Henry Hill - The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes from My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run

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Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to
Kelly and Julian,
and to Peter
whose unwavering support made this project happen
with our deepest love and gratitude.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the following:

Nick Pileggi, Peter Doyle for helping us put together the concept, Joel Gotler and Jerry Kalajian (for bringin home the carrots), Alan Nevins, Marie Timell, Dan Slater, Hillary Schupf, Bryon Schreckengost, Alec Doyle, Rabbi Mark and Harriet, Elaine Breslow, Steve and Denise Oleesky, John Brenner, my sister Lulu (Lucille) and Rays Elbow Room Restaurant, my sister Marie, my niece Bonnie, my sister Stella, and even my brother Joe, Donald Brown, Tommy Bosco, Contemporary Caterers, Joe Palozzi, Scott from the FBI, Bob Pick, Karen, Michael and Gayle, Debby Cromwell, Nancy Vialpando, Amy Newlin-Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Davis, the Berfield family, David and Denise Ellenstein, Quinn Harmon and Jim Kelly, Eric Meza, Sue Leedom, Fran Ferrucci and Mr. Mike, Susan Angelo, Stephanie Nino Pick, Marty and Rebecca Nakell, Ruth Silverman, Andrew Reisini, Diane Gray, Jamie Stolz, and all the food testers for their patience, palates, and wonderful input on the recipes.

Foreword

Henry Hill was obsessed with two thingsbeing a gangster and being a cook. They infused everything in his life. When he was in hiding because his former compatriots were planning to kill him, he repeatedly endangered his life for dinner.

For instance, while hiding from both the Mob and his Federal marshals in Cincinnati, Henry went out on a food binge because he suspected that the Feds were planning to send him to the Deep South where he heard there were no decent Italian restaurants or suppliers.

At the end of the weekend, when the marshals finally caught up with him, they were furious. They said they knew of at least two hit men who were touring Cincinnatis better Italian restaurants looking for him. Henry was immediately whisked off to Kentucky, but along the way Henry convinced the marshals to stop their armored car so he could pick up a few cans of San Marzano tomato sauce and a hefty chunk of imported Parmesan cheese. It didnt hurt that he promised his bodyguards a feast as soon as they found a safe motel with a kitchen.

In fact, it was probably Henrys obsession with food and cooking that sped up the end of his life of crime. Had he just gone about his business like a normal racket guypeddling his dope or making usurious loansand not tried to include a large Sunday dinner for his family and associates, he might have had more time to spend on the street before getting caught.

I Danny Mann, the Nassau County narcotics detective who initiated the Henry Hill investigation, was certain that Henry had to be preparing for an Appalachian-style banquet for his colleagues after tailing him all day Saturday from butcher to grocer to fish monger to baker to cheese shop. Mann, who is partial to bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread, had never seen anyone buy so much food and therefore chose to make the Sunday raid on Hills Rockville Centre, New York, house, assuming hed bag Hills crime bosses and most of the crew.

When he pulled off the raid, Mann was astounded to find that Henrys food buying and preparation was not for a Mob confab, but for a typically chaotic Sunday dinner for Hill, his wife, kids, brother, assorted relatives, friends, and ditsy drug courier.

Nevertheless, Mann got a terrific arrest and Henry Hill started a new life in the Federal Witness Protection Program testifying against his old life on the streets.

Henry not only loves eating and cooking food, he loves talking about cuisine. While interviewing him for the book Wiseguy, hours of our time were spent talking about the great meals he had eaten and cooked. He talked about helping his Sicilian mother make her own dough for pasta, how he started out breaking the eggs into the mound of flour, revelling in the exotic smell of the mixture as his mother taught him to blend the ingredients properly and go on to knead the dough.

It was in his mothers kitchen that Henry learned to razor slice garlic before dropping it into the frying pan so it practically melted into the oil. Henry was very proud of the fact that his mothers garlic slicing technique was so well received by his Mob pals that it was enthusiastically taken up by his entire crew doing time in the Italian Mob suites at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

In fact in those days, Henry recalled, prison was never hard time for wiseguys. They usually had their own wing, their own pots and pans and stoves, and an endless supply of fresh produce, lobster, veal, steak, and wine, brought in by cooperative corrections officers.

Prison was very expensive back then, Henry says. It cost between fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a month just in bribe money and thats not counting the cost of the food.

It was still easy time, especially for certified wiseguys doing reasonably short bits of eighteen to thirty-six months. They usually lived in a dormitory setting with their own Mob crew and quickly got into the routine of coffee, cards, and dinner.

They had the same routine they had on the outside except it was even better in the joint, because at the end of the day they didnt have to go home.

According to Henry, going home was the worst part of a wiseguys day. Or, more specifically, having to go home to the wife. All day long a wiseguy could be out on the street terrifying everyone in sight, having tycoons throw money at them, having union officials slip him hard-to-get membership books, having his shoes shined and car waxed, until he got home and was subjected to the endless grousing and lack of respect.

Henry always felt that the Justice Department would have been far more successful in its battles against organized crime if it had sentenced the convicted hoods to house arrestwith their wives.

A guy could do eighteen months in Allenwood standing on his head, but eighteen months at home with Angelina, who scaled in at about two-twenty in spandex, had four-inch nails, and a mustache, was enough to make Al Capone do honest work, Henry says.

But the only reason Italian Mob guys could get away from their wives and escape their homes was that they were gastronomically independent.

Being able to cook means you can take care of yourself, Henry says. I know guyslet me be honest, most of them are copswho cant boil water. What good are they? They walk around proud because they cant boil water. Cant make their own coffee. They cant fry an egg. Whats to be proud about that?

Italian kids grow up in the kitchen, Hill says. There is no shyness in the most macho of Italian men about the delicacy of their taste, or their dexterity at dropping a six-quart aluminum pot of boiling ziti into a colander without spilling a drop on a silk tie.

As far as Henry is concerned, when he was on the street, it was a rare wiseguy who did not know his way around a stove. Most of them grew up in their mothers kitchen, just like Henry. They were pulling the strings off fresh stringbeans and prepping artichokes before they could read.

There isnt a wiseguy worth his button who hasnt helped his mother or wife drape fresh fettuccini across the backs of chairs to dry, Henry says.

Years ago, while still being debriefed by the FBI and testifying in a dozen Mob trials, Henry Hill used to say that if he lived long enough on the lam, he would someday write a cookbook.

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