The Mafia Cookbook Read online

1/2 cup olive oil (extra-virgin or virgin preferred)

  1 teaspoon chopped garlic

  1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)

  1 small red onion, sliced thin

  Wash greens and pat dry. Add remaining ingredients to greens and toss thoroughly. Adjust seasoning to taste. Serves 4.

  Panacotte (Greens And Beans)

  1 head escarole

  4 whole cloves garlic

  2 tablespoons olive oil (extra-virgin or virgin preferred)

  1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

  1 (16-ounce) can cannellini beans with juice (or approximately 1 cup dried beans, presoaked and cooked)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  2 cups cubed stale bread

  1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  Wash and tear escarole. Slowly sauté garlic cloves (whole) in olive oil. Remove frying pan from heat. Allow to cool slightly. Add crushed red pepper and escarole and cook approximately 15 minutes over medium heat until tender. Add beans with juice and bring to boil. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. Put bread cubes in casserole dish with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese and escarole-and-bean mixture. Sprinkle remaining grated Parmesan (1/4 cup) over top.

  Bake in preheated 375-degree oven until slightly browned (approximately 20 minutes). Serve with crusty Italian bread, or Italian garlic bread, and wine. Serves 4.

  “Joey, did I ever tell you about the time I popped that big fat Lucchese family guy?” Little Dom asked between delicious bites. “I hated this____, he owed me vig for a long time, and I talked his own right-hand man, Johnny was his name, into conning him into meeting me in a parking lot in Queens.

  “Anyway, after I whacked him, Johnny says to me, ‘What’re we gonna do with this fat pig now?’ And since he got the guy there for me to whack, it’s only fair I help him get rid of the body. So we stuff him into my trunk and drive to Boot Hill. I told Johnny that we gotta dig deep, five or six feet, ’cause the lime I use to cover the body smells, even through the ground. When we were finished, I drove my car as close as I could to the hole, and we threw the fat man in.

  “Then I said, ‘Damn, Johnny, I forgot to take his watch off, his ring and his dough. No sense in burying them.’ So Johnny jumps in the hole to get the stuff and I shot him too. I put the lime in, then the dirt, then the grass seed. But I had a lot of dirt to spread around, because I had a two-story job there.

  “Ha ha, that’s funny, Joey. A two-story job.”

  Little Dom Cataldo cracked himself up.

  Shrimp Scampi

  NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA, 1974 JIGGS FORLANO’S APARTMENT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Tommy Agro Jiggs Forlano (Colombo capo) Bobby “Bobby Anthony” Amelio and Rabbit Fusco (drug dealers)

  Jiggs was a Colombo family capo from Brooklyn who liked to tell people he’d retired to Miami. Yeah. You retire from the mob when you retire from the living. It’s like the IRA motto: “Once in, never out.” Anyway, Jiggs had set up a meet with two suitcases from New York who needed investors in a marijuana-smuggling operation. He figured Tommy Agro could come with some fast cash. T.A. brought me to the meet as backup.

  Bobby Amelio (aka Bobby Anthony) and his partner, Rabbit Fusco, were a couple of knockaround Mafia wannabes—babes in the woods, we called those kind—who were always on the fringe of a hustle. T.A. didn’t like them, but “like” didn’t matter to Tommy when money was involved. Jiggs made the introductions and began pouring drinks while I headed for the kitchen to impress the guys with my Shrimp Scampi. Now I know you’re gonna say, Whoa, half a pound of butter and sour cream?! But remember, these guys ain’t exactly concerned about their cholesterol count. So when serving guests with more normal appetites just keep the sauce on the side.

  Shrimp Scampi

  2 pounds jumbo shrimp (preferably under 15 to a pound)

  1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter

  1 shallot, chopped fine

  3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped fine

  2 cups sour cream

  2 tablespoons chopped dried chives

  1 teaspoon garlic powder

  1/4 teaspoon white pepper

  1 teaspoon Accent (optional)

  Shell, devein, and butterfly shrimp. Set on large flat pan or large microwave dish. Set aside.

  “What are you gonna cook for these guys, Joe? I didn’t know you knew how to cook.” Jiggs, a huge man with an Italian cigar nub apparently surgically attached to the side of his mouth, looked impressed.

  “I used to be a sauce chef when I was a working stiff,” I told him. “I like foolin’ around in the kitchen.”

  “You mean you retired from workin’ so you could become T.A.’s valet, chauffeur, and ____ing cook?” he asked. I lifted a large carving knife and Jiggs went back out to the living room while I went back to my shrimp.

  Melt butter in a good, thick metal pot (do not scorch). Add chopped shallot and garlic, and sauté for 3 to 5 minutes over low heat. Add sour cream and stir. (It is thick at first, but once heated it will thin.) Add chives, garlic powder, pepper, and Accent, if using. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, for approximately 30 to 45 minutes until it thickens to a nice texture.

  “Jiggs, you staying for dinner?” I shouted.

  “I’d like to, Joey, but you guys got business to attend to what I don’t want to know about. I’m gonna take a walk.”

  If you’re going to broil the shrimp, watch them closely so they don’t overcook. If you microwave them, do so for 3 to 31/2 minutes on high setting. Pour sauce over shrimp and serve with rice. Serves 4.

  “Joey, I never had shrimp scampi like this before,” Rabbit Fusco said.

  “Me either,” Bobby Anthony agreed, licking his chops. “Now listen, we got a ton of that stuff coming in on the boat from Colombia. It’ll be here in about ten days. I need some front money from you guys.”

  “How much do we have to come up with?” I asked.

  “Fifteen grand.”

  “Marrone, “ T.A. whooshed. “And suppose I just hand youse this fifteen large? What’s in it for me? I wasn’t made with a finger, you know.”

  Baked Pork Chops Philadelphia

  WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 1975 MY HOME

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Tommy Agro

  I invited Tommy Agro over to my house for dinner. I gave my wife, Bunny, who was also a good cook, the night off. Since the reefer smuggler Bobby Anthony (see Shrimp Scampi) never consummated his dope deal, Tommy shylocked out as a loan the $15,000 we had given him for the dope. But he’d been slow coming back with his payments. That extortion bit T.A.’d been dodging in New York looked like it was finally going to catch up with him, and he wanted to make contingency plans in case he had to go into the joint. This recipe is a man’s-man kind of dinner I’d picked up from a Philly mobster vacationing in Miami, and I wanted to make this a special occasion, like a last meal, just in case I didn’t see T.A. for a while.

  Baked Pork Chops Philadelphia

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  4 pork chops (1 inch thick)

  4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

  1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

  2 shallots, grated or chopped very fine

  Salt and pepper to taste

  1/4 cup cognac

  1/4 cup dry white wine

  11/2 tablespoons green peppercorns

  11/4 cups heavy cream

  1 tablespoon Accent (optional)

  Heat vegetable oil in a fairly large saucepan. When hot, cook the pork chops for 3 minutes on each side to brown a little. Put pork aside. Add butter to pan and cook mushrooms and shallots for another 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Then add cognac and wine and cook for another 4 minutes, stirring, over high heat. Mix peppercorns and cream in separate bowl. Crush peppercorns into cream. Add Accent. Pour mixture over mushrooms and shallots and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  From my living room, I heard the apo
plectic T.A. yelling into the kitchen: “You tell this ____Bobby Anthony that I want my ____ing money back. All of it. By no later than the first of the month. And I want a ten-grand bonus. You hear?”

  Place the pork chops in a baking pan. Pour the mushroom-shallot mixture over the pork. Cover and bake for 20 minutes in a preheated 350-degree oven. Serve with vegetable, potato, and applesauce.

  “Joey, if I hafta go in and this guy don’t deliver, I don’t want you to do nothin’. I’ll take care of this from the inside. I’ll reach out for him. I need you out here watching my back. Marrone, what is this, Joey, pork? This is good. Ain’t this what the Jews eat?”

  “No, Tommy,” I said. “Jewish people don’t eat pork.”

  Mandarin Pork Roast Rice And Ricotta Pudding

  QUEENS, NEW YORK, 1976 UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Thomas DiBella (Boss, Colombo family) Allie LaMonte (Colombo capo) Dominick “Little Dom” Cataldo assorted Colombo capos, soldiers, and associates

  Talk about a dangerous meal. Cooking for capos had always been nerve-racking enough. But Thomas DiBella had just been named acting head of the Colombo crime family while Carmine “Snake” Persico did a stretch in the federal pen. The Colombo famiglia were fêting the new boss with a round of dinners. When Little Dominick Cataldo’s turn rolled around, he flew me up from Florida to put on the dog. (Ooh, I love a bad joke.) Little Dom owned a club in Queens—and he gave me free run of the kitchen.

  Little Dom was nervous. He wanted everything to be just right. There were more than a dozen Colombo crew members present, each of them a heavyweight. “Please make everything perfect for the new Scoutmaster,” Dom begged me. “And, Joey, please watch your mouth tonight. I know how you’re always calling us wops, and I understand it’s a joke. But please don’t let none of those old zips hear you talkin’ like that.”

  I promised to behave myself, and got to work on the pork.

  Mandarin Pork Roast

  1 (6-pound) boneless pork loin (tied with string)

  1 teaspoon salt

  1/2 teaspoon white pepper

  3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

  21/4 tablespoons Dijon mustard

  1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges

  1/4 cup light brown sugar

  1/4 cup red wine vinegar

  1 chicken bouillon cube

  11/4 tablespoons soy sauce (low-salt)

  2 tablespoons cornstarch

  3/4 cup water

  1 medium onion, chopped

  1/2 cup chopped green pepper

  Trim excess fat from pork. Rub salt, pepper, and garlic powder into pork. Spread mustard over roast. Place roast in large dutch oven. Cover and bake in preheated 325-degree oven until meat thermometer reads 170 degrees (approximately 3 hours).

  Drain oranges. Save liquid. Place orange liquid, brown sugar, vinegar, chicken bouillon cube, soy sauce, cornstarch, and water in saucepan. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until smooth and thickened. Remove from heat and stir in onion, green pepper, and oranges. Spoon sauce over roast and bake uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes, basting occasionally. Slice pork and serve with sauce. Serves 14 to 16.

  I was allowed to dine with the Colombo boss and his soldiers—the only Gambino honored like that at the table. After dinner, DiBella came over, embraced me, and kissed me on both cheeks. (Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t fags or nothing. It was just our way of showing respect.)

  “Joey, I want you to know how much I enjoyed that meal,” the acting Don said to me. “I know it was some kind of southern dish, because Little Dom tells me you’re from the south. So where exactly in South Brooklyn you from?”

  I kid you not. The guy may have been a boss, but he was still a lob at heart. Now, a lot of the boys had brought dessert with them from a variety of Italian bakeries. But since this was Little Dom’s “Scoutmaster,” I really wanted to do it up. So before anyone could get to cutting open the store-bought desserts, I had the waiters bring out my famous Rice and Ricotta Pudding.

  Rice and Ricotta Pudding

  FILLING

  4 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese (2 15-ounce containers; Polly-O brand preferred)

  1 cup sugar

  1 tablespoon grated lemon peel

  1 ounce semisweet chocolate, melted

  Beat ricotta and sugar (with electric beater) until creamy. Mix in lemon peel and chocolate. Set aside.

  PUDDING

  11/2 cups rice

  6 cups milk

  3/4 cup sugar

  3 eggs

  3/4 teaspoon vanilla

  Butter for coating baking dish

  Flour for dusting

  1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

  Combine rice, milk, and sugar in large saucepan. Bring to boil, uncovered, over low heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes from boiling point, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Reserve 1/4 cup of rice pudding liquid (skimmed from top) in small bowl. Cool along with pudding for 20 minutes. Beat eggs and reserved liquid until blended (do not overbeat). Trickle into rice mixture, stirring well. Add vanilla. Generously butter a high, 12-inch round baking dish and dust with flour. Spread about half the pudding on bottom of baking dish. Spread ricotta cream filling over pudding and cover with remaining pudding. Bake in preheated 325-degree oven for 1 hour 15 minutes. Serve hot or cold, sprinkled with cinnamon.

  New York Strip Steak Florentine With Sautéed Mushrooms Asparagus Hollandaise

  HALLANDALE, FLORIDA, 1976 TOMMY AGRO’S APARTMENT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Tommy Agro Skinny Bobby DeSimone Louie Esposito Buzzy Faldo

  It was T.A.’s coming-out party. He’d just done eight months—mostly in the hospital ward because of his asthma—and this was his first night back in Florida. He’d asked me, Skinny Bobby, Louie, and Buzzy over, and I’d told him his wish was my culinary command. Like any guy fresh from the joint, he wanted steak. (Tip for would-be compares: if any guy wants to join your crew and tells you he’s just out of the joint, take him to dinner. If he orders anything but steak or lobster, he’s lying and probably a Fed.)

  New York Strip Steak Florentine With SauteéD Mushrooms

  31/2 tablespoons butter

  2 teaspoons olive oil (extra-virgin or virgin preferred)

  2 pounds mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

  Salt and pepper to taste

  2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives (or 1 tablespoon dried crushed chives)

  3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

  3 cloves garlic, sliced paper thin with single-edge razor blade or crushed and chopped fine

  1 shallot, chopped fine

  1/4 cup cognac

  Juice of 1/2 lemon

  5 New Tork strip steaks, 8 ounces each

  Heat butter and olive oil in large frying pan over medium to high heat. When hot, add mushrooms and 1 teaspoon salt and teaspoon pepper. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring or tossing occasionally. Add chives, parsley, garlic, and shallot, stirring them in to blend for 7 or 8 more minutes. Then add cognac and lemon juice. Allow to simmer for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and check for seasoning. Broil steaks to your preference (rare preferred) and pour sautéed mushrooms over steaks. Mushroom recipe is for 5 steaks, I like to serve this with a nice asparagus in hollandaise sauce. Just serve the sauce on the side if it’s too rich.

  Asparagus Hollandaise

  4 egg yolks

  1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

  1/4 teaspoon salt

  1/4 teaspoon white pepper

  Juice of 1/2 lemon

  1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, melted and clarified by pouring off milky residue

  1 bunch asparagus spears (approximately 20 stalks), trimmed and steamed

  Place egg yolks, mustard, salt, pepper, and lemon juice in blender and blend at high speed for 1 minute. Then put on low speed and slowly add clarified butter until mixture thickens. Very important: Do not scorch butter, and pour only the clarified butter—not any milky residue—into blender. Pour over
steamed asparagus stalks. Serves 4.

  “Joey, these mushrooms are so good,” Tommy said in the calmest voice I’d heard in years. The joint must have done him good.

  “You gotta be careful with mushrooms, though, Tommy.” Skinny Bobby always had to put in his two cents. “Some of them are poisonous.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I lost my first wife that way.”

  Tommy was seriously taken aback. “Jeez, Joey, I didn’t know that. You never said nuttin’.”

  By this time I was almost in tears. “Yeah, I lost my second wife, too. From a crushed skull.”

  “Marrone,” T.A. said. “What happened? Car accident?”

  “Nah . . . She wouldn’t eat the poison mushrooms.”

  Manicotti Marinara With Mint

  HALLANDALE, FLORIDA, 1976 TOMMY AGRO’S APARTMENT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Tommy Agro Skinny Bobby DeSimone Louie Esposito Buzzy Faldo

  There was a broad in Tommy’s apartment this afternoon, and Tommy was always trying to show me off if he thought it would help get his worthless little ass in the sack. She said her name was Jennifer—Jenny, the crew started calling her—and I must admit, she was a looker. She’d shown up at the apartment peddling Stanley Products door-to-door. You know, shaving cream, toothpaste, razor blades, stuff like that. She had samples with her, and you’d order from her catalogue. Personally, I suspected she was a hooker with a great angle. No matter. It wasn’t like any of us were averse to popping a hooker.

  Anyway, right away T.A. starts in with his lord-of-the-manor routine. “Jenny, honey, I want you to meet my personal chef, Joey Dogs. You’re gonna stay and have dinner with us, Jenny. What’re you selling? Marrone, what a body you got there. You ain’t selling that, are you? Ha ha. Just kidding. Joey, cook up something special for my little Princess Jenny here. Hurry up, Joey! Jenny’s hungry!”