve sent to die in landfills for the next 300 years.) Finally, it’s just good for the soul to carve out the time to sit down, enjoy your food, and talk to the people with whom you spend your day.
I don’t remember my grandmother ever using a cookbook, yet she kept a small shelf of them handy for new ideas. There was one in particular that had an appealing green and red striped spine and had been beaten-up and weathered for as long as I can remember. When she passed away it was one of a few things I wanted to keep as a reminder of her. The book, 
, was the 1965 English translation of Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), by Ada Boni. I now keep it in my kitchen, but I admit that I haven’t cracked it open since taking it home.
and enjoy communal afternoon coffee in these 
