Snacking State-by-State: New Jersey II - Hey Mambo! Mambo Napoletano!

As noted in the previous State-by-State post, the basic tomato sauce so common in Naples serves as a basis for many sauces, including the famous "Sunday sauces" that permeated Italian-American kitchens for decades, simmering for hours on the back burner while the family went to church (Yikes, did my great-grandmother do this in Baltimore's Little Italy?  Leaving the burner on while you're not there just doesn't seem like a safe idea).

Official Name: State of New Jersey

State Nicknames: The Garden State

Admission to the US: December 18, 1787 (#3)

Capital: Trenton (10th largest)

Other Important Cities: Newark (largest), Jersey City (2nd largest), Paterson (3rd largest)
Region: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic; Middle Atlantic (US Census)

RAFT Nations: Clambake

Bordered by: Delaware and Delaware Bay (southwest); Pennsylvania (west); New York (north and northeast); Atlantic Ocean (east)

Official State Foods and Edible Things: honeybee (for the honey, not the bee); brook trout (fish); knobbed whelk (shell)

Some Famous and Typical Foods: Italian, Italian, and more Italian; diner foods; pork roll (aka Taylor ham); "ripper" dogs and various preparations thereof; very diverse cuisines (inckluding Italian, Indian, South American, etc) around Philadelphia (southwest) and New York City (northeast); Did I mention Italian?

Italian-Americans have continued the Sunday sauce tradition, maybe or maybe not on Sundays per se, but I digress.  One must also remember that Italian food need not be the fattening atrocity that it has become in the United States.  After all, our spaghetti and meatballs with powdered "Parmesan" "cheese" and a big chunk of garlic bread is about as "Italian" as General Tso's chicken with fried rice and an egg roll is "Chinese".  And about as healthy.

And yet, we see diet gurus touting the "Mediterranean" diet.  There really is something to that.  It's even the basis of Skinny Italian, a cookbook by Teresa Giudice, one of the stars of Bravo's Real Housewives of New Jersey.  I have to say that I've never seen any of these Real Housewives shows: Jersey, New York, Atlanta, etc, etc. I'm not sure what the allure is (and I call myself "gay" - p'shaw), so I don't know anything about Giudice or her costars.  But I did think it was a good idea for this New Jersey post to look at Italian recipes that were actually made by somebody, you know, from New Jersey.  Most of the other Italian-American cookbooks are super heavy on recipes from all boroughs of New York City.  I'm not looking at New York yet.  And I probably should eat healthier anyway.


In Skinny Italian, Giudice, who is first-generation Italian-American, lays out a basic guide for eating Italian food in a more authentic way, and as I note in my previous post, that simple tomato sauce is a basis for so many sauces.  Of all the sauces that you can base this one on, I was most intrigued by Giudice's Napoletano Sauce, being a quarter napoletano myself - okay, my great-grandparents were from Salerno, not Naples.  Okay, a small little mountain village to the northeast of Salerno, but my great-grandmother apparently still considered herself napoletana (not that I could ask her, since she died almost 25 years before I was born).  Giudice implies that this whole meat sauce, which was her mother's and which she names for her daughter Gia, is a staple in Italian-American households:

Napoletano sauce is typically what Italians serve at their weekend family dinners, and it's also called "Sunday gravy."  It would sit on the back of the stove simmering for hours while everyone went to Mass.  When you got home, the smell...unbelievable! [Giudice and MacLean 2010:121]

Keeping in mind that "many different ways to make it" part, I adjusted the meats somewhat, but still got an amazing sauce.

The Recipe: Napoletano Sauce (a Real Housewife original)


For this sauce, on pages 121-123 of Skinny Italian, you will need the following:

* 1 recipe basic tomato sauce (about 3 1/2 cups - one of Giudice's "Quickie Sauce" recipes on page 117 of her book should yield this)
* beef (Giudice calls for 1 1/2 lbs of beef top round steak, but I found it cheaper to buy a pound of Angus beef boneless chuck steak, which was cheaper, for about $4.50 on sale at the Harris Teeter)
* a few pork ribs (okay, here I really deviated, as all the recipes I saw - this one as well as Arthur Schwartz's in his Naples at Table - call for ribs.  I wasn't near an actual butcher, and didn't feel like buying an entire rack of ribs just for a few for the sauce.  So for this one I bought pork loin chops, bone in, again at Harris Teeter, for about $3.50.  I know it won't be the same, but again, these recipes aren't all the same).
* onion (had it)
* pecorino romano cheese (bought a chunk for about $10 a pound - and I will be using the rest of this often - at Pastore's Deli).
* parsley (no fresh on hand, so yes I did use the dried stuff)
* olive oil (had it)
* red wine (same - I used a lovely Sugar Pie red wine from Trader Joe's that I also used in a cranberry sauce a few weeks ago.  Not a big fan of red wine but I like this one tremendously)
* salt and pepper (I just used more of that ground Mexican red chile pepper with the kosher salt).

Grate a substantial portion of the pecorino romano to start off with.

Mix the cheese with the parsley...

...and press it into the raw meat.

You will next brown this cheesy parsleyed meat in the olive oil.

Take out the meat and set aside...

...and saute your onion in the oil until translucent.

Add to this your red wine, and get the meaty bits off the bottom.  Bring the wine to a boil.

Add back to the pot the meat, the salt and pepper.

Oh yeah, and the basic tomato sauce.  You'll need that.

Here's where you need some patience: this sauce needs to cook for a few hours on the stove, partially covered, for the better part of two hours.  I couldn't leave it alone, occasionally stirring and, er, tasting.  Originally I was going to put this in the slow cooker until I read the "partially covered" part.  You can't really do that with the slow cooker.

About half an hour in.

When finished cooking, take out the meat and cut it up.

I think I should have cut it more finely than I did.

Add the meat back to the sauce, stir, and serve!

This was a lovely, delicious sauce, and I daresay that it is thick enough I almost wanted to just sit down and eat it like a stew.  But of course I didn't...

Though it should take a heartier pasta, I used the capellini I had on hand already.  Really it still is a delicious sauce, so rich and vibrant.  Hell, I think I'll need a bowl of the sauce by itself after all.  Again, I'm not quite sure what these Real Housewives do, but if they're eating this then they must be doing something right, yes?

Sources:

Accidental Scientist (Exploratorium).  "Saltwater Taffy Recipe".  Date unknown.  © The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu, 2011


Cristaldi, Justin R.  "Little Italy Across the Hudson".  PRIMO Magazine, September/October 2001.  Copyright Cristaldi Communications 1999-2001.


Giudice, Teresa, with Heather MacLean.  Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It - Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!  Hyperion: New York, 2010


Jersey Pork Roll (JerseyPorkRoll.com).  "What is pork roll?"  Published 2005.  Copyright JerseyPorkRoll 2011.


Schwartz, Arthur.  Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania.  HarperCollins: New York, 1999.


Stern, Jane, and Michael Stern. 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Boston, 2009.


Virtual New Jersey Shore (VirtualNJShore.com).  "Salt Water Taffy at the Jersey Shore". Published 1999.  Copyright New Jersey MetroNET, Inc., 1999.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "New Jersey" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "New Jersey".

Snacking State-by-State: New Jersey I - Come On-A My House, My House, I'm Gonna Make A-You Gravy... or Sauce

Most of us outside of the Garden State tend to think of New Jersey as one long turnpike, and that's about it.  That does a disservice to the state, I think - a state that I have never bothered to get to know better.  I'm not heading that way anytime soon, so the next best thing - no, not watching one of the many reality TV shows based in the state - is getting to know its food.  That's what this project is all about, anyway.

Official Name: State of New Jersey
State Nicknames: The Garden State
Admission to the US: December 18, 1787 (#3)
Capital: Trenton (10th largest)
Other Important Cities: Newark (largest), Jersey City (2nd largest), Paterson (3rd largest)
Region: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic; Middle Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake
Bordered by: Delaware and Delaware Bay (southwest); Pennsylvania (west); New York (north and northeast); Atlantic Ocean (east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: honeybee (for the honey, not the bee); brook trout (fish); knobbed whelk (shell)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Italian, Italian, and more Italian; diner foods; pork roll (aka Taylor ham); "ripper" dogs and various preparations thereof; very diverse cuisines (inckluding Italian, Indian, South American, etc) around Philadelphia (southwest) and New York City (northeast); Did I mention Italian?

Flanked by Philadelphia to its southwest and New York City to its northeast, New Jersey is one of the more ethnically diverse states in the Northeastern region of the United States.  As Wikipedia notes, New Jersey has some of the largest percentages of any state of Americans of Italian, Irish, African, German, Polish, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Costa Rican, Cuban and Middle Eastern descent (among others).  Jersey also has one of the largest percentages of American Muslims and American Jews.  It's just a friggin' diverse place.


Among all ethnic groups in the Giardino State, New Jersey is by far best known for its large Italian-American population.  Sure, when we think of Italians in the Northeast, we think of New Yorkers: the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan and so on have given us many of this nation's most famous celebrities of Italian heritage.  But per capita, New Jersey just has more.  And very, very few of them are orange.  Hell, my great-grandparents came right over from Salerno.  They weren't orange!  Sure, they made a beeline right from Ellis Island to Baltimore, but had they stopped in Newark, they certainly would've stayed that same shade of olive that I remember my grandmother's skin looking like.  But I digress.

New Jersey is specifically Southern in nature... Southern Italian, that is.  As noted in PRIMO Magazine.  In Newark, for example, we find many Americans of Sicilian, Campanian and Calabrese heritage.  Italian-Americans in Newark arrived late in the 19th century, as they did to much of America.  At one time, according to the author, Newark's 1st ward - "The North Ward (now the Central Ward) was once 95% or more Italian" [Cristaldi 2001].  It was once a bustling Little Italy in its own right, and even Frank Sinatra had baked goods shipped to him right from this neighborhood [Cristaldi 2001].


Of all the Italian foods that have become a part of the fabric of American food, none is more ubiquitous than tomato sauce.  You need it for most of the other Italian foods that are popular in the US: pizzas, pastas, lasagnas, and so on.  There are many variations on the basic tomato sauce.  For a few years now I have used one I saw Adam "Amateur Gourmet" Roberts make (a la Lidia Bastianich) at the Baltimore Book Festival (Adam was cooking under a tent.  I and my copy of his book got drenched by a severe downpour).  Bastianich's recipe is a good one, but I've never bothered to use it as a base for other sauces.  I will likely do that with the Bastianich sauce I have in the freezer.  But instead I will familiarize myself with another "quick" recipe, this time from Naples (the reason for that will be clear in the next State-by-State post after this one).  And I've been looking for a reason to use my copy of Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table for a while now.


Schwartz's book, one I have kept on my bookshelf for years, has a whole chapter just on "The Classic Sauces" (or "Gravies" as referred to by some Italian-Americans, though by no means all).  Many of them are made from those wondrous San Marzano tomatoes, which are now pretty easily available in major metro areas.  One tomato sauce that serves as an important base for many heartier tomato sauces is the classic sugo di pomodoro - the smooth tomato sauce.  Schwartz notes that while Neapolitans prefer to use fresh tomatoes, they feel no shame at all in using the preserved stuff.

Bottled tomatoes are definitely preferred over canned, and many households, even those in the center of bustling, urbgan Naples, still go to the trouble of putting up what they consider the world's best tomatoes - their own San Marzano, grown at the foot of Vesuvius as well as in gardens and farms all over the region.  Bottled tomatoes are also sold in the groceries... In theory, they don't have as strong an acid edge (or metallic edge, if you will) as canned tomatoes, but all processed tomatoes, no matter what brand or in which material they are packed, get more acidic, bitter, and mushier with age.  It's best to use canned or jarred tomatoes within six months of their packing. [Schwartz 1998: 50]

I bought myself a big old can of San Marzano tomatoes, which may very well have been packed before those requisite six months ago, for this recipe.  A 35 ounce can will yield four cups of sauce if you keep the liquid in the sauce, instead of reserving it for something else like Schwartz suggests.


The Recipe: Sugo di Pomodoro Pelati (Smooth Neapolitan Tomato Sauce from Canned Tomatoes)


The recipe I used, with exact measurements, can be found on pages 50-51 of Schwartz's Naples at Table book.  I made just a few minor adjustments, but still I didn't need that many ingredients.  And you won't either.

* canned San Marzano tomatoes (note: not just tomatoes, and for the love of God not "Italian flavored tomatoes".  These Campanian beauties are what you need for your homemade tomato sauce.  This extra-large can was about $4 from Pastore's Italian Deli in Towson)
* olive oil (had it)
* onion & garlic (Schwartz actually suggests onion or garlic, but I wanted both.  Neapolitan cuisine does not go all heavy on the garlic. It's a subtle, special flavor that is added in moderation)
* salt and hot pepper flakes (here I ground up a dried Mexican red chile)
* basil (had some in the freezer - frozen but just as flavorful)

Start by sauteing the garlic and onion.  You need to remove the garlic after a few minutes in the oil.  This is more difficult if you chop it up and throw it in.  Trust me.

Note the beautiful tomatoes.  While Schwartz suggests not adding the liquid, I wanted to do just that.  Many recipes for this basic sauce say to add the liquid, while others say not to.  I figured it was a personal decision.

Dump out those maters and squoosh 'em with a food mill (or lacking that, your hands).

Squooshed.

Add the tomatoes to the pot, along with the salt and pepper.

Let simmer for about 10 minutes, adding the basil towards the end, for a more intense flavor.

This is a pretty simple recipe, and not too different from others I have seen.  With this, I don't understand why someone would use tomato sauce in a jar.  It's about the same price considering how much you get, plus it has none of that crap in it.  It's just a lovely tomato sauce.  And in the next post, we'll see how this basic sauce becomes (yes) the base for something more complicated.

Sources:

Accidental Scientist (Exploratorium).  "Saltwater Taffy Recipe".  Date unknown.  © The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu, 2011


Cristaldi, Justin R.  "Little Italy Across the Hudson".  PRIMO Magazine, September/October 2001.  Copyright Cristaldi Communications 1999-2001.


Giudice, Teresa, with Heather MacLean.  Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It - Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!  Hyperion: New York, 2010


Jersey Pork Roll (JerseyPorkRoll.com).  "What is pork roll?"  Published 2005.  Copyright JerseyPorkRoll 2011.


Schwartz, Arthur.  Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania.  HarperCollins: New York, 1999.


Stern, Jane, and Michael Stern. 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Boston, 2009.


Virtual New Jersey Shore (VirtualNJShore.com).  "Salt Water Taffy at the Jersey Shore". Published 1999.  Copyright New Jersey MetroNET, Inc., 1999.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "New Jersey" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "New Jersey".

Tiramisù, Campania-Style

I found this little recipe on The Atlantic Magazine website. Chef, ex-pat and Food Section contributor Faith Willinger talks about a simple tiramisù she found at the E Curti restaurant in Naples, Italy (where both of my paternal grandmother's parents came from). It replaces mascarpone with ricotta and ladyfingers with regular ol' cookies, dispenses with egg and flavors it with espresso and sugar. She calls it tirami-super!

Want the recipe? Read her article.

Broccoli in Tomato Sauce, Two Ways

I cooked up a lovely purplish-green broccoli I got at the farmers' market last weekend in two different tomato sauces, one Italian, one Indian. The Indian was my favorite microwave vindaloo sauce care of Julie Sahni's Moghul Microwave, one of my favorite cookbooks), out of which I have gotten so much mileage. The Italian was from Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table, my culinary Bible for cooking like my napoletani ancestors. I made his simple smooth Campanian tomato sauce, using San Marzano maters and doubling the recipe so I could have some for future use. I took a cue from the Amateur Gourmet and added a little tomato paste and some sprigs of basil, which Schwartz's recipe does not suggest. I made the vindaloo the way I always do, but substituting smoked paprika for the regular.

I steamed half a small head of broccoli, cut up into its branches, in a pot with about a cup of Neapolitan tomato sauce. The other half of the broccoli I put into a cup of vindaloo sauce and microwaved it, covered, for 4 minutes. I put half of each on a bed of basmati rice and went to town.


With it, I put some Brussel sprouts that I cooked in olive oil, shallots and garlic yesterday. I just caramelized the shallot and garlic, then cut the stems off the sprouts and cut the sprouts in half. 15 minutes later, with the occasional stir, and it was done. I did this because I was going into sugar overload yesterday, and wanted a savory snack. I found a recipe like this online, so I can't take credit.

Altogether, it's a very tasty vegetarian meal, as I just realized.