Memorie di Angelina

Today is Pasquetta, or ‘Little Easter’, known in English as Easter Monday. A holiday in Italy and much of Europe, folks traditionally take to the roads to drive out to the countryside and enjoy a fresh air picnic. In Campania and elsewhere, one favorite item in the Pasquetta picnic basket is the pizza rustica, literally […]

“Wedding soup” is a popular Italian-American dish made with escarole and tiny meatballs simmered in chicken broth and adorned with small pasta, typically of the tiny acini di pepe (or “peppercorn”) type. It is so popular, in fact, that it has been marketed as a canned soup by Progresso under the funny name “Chickarina Soup“. Italian-Americans […]

When we think of Neapolitan cooking—and southern Italian cooking in general—we think of pasta and pizza. So it may come as a surprise that one of the most emblematic dishes of Neapolitan cooking is actually a rice timbale, the sartù di riso. The word sartù, the story goes, is an Italianized version of the French phrase […]

Pasta e fagioli, or pasta and beans, which goes by the amusing nickname ‘pasta fazool‘ in Italian-American slang, is one of the most internationally famous dishes in the entire Italian repertoire.  It is, however, a victim of its own success, and is too often made badly, very badly, which is why I would never order […]

The word pizza in Italian has a broader meaning than it does in English. Besides the savory disk we all know and love, it also refers to both savory and sweet confections that we would likely call ‘pies’ in English, including Angelina’s pizza dolce, which doesn’t even have a crust. Then there’s the classic pizza rustica, […]

  One of the oldest nicknames for the people of Campania was mangiafoglie, or ‘leaf eaters’, because they were known for their prodigious consumption of leafy green vegetables. It was probably a matter of necessity as much as preference back in the day. Wander around just about any open piece of land in Italy and […]

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: is there anything more primally satisfying than fried dough? If there is, I haven’t come across it yet. The Neapolitans have come up with all sorts of tidbits made from fried dough, of which we’ve already seen two examples, zeppole and calzoncini, where the dough acts as […]