Exceptional Italian Dishes from the Old Neighborhood

Growing up in an Italian family in Chicago's Little Italy in the 1940's and 50's was a great experience in food. It was an era where stress wasn't a societal and health issue, where the vast majority of households were two parent households with one parent working exclusively in the home, tasting the raw beef mixture for enough salt while making meatballs posed no threat of you becoming ill, a time where kids spent four to ten hours a day playing games outdoors This was an era, where, with one phone call Dr. Crasseros would come to your home dressed in a suit and tie at any hour when you fell ill, and get this, wherever you made a phone call, a human being answered; no, not kidding-the only time you heard the word "press" was in the weight room at the "Y."People and community seemed much closer than today. Maybe it's because people visited each other much more often, had cof-fee and cake or lunch, and talked. Food seemed to be the catalyst that brought people closer. Today we are more self-sequestered, private, with many technological devices to distract us from and replace direct human contact, almost a pur-suit of loneliness. We have phone mail, email, text messaging, press 1, press2, Blackberry, video games, internet, 28 hours per week of television per capita, transporting ourselves alone in our beloved cars, headphones to tune out, and over scheduling ourselves and our children. As Socrates cautioned, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life."In that era of the old neighborhood my aunt Rose made raviolis from scratch rolling huge sheets of dough, cutting them into strips, placing the individual mounds of the homemade ricotta mixture on the strips, placing another strip on top, cutting the individual squares, then sealing the edges with a fork. Food was a vital part of the neighborhood's culture-a means of ex-pressing hospitality, warmth, love, and celebration-any person who came to visit had to fight to get out the door without eating something first. And it was all homemade. At that time if four came to dinner, you can bet there was enough food for at least six, along with a constant prodding to eat more. Like many Italian women of that generation, my mother found profound pleasure in seeing people consume her cooking. It seemed that for her, the stomach and the heart were synonymous. As kids we had no idea how good we were eating...this was a normal to us...didn't everyone eat like this? As a bonus, almost all the foods were extremely healthy by today's standards. Who hasn't heard about the cholesterol benefits olive oil? We now know that tomato based sauces contain lycopene-a cancer fighting ingredient. Lentils, beans, and artichokes containing high amounts of fiber which few of us get enough of. Then there are the immune-enhancing chemical properties of parsley, garlic and onions. And don't forget anchovies with their ever-popular omega-3 fatty acids, which almost seems to be a panacea, or the healthful benefits of the trace minerals in cayenne pepper which is used to make hot giardiniera. Food was a celebration of life relishing the present, the now, accompanied with a lot of laughter, nurturing the spirit as well as the body. I invite you to join me in reliving the spirit of that era and savor the dishes that are represented on these pages. As nobody can make Aunty Della's pizza the way she did because no one can duplicate her hands, put your hands into these recipes and make them your own. The recipes on these pages are a legacy of those days that may help remind us to put the fork down for a minute and talk, slow down, yes-relax, relish the moment, enjoy, drink in life-something that brings us into the moment and away from the treadmill of the modern day race. Celebrare vita (celebrate life). In the great thunder of time, we are here for a nanosecond. Buon appetito mio amico.