Bucco Artie - The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco

Copyright 2002 by Warner Books, Inc. and Home Box Office, a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Text Copyright 2002 by Warner Books, Inc.

Recipe photographs copyright 2002 by Warner Books, Inc. The Sopranos photographs copyright 2002 by Home Box Office, a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. All Rights Reserved.

The Sopranos, HBO and ITS NOT TV. ITS HBO. are service marks of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.

Grand Central Publishing

Hachette Book Group USA

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

First eBook Edition: September 2002

ISBN: 978-0-446-54534-1

To all of our mothers, no matter what they cook.

Many, many thanks to: David Chase, Ilene Landress, Russell Schwartz, Sandra Bark, Michele Scicolone, Ellen Silverman, Carolyn Strauss, Miranda Heller, Richard Oren, Martin Felli, John Ventimiglia, Federico Castelluccio and cast and crew, Sandra Vannucchi, Nona Jones, Victoria Frazier, Chris Newman, the gracious staff of the New Jersey Information Center, and the incomparable assistance of Bree Conover and Felicia Lipchik. Also, Id like to thank Ann-Marie, Blaine, and Max for all their love and support.

Allen Rucker

Thank you to Ilene Landress for never getting depressed with all the meetings it took to produce this book. We already thanked our mothers, so thank you to my grandmother, Theresa Melfi, one of the worlds great cooks and also my father, Henry Chase who was a really good cook, pie maker, and, perhaps more important, convinced me to eat mussels and clams. To most of my relativesthey are good at the stove, my wife, Denise, and her mother, Simone Kelly, where I first experienced French food, and also to my daughter, Michele with whom weve had a lot of happy, delicious lunches and dinners.

David Chase

NUOVO VESUVIO RISTORANTE, ESSEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY

C iao! Benvenuti alla mia cucina! To all of you, I say, Hello, and welcome to my kitchen! Actually, Im inviting you into many kitchens, many Italian-American kitchens, and, along the way, into many Italian-American lives. If you are one of us, either by birth or in spirit, you know that food is not just fuel for the Italian body. Food is la gioia di vivere, zest for life. Food is family, tradition, birth, confirmation, marriage, sickness, deathlife itself A paisan without food is like Cecilia Bartoli without a song. Why get up in the morning?

This Italian-American cookbook does not come from some loudmouth TV chef trying to get rich off of Risotto al Funghi or a brainy student of Italian cooking who learned it all in a weekend at a high-priced gastronomium in California. This book of meals comes from real life, la vita reale. The recipes are real, the people who cook them do so in real kitchens, for real families, and many get real fat! The cuochi, or chefs, are my friends, or in some cases, me, and they are all non-pros, except, of course, me. We live in northern New Jersey, the true garden of the Garden State, and although we come from many walkways of life and have our own private victories, defeats, and tie games, we share a common passione for the food our forefathers and mothers brought with them from the old country. This cookbook is our humble attempt to pass this culinary blessing on to you, the reader.

Before we start to boil the water and saut the garlic, a few words about myself. I am a third-generation Italian-American chef and restaurateur. My grandparents, Enrico and Concetta Bucco, came from the province of Avellino in Southern Italy in 1913, leaving behind a legacy of poverty and exploitation. But they had each other and a love that could move mountains. With uncommon courage, they followed their dream and opened their first hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Buccos Vesuvionamed after the volcano of their youthin the heavily Italian First Ward of Newark, New Jersey, in 1926. Their rice balls were soon known as far away as Hackensack.

My father, Arthur, and my dear mother, Dot, followed their dream by following the migration of second-generation Italians to the green grass of the suburbs. They opened the second Buccos Vesuvio, also in Newark but near Bloomfield, New Jersey, in the early 1950s. When they retired to Brick Township, NJ, the keys to the front door were handed to me, fresh out of cooking school in London. That day I became the keeper of the Bucco flame. But then in 1999, tragedy struck in the form of a mysterious three-alarm fire and my dream was suddenly and cruelly asphyxiated. Yet how, I wondered, could I let that flame die? Soon my wife, Charmaine, and I opened the third Vesuvio, called Nuovo Vesuvio, also in the Essex County area. Please come by and sample our best. Reservations are recommended.

Dear Mama:

I miss you very much. It is cold here and the heat in our building went out and we must wear heavy coats & gloves to bed. Please send recipe for rice balls. Many ask for them and I want to make them right. Am now working as ditch digger, but pay is low, the padrone is a bastard, and I often get sick. Concetta says we should start our own restaurant. What a dreamer! Wish you were here. Give my love to Papa. Your loving son, Enrico

It was a labor of love for me to gather these cherished recipes in one book. Over half of the entries come from my dear friends, the multigenerational Soprano family, which includes my oldest friend, Tony Soprano, a waste management consultant in the area. He, above anyone I know, is a lover of la tavola. Also, his poker club relationship with a local literary agent allowed me to get this book off the ground with much less shoe leather and also at a better agency percentage than would be typical for a first-time writer.

Thus, our mutual decision to call this The Sopranos Family Cookbook. When you come right down to it, it really should be called The Northern New Jersey/Friends of Artie Bucco/ Neapolitan-Avellinese Italian-American Cookbook,