The heart of American cuisine

THEHEARTOF

AMERICAN CUISINE

Real ‘American food’ based on recipes from ‘old country’

By Marian Betancourt

Associated Press

When food and wine writer David Rosengarten recently accepted a James Beard Foundation award for his cookbook, “It’s All American Food,” he thanked those who came here from other countries.

They are what American food is all about, he said.

“Ethnic food is the real heart of American food,” Rosengarten said.

He said he wrote his book because “Americans are not proud enough about what they eat every day.”

So his book aims to celebrate what the subtitle calls “the food we really eat, the dishes we will always love,” that are not often celebrated.

“These are my interpretations of things I’ve tasted. I wanted to make the very best version for home cooks,” he said.

“It’s All American Food” ($29.95) reflects the great melting pot of America. Its recipes come from 18 groups of what Rosengarten calls hyphenated Americans, including Chinese, Mexican, Spanish, Cuban, Russian, Scandinavian, Moroccan and Italian.

“When the Italians came here they couldn’t find the same ingredients they had in Italy so with great ingenuity they created what’s known as Italian-American food. It was great food,” he said.

Rosengarten got a taste of this very early in life. He recalls Angelo, the namesake of a restaurant in Brooklyn, “as the greatest chef in the world,” who changed Rosengarten’s life when he was 9 years old.

Rosengarten ate dinner at Angelo’s every Saturday or Sunday with his parents and extended family. He still considers their linguine and white clam sauce “the holy grail” and he mastered the recipe for his book.

Angelo’s was where he also tasted real garlic bread, or as he now calls it, “prebruschetta garlic bread.”

As he explains in the book, “No trendy grill was used for the bread. The guy in the kitchen just piled a load of chopped garlic on slices of bread, drizzled olive oil over all and baked the slices in a hot oven.

“If you ate the slices with the garlic still on them, you couldn’t get close to anyone for three days. But most people knocked the garlic off before eating.”

Another prebruschetta garlic bread option, he said, is soaking a whole bread with butter and garlic, wrapping it in foil, and baking it in the oven.

“I’ve been traveling across this country for 25 years,” said Rosengarten, who hosted the Food Network television series Taste from 1994 to 2001, and who can rattle off the names of dozens of his favorite ethnic restaurants.

“I keep lots of records and have a 100 percent gastronomic memory,” he said.

In his continuing search for food and wine to write about in his monthly newsletter, The Rosengarten Report, he recently went to Sicily, where he had heard the food was influenced by Greece and Africa.

He said he found it “very much like the Italian-American food I eat in New York. I went to lots of mom-and-pop trattorias. For $25 you could get a feast for two. It was like eating in places where Vito Corleone ate. They had meatballs,” he said, lamenting the fact that the latter rarely appear on American menus today.

“Save the Meatball” is a logo on T-shirts made up to promote his book. To Rosengarten the meatball is the symbol of the kind of ethnic food that is disappearing from the American dining scene.

“I was afraid it (American food) would dwindle away to mediocrity,” he said.

“The real story,” Rosengarten said, “is about America.”

Here are three recipes from “It’s All American Food.”

You probably will not find meatballs served with spaghetti in Italy, David Rosengarten said, because the pairing seems to have been devised in the United States.

The story is that government social workers were concerned about the lack of protein in the immigrants’ diet, and advised them to add some meat to their carbohydrates and tomatoes.

Spaghetti and meatballs

1large egg

1/3cup milk

1 1/2cups soft bread cubes (torn or cut from plain slices of white bread with crust)

1pound ground beef

1/2cup grated pecorino Romano cheese, plus extra for serving

1teaspoon very finely minced garlic

1/4cup very finely minced parsley

1/4cup olive oil

6cups tomato sauce, warmed

1pound spaghetti

2tablespoons butter

Beat the egg in a large bowl, then blend in the milk. Add the bread cubes, stirring to coat them well. Let sit for 15 minutes.

Using a fork, mash the bread cubes until they’ve formed a rough paste. Add the ground beef to the bowl and, working with your hands, incorporate the rough paste into the beef. Add the pecorino Romano cheese, garlic and parsley and blend evenly with the meat mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste (you can taste by frying a little bit of the meat mixture).

Using wet hands, form the meat into balls the size of golf balls or a little smaller. Place the olive oil in a large, heavy saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the meatballs to the oil to brown on all sides. Don’t crowd them in the pan; you may have to brown them in batches. As they are finished browning, transfer them to the saucepan that holds the warmed tomato sauce. Bring sauce to gentle simmer and cook for 45 minutes.

When the meatballs are nearly done, drop the spaghetti into a large pot of boiling salted water. Cook until spaghetti is al dente, about 8 to 9 minutes. Drain spaghetti in a colander, then return it to the pasta cooking pot over medium heat. Ladle enough sauce from the saucepan to just coat the pasta; stir well. Add the butter and stir well. Keep the pasta in the pot for a total of about 1 minute. Then divide the pasta among 6 wide, shallow bowls. Top each mound of pasta with a few meatballs, then ladle some more sauce over all. Serve with grated pecorino Romano on the side.

Makes 6 servings.

Prebruschetta garlic bread

1loaf basic Italian bread

1cup fruity olive oil

8tablespoons chopped garlic (about 16 large cloves)

Cut bread on a slight diagonal into 12 slices that are each about 1 inch thick; ideally, the slices should be about 3 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. Place slices on a baking pan. Break the surface of each slice with the tip of a spoon in a few spots.

Drizzle 2 teaspoons of the olive oil over each slice. Top each slice with a heaping 1/2 tablespoon of the garlic. Drizzle 2 teaspoons more of the olive oil evenly over each slice. Let bread rest, covered, for 1 to 2 hours.

When ready to cook, preheat oven to 425 degrees. When oven is hot, place baking pan in oven, uncovered. Let bread heat until it is warmed through and crunchy around the edges, about 7 to 8 minutes. If you like the bread to be browned on top, pass it for a moment under a hot broiler. Serve immediately.

Makes 12 slices.

Chicken cacciatore

2halves of a chicken breast with skin on and bone in (about 1 1/2 pounds)

4chicken thighs with skin on and bone in (about 1 1/2 pounds)

Flour for coating

5tablespoons olive oil

2heaping tablespoons finely minced garlic

1/4pound green bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch squares

1/4pound red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch squares

1/2cup red wine

128-ounce can whole tomatoes

1tablespoon tomato paste

1/4cup finely minced parsley, plus a little extra for garnish

1/4cup finely shredded fresh basil leaves

1teaspoon dried oregano

2bay leaves

1/2pound white mushrooms, wiped clean and cut into medium-thin slices

Cut each piece of breast in half crosswise; you will now have 4 pieces of breast roughly the same size as the 4 thighs. Salt and pepper chicken pieces well. Coat lightly with flour. Reserve.

Place 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large, heavy saute pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the garlic and spread evenly across the pan. Immediately add the chicken pieces, skin side down. Cook, turning occasionally, until chicken is golden-brown on both sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove chicken and reserve.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of minced garlic to the pan. Add the green and red bell pepper and toss well in the garlic. Add the red wine and scrape up the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Simmer for 30 seconds.

Remove the tomatoes from their can (reserve tomato juice in can) and, working with your hand, squeeze each tomato into the saute pan. Add the tomato paste and blend well. Add the parsley, basil, oregano and bay leaves. Stir well. Return the chicken pieces to the pan, coat with sauce, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 15 minutes, covered.

While the chicken is cooking, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil to a wide, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are golden-brown and just tender (about 4 to 5 minutes). Salt them to taste. Then, after the chicken has cooked for the specified 15 minutes, add the mushrooms to the chicken cacciatore. Stir well to blend in evenly. If the sauce seems too thick, blend in a little of the saved tomato juice from the can. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To serve: Divide chicken among 4 dinner plates, top with peppers and mushrooms, surround with sauce, sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately (perhaps with pre-bruschetta garlic bread).

Makes 4 main-course servings.