Joey Campanaro - Big Love Cooking: 75 Recipes for Satisfying, Shareable Comfort Food

DEDICATION

For my mother, Patricia, and her mother, Rosie Bova my mom-mom. And the loving, intelligent, beautiful, and powerful women who have influenced me in becoming the person I am today.

Text copyright 2020 by JOEY CAMPANARO.
Photographs copyright 2020 by CON POULOS .

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Campanaro, Joey, author. | Gambacorta, Theresa, author. | Poulos, Con, photographer.
Title: Big love cooking / Joey Campanaro with Theresa Gambacorta ; photography by Con Poulos.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2020. | Includes index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020004851 | ISBN 9781452178639 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781452178974 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking, Italian. | Cooking, American.
Classification: LCC TX723 .C28145 2020 | DDC 641.5945dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004851

Food styling by PAUL GRIMES .

Prop styling by LITTLE OWL TEAM .

Design by LIZZIE VAUGHAN .

Typeset by HOWIE SEVERSON .

Typset in Mrs. Eaves, Mr. Eaves Modern, and Saveur Sans.

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I had reason to believe that the restaurant gods were taunting me. Over the years, a small storefront half a block from my house, in Greenwich Village, was occupied by one restaurant after another, and none of them turned out to be where I wanted to eat.

My neighbors claim that only a few restaurants ever did business in that space; to me, it seemed like dozens. As each renovation began, Id try to divine from the building permits pasted in the window which kind of restaurant would emerge. I had big dreamsa Chinese restaurant serving the food of a province so culinarily superior that when its inhabitants visit Szechuan or Hunan they always bring their own lunch, for instance, or a fried chicken joint whose cook had, miraculously, replicated the recipe of the legendary Kansas City panfryer Chicken Betty Lucas.

I dont remember the names of the establishments that appeared instead, dashing my dreams. I do remember that one of them served the sort of overcomplicated food that reminded me of the generic restaurant I used to refer to as La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine.

Then, in 2006, along came Joey Campanaro and Little Owl. I realized that this was what Id been waiting for all alonga place with a neighborhood restaurants feel and a destination restaurants food, a place where a casually dressed waiter could be taking your order for gravy meatball sliders as well as for Parmesan truffle asparagus. And it was so close that I began referring to one table as my UPS table, since it offered a view that enabled me to intercept anyone who was about to make a delivery to my house. I might have concluded that I was, at last, being rewarded for some childhood good deed, except that, offhand, I couldnt remember any childhood good deeds that might qualify.

After a dozen years, my craving for the aforementioned gravy meatball sliders still approaches an addiction. Others are similarly afflicted. Gravy meatball sliders are Little Owls best-known dish, despite competition from the pork-chop-with-butter-beans faction. Its in keeping with the spirit of the place that its best-known dish is not something Joey Campanaro developed while working in some of the countrys most distinguished restaurants but something his grandmother made for him when he was growing up in South Philly. The proprietors of La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine would not approve of putting it on the menu of a restaurant that serves lobster bisque and filet mignon. Chicken Betty Lucas would.