Lucinda's Rustic Italian Kitchen

By Lucinda Scala Quinn and Quentin Bacon

Home-style Italian American cuisine from the Everyday Food cohost, Mad Hungry author, and Martha Stewart Living executive editorial director.
 
Even the writing has an irresistibly Italian flavor in this cookbook by Lucinda Scala Quinn. She presents fifty-two delicious, easy-to-prepare Italian recipes from her childhood and her extensive travels throughout Italy. Included are drinks such as the Aranciata Cocktail and Handmade Cappuccino; Bruschetta Pomodoro and Grilled Calamari appetizers; pasta dishes including Rigatoni with Rapid Ragu and Linguini with Clams; recipes for Pizza Margherita, Risotto Milanese, Osso Buco, and Veal Piccatta; and mouthwatering desserts to top off your meal. Mangia!
 
“Along with plenty of color beauty shots by Quentin Bacon, Quinn’s book demonstrates that even at its very humblest, Italian cooking yields extraordinary flavors.” —Publishers Weekly
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9780544187221

Lucinda Scala Quinn

Lucinda Scala Quinn is the founder of Mad Hungry, the headquarters for home cooks looking for proven recipes, strategies, and inspiration. She is the author of four cookbooks, including Mad Hungry: Feeding Men & Boys, Mad Hungry Cravings, and Mad Hungry Family, and appears regularly on both morning television and QVC with her top-selling Mad Hungry kitchenware line. Scala Quinn is the former senior vice president and executive editorial director of food and entertaining at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the host of her own television show, Mad Hungry: Bringing Back the Family Meal, and she cohosted Everyday Food on PBS for six years. She lives and cooks with her husband and three sons in New York City. Find her on Instagram @madhungry.

Book preview

Copyright © 2007 by Lucinda Scala Quinn. All rights reserved

Photography copyright © 2007 by Quentin Bacon

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Quinn, Lucinda Scala.

Lucinda’s rustic Italian kitchen / Lucinda Scala Quinn.

       p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-544-46401-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-0-544-18722-1 (ebook)

Cookery, Italian. I. Title.

TX723.Q56 2007

641.5945—dc22

2006010289

Food Styling by Alison Attenborough

Prop Styling by Darienne Sutton

Design by Elizabeth Van Itallie

v1.0515

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes to the Cook

DRINKS AND APPETIZERS

Aranciata Cocktail

Fruit and Fresh Herb Carafe

Handmade Cappuccino

Roasted Peppers

Bruschetta Pomodoro

Miniature Meatball Panini

Tuna Gremolata Dip

Pancetta Frittata

Prosciutto with Fresh Fruit

Grilled Calamari

PASTA

Spaghetti Pomodoro

Fettuccine alla Carbonara

Gnocchi with Pesto

Pesto

Fusilli with Broccoli

Bucatini Puttanesca

Rigatoni with Rapid Ragu

Mostaccioli Amatraciana

Linguine with Clams

VEGETABLES AND SALADS

Baked Artichokes

Tuscan Kale

Sautéed Mushrooms

Carrots Agrodolce

Green Beans with Tomato and Basil

Spinach with Lemon

Broccoli di Rape

Pomodoro Salad

Arugula Salad with Shaved Parmesan

Luca’s Caesar Salad

SOUP, PIZZA AND SAVORY PIES

Minestrone

Cannellini Bean Soup

Stracciatella Soup

Basic Pizza Dough

Pizza Margherita

Escarole Pizza

Spinach and Ham Pie

Polenta

Risotto Milanese

CHICKEN, MEAT AND FISH

Chicken Milanese

Roast Chicken with Herbs

Pork Chops with Vinegar Sauce

Beef Braciola

Osso Buco

Polpette

Veal Piccatta

Fish Fillet with Rosemary

Grilled Shrimp with Salsa Verde

DESSERTS

Aqualina’s Molasses Cookies

Carolina’s Wine Taralli

Espresso Granita

Macerated Oranges with Stuffed Dates and Pistachios

Zabaglione with Fresh Peaches and Raspberries

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am eternally grateful to Martha Stewart, who has given me more opportunites than any cook could hope for. Thank you, Martha, and all my colleagues at MSLO, for continually teaching and inspiring me every day. Thank you Carla Glasser and Justin Schwartz. You gave my dream to write books a chance. Uncle Jim and Aunt Lucia safeguarded the family recipe files and shared them with me. To all my cousins—I hope you find something within to spark your own memories. Our old-time, multi-generational family gatherings live cinematically in my mind.

I am fortunate to have been raised in a family where the simple act of gathering together at the family table for meals was a highly valued routine, one that allowed for the daily exchange of thoughts, feelings, emotions and fundamental nourishment. Love and thanks to my parents, Rosemary and George Scala. Today, my brothers, Jim, David and Peter, and I continue the tradition with our own families.

Richard, Calder, Miles and Luca, I love you forever.

INTRODUCTION

This is the food of my heart and soul. Most of my warm family memories are inextricably and forever linked to Italian food. This humble volume of simple-to-prepare recipes is culled from my family’s personal collection. It combines tastes from my Italian-American childhood with flavors remembered over years of visiting Italy. Be it a weeknight supper or a languorous Sunday dinner, the Italians know that there is goodness to gain from the rituals that lay within a carefully made meal shared with family and friends.

From early childhood, I remember being perched on my grandmother’s knee, as she argued with her sister-in-law over the proper technique for cooking meatballs; the Scalas browned them first, the Ferlos dropped the raw meatballs into the bubbling hot tomato sauce. Their lasagna had miniature meatballs tucked between its layers, and those same little jewels could be found floating in a bowl of escarole soup.

My great-grandparents Thomas and Aqualina Ferlo, Rome, New York.

I recorded my Italian family history many years ago in a photographic documentary titled Five Sisters from Rome, New York, about my paternal grandmother, Mary Ferlo Scala, and her sisters, Elizabeth (Bessy), Valentine (Wally), Sara and Jane. Every story was shared while we prepared and ate meals together. The sisters’ legacy along with that of their mother, Aqualina, daughter of my great-great-grandmother, Archangela Spadafore, is a powerful snapshot of Italian-American immigrant women and their rituals, which centered around the family table.

My dad’s sister, Aunt Gina, remembered her grandmother, Aqualina. "My grandmother was a very forceful woman. When people came from the old country, Grandpa would sponsor them. He used to send her to New York City to meet the boat. She was a great woman who knew a little about a lot of things. She was the business head in the family. When she was young, she was beautiful. Her marriage was at fifteen.

Aqualina on her wedding day.

"In the later years, she moved in with Aunt Sara. They never got along because Sara had a tendency to be sharp. When I was sixteen, I would go stay with them. Grandma would stay in her own room and I’d stay with Aunt Sara. In the morning she would take the yardstick and poke me. She wanted me to come into the kitchen at seven a.m. and have Coffee Royale. She didn’t want Sara to know so she wouldn’t get any hassle.

"My mother (Mary) didn’t approve of Grandma. I can remember sitting at the dining room table and Grandma would have a bottle of Utica Club. She’d swig out of the bottle and Mother would