Weeknight Meals

In any coastal region where you find limes, you’ll find ceviche, going by one name or another. In Mexico, it’s frequently made with a combination of scallops, shrimp, conch, and octopus (the last two usually precooked to the point of tenderness), and those are all good fish for the mix. If you can find spanking-fresh fillets of your local white fish, you can use that here too, although scallops alone are easy and fabulous. (They’re also the safest shellfish to eat raw, but if the whole thing makes you nervous, see Mock Ceviche, page 35.) If you happen to have a couple of different colors of bell peppers, mix them; it’ll make the dish really sparkle.

I have had squid prepared many ways, but never in a Milanese cutlet style until Tanya and I encountered this dish on our trip to San Diego when we went to Anthony’s Fish Grotto. The calamari cutlet was a thick slab, like a veal cutlet, quite different in size from the smaller version of calamari I am accustomed to cooking on the East Coast, and yet very tender. This popular calamari may be up to 2 feet in length; the giant squid can get to approximately 43 feet; in 2003, a colossal species of squid was discovered that can be upward of 46 feet. I’m not sure which calamari was used for my Milanese at Anthony’s, but it was very good; I tested the recipe with the traditional-sized calamari, and it worked deliciously.

The Sicilians have a tradition of using bread crumbs in many of their recipes, like involtini di pesce spada, or swordfish rollatini, which are dressed with dried-oregano-seasoned bread crumbs and olive oil. It makes sense that the large Sicilian immigrant population in the States would keep up the tradition here using fillet of sole, an easier, more economical catch than swordfish, especially for the early immigrants.

I cooked this simple dish in my first restaurant, Buonavia, which I opened in 1971. I made it with fresh lemon sole and fluke, bought directly from the fishermen on Long Island when in season. But you can make it with the fillet of any white fish. It is delicious and quick.

This dish is best when the tomatoes are fresh and ripe, but it will be almost as good with canned plum tomatoes. It makes a complete one-pot meal, including vegetables and protein. I used spinach, but escarole is a good Italian American substitute.

This delicious baked-halibut recipe came from The Gloucester House, presided over by Michael Linquata, with whom we had a lovely lunch on the porch of the restaurant. This fish is simple to make, and the recipe can easily be multiplied if you have guests coming.

Mackerel is not a popular fish, but I love it: it is flavorful and very nutritious. As with all fish, but especially with mackerel, the freshness of the fish is the key. This dish is very good eaten hot, but also at room temperature.

On one of my visits to Roberto’s on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, I picked up this delightfully spicy chicken recipe. It pairs wonderfully with the tomato-and-bread salad on page 94.

Macaroni and cheese has to be one of the quintessential American comfort foods. To most people it brings back fuzzy memories of a childhood family table. Even Thomas Jefferson had a thing or two to say about this dish. He ordered a macaroni-making machine and instructed the cook to use cheese liberally on the pasta and bake it like a casserole. It appears that this “macaroni” was more similar to the spaghetti of today. A lot of the versions of macaroni and cheese that you may have eaten would have had some form of cream sauce or roux, but here I’ll give you a recipe for this dish as an Italian in Italy would make it: a simply delicious rendition.

I would venture to say that, along with chicken parmigiana, chicken scarpariello is one of the most recognized chicken recipes in America. Chicken scarpariello is a composition of a few favorite ingredients: chicken, lots of garlic, and vinegar. In this recipe, I added some sausage, which is not unusual, especially if you have a big brood coming over. To multiply the recipe: proceed in batches; then, once you have brought the whole thing to a boil, transfer to a roasting pan and finish cooking in a 450-degree oven, stirring the chicken periodically so all the pieces get crispy.

I had this dish at Roberto’s on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The smokiness of the provola is the defining element that graces the dish.

There was a time when calamari was not much consumed in America and it was considered a cheap fish. But Italians love calamari, and it became the fish of choice of the Italian immigrants. You can find calamari today as a delicacy in contemporary restaurants of every ethnicity. Spicy calamari with linguine is a trademark of Italian American restaurants all over America.

Broccoli rabe grew wild in Italy, especially in southern Italy; in places like Puglia, Calabria, Basilicata, and Sicily it was abundant and free for the picking, and thus used especially to dress pasta dishes. Orecchiette, a pasta that has an indentation from being dragged with the finger on a board, was the pasta of choice. All of these regions are on the sea, and mussels were cheap and abundant as well. So it would seem natural that the three ingredients come together to make this wonderful dish. Now broccoli rabe is abundant in the United States, thanks to Andy Boy vegetable growers in California. This recipe is a delightful combination.

Ralph’s claims to be the oldest Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, and it is still run by the original family. It was opened in 1900 by Francesco and Catherine Dispigno, emigrants from Naples, who named the restaurant after their son Ralph. A host of celebrities have eaten at Ralph’s, and while we were eating there, a nearby couple told us they travel an hour each way once a month to come and eat there. The original mosaic-tile floor is beautiful, and eating in the upstairs room transports you back to the 1920s. Now Jimmy and Eddie Rubino, still part of the family, run the restaurant, and this chicken dish has been on the menu as long as they can remember.

I first encountered this dish in Chicago. While the sauce for the pasta has all the makings of a primavera, the fried shrimp on top is very much Sicilian.

This dish is especially good when made with live blue-claw crabs, but sometimes they are difficult to find. The snow crab—or its more expensive cousin, the Alaskan king crab—will yield a most delicious sauce as well. In immigrant Italian American fishing communities, such as those in Delaware and Rhode Island, this dish was made by the fishermen’s wives from the unsellable catch.

This is the quintessential Italian pasta dish, especially in Naples and Rome. The ingredients are three; the clams are the smaller ones—vongole veraci—and they are always cooked in their shells. Once they open, the sauce is done. Here in the States, linguine with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense, especially since the clams here can be quite large, from littlenecks (small to medium) to topnecks (large) to quahogs or chowder clams (very large). Today, though, one is ever more likely to find smaller cockles on the market; if you find them, by all means use them.

Broccoli rabe, the leafy bitter almond-flavored vegetable consumed by the Italians for centuries, has found its way into American hearts. It is great just braised with olive oil and garlic; it makes an excellent soup; it is also delicious stuffed and as a flavoring in some crunchy Italian bread. But I love it with pasta, and not with just any pasta—I love it with orecchiette (little earlobes). Rapini, as it is called in Italy, is a plant in the mustard family that grew wild, especially in southern Italy. In America, the largest producer is Andy Boy, a company founded by Stephen and Andrew D’Arrigo, emigrants from Sicily, who officially named the rapini “broccoli rabe.” They knew that the vegetable that was part of their family table in Italy would make it to the American table.

Pasta with spring vegetables—or, for that matter, any vegetables—has always been a staple of Italian cuisine. But Sirio Maccioni, the renowned Italian restaurateur who has owned Le Cirque for decades, claims to be the one to baptize it primavera in 1974. Along with Romeo Salta, and the Giambelli brothers, Sirio was at the lead in bringing the fine Italian dining experience to New York. Sirio runs a restaurant that is French by name but serves pasta primavera.