Welcome to Luigi’s Prima Pizza & Pasta where we serve the best in Italian-American cuisine. Come to our lively, festive restaurant where our beautiful hostess Felicia will show you to your table. Felicia, from Calabria, speaks no English, so Felicia…no capicia. But if you have any questions on the menu, Angelina, the waitress (at the pitzzeria) will be glad to answer them.
All dishes are prepared home-style and created from recipes evolved from Chef Luigi’s grandparents from the “old country.”
Here is a sample of Luigi’s award-winning menu.
Antipasto
Minestron’
Pasta fazool
Zooma Zooma Baccala (served room temperature in a salad with hot cherry peppers)
Ol’ Fashion Salami
Brooklyn Pastrami
Cucuzza*
*”Cucuzza grows in Italy, they love it on the farm. Something like zucchini flavored with Italian charm”
Pizza
Tomatoes and fresh Mozzarella*
Sausage
Meatball
Fresh Garlic
Anchovies
Mushrooms
*Extra mozzarella, the way my cucuzza likes it, add $1.
Pasta
Lasagne
Ravioli (Luigi’s specialty)*
*Comes with one meatball. Extras are $2 each.
Primo
Cutlets Parmigiana (chicken, veal or pork)
Steak Pizzaiola
Chicken Cacciatore
Virginia Ham (on the bone)
Sweets
Bananas (unless we run out and then, yes, we have no bananas)
Banana splits*
Spumoni
*A glass of ice water free with every banana split order.
I think I know how it is pronounced, but I can’t be certain. I’ve never had a misunderstanding when ordering. Sometimes I just point to the number next to it on the menu to avoid embarrassment. The waiters understand. If I called it Fa instead of Fuh…or Pho instead of Faux would I create an international incident? I think not.
The snow—or is that sleet or freezing rain—might be coming down for the 500th time in this endless winter, yet I’m inside happily slurping noodles in a warm aromatic oxtail-based, star anise-scented broth. The ability to pluck out thinly-sliced, braised in the broth, round steak—or maybe a gelatinous piece of tendon with chopsticks adds to my sense of contentment.
When I eat Pho, I often think of Otis Redding’s “Sad Song,” also known as “Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa.” But there is nothing sad about this Fa.
Memorable food moments in film have been well documented. One of my favorites occurs in the 1978 masterpiece from filmmaker Les Blank, Always for Pleasure, the documentary about Mardi Gras traditions in New Orleans. In the film there is a particularly memorable scene, at least to me, where New Orleans’ native, singer, Irma Thomas recites her recipe on how she makes her red beans and rice. “First you need a large pot…at least five quarts…”
I’ve seen the film numerous times, but only on video and that scene has always made my mouth water. Now if I ever had the pleasure of viewing Always for Pleasure at a screening where the filmmaker was in attendance and employed his gimmicky, yet sadistically ingenious technique of “Smellaround;” the addition of the actual aroma from a big pot of red beans and rice being cooked within the theater itself, the gurgling from my stomach would probably drown out the dialogue from the screen.
Instead, the film motivated me to make red beans and rice according to Irma Thomas’s recipe. I was able to find a copy of the recipe in a 1986 book called Totally Hot! The Ultimate Hot Pepper Cookbook, by Michael Goodwin, Charles Perry, and Naomi Wise (Dolphin Doubleday). The recipe, adapted by Les Blank from Irma Thomas’ recipe is much more complicated than what she recited in the film. Hers was brief and simple. I made Les Blank’s recipe from the book. The result, however, for whatever reason, was a slight disappointment.
Since then I’ve tweaked the recipe borrowing much from it, including an enormous amount of garlic. Irma Thomas suggested using a half head. Blank, who made another masterpiece in 1980, Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, centered around the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, so we know where he stands on the benefits of the “stinking rose,”calls for a full head.
For what I made, I used probably three quarters of a head of garlic, In Blank’s recipe, a smoked ham hock is called for and that is what I used when I made his recipe. Thomas, in the movie suggests using “seasoning meat of your choice.” My choice for this batch of red beans was Andouille sausage. Also instead of using a big pot on the stove, I switched to a crock pot hoping the consistent, low temperature would produce better results. Beyond those changes, I’ve left much of the other red beans and rice basics intact.
So here, for your Fat Tuesday pleasure is the Neck Bones rendition of Irma Thomas’s version combined with Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure red beans and rice.
Ingredients:
2 cups of dried red beans (one pound bag)
6 cups of water
1 lb of Andouille sausage (any other garlicky smoked sausage will work too), sliced.
2 medium onions (about 2 cups worth) chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 ribs of celery, chopped
6 tablespoons of minced garlic (or just mince a head—depending on the size of the head)
1 tablespoon of creole seasoning*
½ teaspoon salt
Cooked white rice
Green onions, a.k.a scallions for garnish
*If you don’t have creole seasoning, you can add ½ tablespoon each of black pepper and cayenne pepper or more cayenne than black, depending on your spice preference.
Beans soaked overnight
If you are a reader of Fried Neck Bones…and Some Home Fries you know I prefer the easy to the difficult when it comes to my own cooking. Following that philosophy, I rarely use dried beans going the lazy route with canned beans as a substitute. For this recipe, however, I think dried beans are best because of the very long cooking time involved. So soak the beans in water at room temperature overnight and then pour off whatever water remains and rinse them again in cold water.
Put the beans in a crock pot or slow cooker and cover with the water.
Quickly sauté the sausage to cook off a bit of the fat. You don’t need to do this; you can just throw in the sausage and the excess fat will just add more flavor of the beans, But if you want to limit your fat intake somewhat, either sauté it and drain with a slotted spoon, or boil it briefly first and then add to the crock pot.
Andouille sausage
Cook the onions, celery, and bell pepper for about three minutes in the grease from the sausage and then, again with a slotted spoon, add it all to the crock pot.
Toss in the minced garlic and the Creole seasoning.
Garlic going in.
Turn the crock pot on low and cook for about eight hours until the beans are so soft they meld with the cooking liquid giving it all a creamy consistency.
Looking for that creamy consistency. Not quite there yet.
Serve over cooked white rice and sprinkle with chopped green onions.
Red beans and rice
Enjoy with a cold beer or maybe borrowing from another Fat Tuesday celebration, this one in Brazil, with a cold caipirinha, the recipe for the cocktail can be found here A Lime Cut Three Ways: The First Cut .
And for more pleasure while you eat and drink on this Fat Tuesday, below is the trailer for Always for Pleasure:
Little Pepper Hot Pot 133-43 Roosevelt Avenue Flushing, Queens
“I don’t think I like hot pots,” Gerry wrote in an email after I told him Zio and I were going to spend a Chow City interlude at the Little Pepper Hot Pot in Flushing.
Despite his hasty judgment based on one hot pot experience (Minni’s Shabu Shabu), Gerry agreed to meet the two of us there.
After reading blurbs about the restaurant, I learned that I could park in the garage of the nearby Sky View Center for free for up to three hours. I didn’t think it would take us longer than that to make quick work of Little Pepper’s hot pot so I pulled into the multi-level parking garage and walked through the gleaming, glass enclosed, Taipei City-like mall, passing such culinary stalwarts as Applebee’s and Chucky Cheese on my out to Roosevelt Avenue.
Where am I?
I found Little Pepper Hot Pot across the street from a 1960’s housing development and then recognized it as the location of the great and original Little Pepper (A Cold Sweat in Flushing), which has since relocated to College Point Avenue.
The tables of the narrow restaurant were all adorned with an electric stove top heater. The menu was attached to a clipboard. What turned Gerry, and most of us off about the other hot pot experience was the chaos for first timers. We had no clue what to do and the servers at Shabu Shabu were just too busy to deal with our hot pot virginity.
The hot pot heating device.
At Little Pepper Hot Pot our waiter spoke perfect English and was patient with our ignorance of things hot pot related. Still, the three of us, sadly, are not quick studies and at first it was a struggle, especially for the menu-challenged Zio.
“I just have no clue,” Zio said, shaking his head and tossing the clipboard.
I took the menu and studied it. It reminded me a little of the SAT tests where you need to blacken little circles next to the correct answers. Where was Mike from Yonkers, the SAT specialist, when we needed him?
Finally, I think I figured it out and explained to Gerry and Zio that for the table we needed to order one hot pot for $25, which would serve as our cooking device. From there we could choose other meat and vegetable items from the menu to toss into the boiling cauldron.
There were three hot pot options: Szechuan (all spicy), half Szechuan and half “Original” (mild), or all Original. We like to think that we are very brave when it comes to spice. No one can tell us something is too hot for us. And there have been instances when condescending waiters, assuming because of our vanilla visages (speaking about my own only) that we cannot tolerate the same heat as those born with the spice resistance gene.
This was, however, an offspring of the original Little Pepper where they definitely did not pull any punches when it came to spice. So in this instance we decided to take the safe route and go with the option number two: the combination pot.
The pot was brought to the table, placed on the portable stove top and turned on. On one side was the chili pepper red Szechuan while on the other was the clear, milky Original—the two separated by a divider. It wasn’t long before both broths were bubbling furiously.
The yin and the yang of hot pots.
A gigantic tray of vegetables came with the pot: watercress, wood ear mushrooms, corn, bean sprouts, cabbage and a plate of “fatty beef.”
The veggies ready for the pot.
Fatty beef
Using chopsticks, I started to drop the meat and vegetables into the hot pot.
“Use your hands,” Gerry barked. “You’re taking too long.”
I did as commanded and then the waiter appeared with the other items we ordered: fish, parsley meatballs, king oyster mushrooms, lotus root, cabbage, and enoki mushrooms.
More to go into the pot
“Now what the hell are we supposed to do with these?” Zio wondered, holding up one of the slotted, net-like spoons that came with the hot pot.
“Fish out the fish,” Gerry said.
I tried to fish out the fish from the Szechuan side of the pot and came up with something—maybe the wood ear mushrooms and some of that fatty beef. I shoved whatever it was into my mouth and almost immediately my eyes watered and nose ran and I quickly spat it all out. I examined what had flown out of my mouth and was now on my plate. In my insatiable haste, I almost ingested countless pieces of dried hot chilies.
“Next time maybe you’ll be more careful,” Gerry scolded.
And the next time I was able to fish out the fish and the other ingredients that were now all cooked through and deliciously infused with the accumulation of flavors the multiple ingredients gave the broth.
A bubbling cauldron
The piles of napkins on our table were dwindling at the same rate as the honking noise from our collective noses was increasing. Scooping the meats and vegetables from the “Original” side of the hot pot did little to ease the self inflicted pain from the heat of the Szechuan side. But no one was complaining. It was what we wanted. What we came here for.
Soon, with the exception of the dried chilies and a few enoki mushrooms, there was nothing much left in either side of the pot.
“I’ll be back,” Gerry, who was originally skeptical, said inferring that another trip to Little Pepper Hot Pot was needed.
“Yeah, me too, but not with the Colonel,” Zio said. The Colonel, who was Zio’s partner, had, as Zio made it known many times, a zero tolerance policy when it came to spice. “One sip of this stuff and her tongue would be fried. She wouldn’t be able to talk for a week. Though that’s not a bad idea.”
As I made my way through the enormous mall to try to locate the car somewhere in the bowels of the indoor parking garage, I could feel a burn in my gullet. It made me think of the song “Ring of Fire,” by Johnny Cash. I hummed it in the car driving back home.
The next morning the tune was still in my head, but it was no longer the Johnny Cash version I was humming. The burn had lingered overnight and the effects I was feeling the next morning were closer to how Ray Charles handled it: slow and deliberate and with a raw blast of the blues (see below). The burn and the accompanying pain, I knew, would fade but it wouldn’t be long before I, like Gerry and Zio, would eagerly go back for more of the same.
Last year, around this time, when I started seeing the Puerto Rican flags streaming from car antennas, out of apartment windows, and draped across uptown streets, I immediately thought of the Cuchy Frito man, specifically, Cal Tjader’s rendition and the celebration of all pig parts fried Cuchy Frito Man.
I am seeing those same flags again now. And this year, instead of Cal Tjader and cuchifritos, I thought I would celebrate La Isla del Encanto by stopping by my local lechonera, Lechonera La Isla, for a taste of pernil, roast pork shoulder.
Plenty of room at the lechonera.
La Lechonera La Isla was quiet when I walked in; the few stools of the small restaurant counter were empty. There was beef stew available along with oxtails and roast chicken. And there were a few slabs of pernil that had been roasted to sweet oblivion.
The day’s remains soon to be devoured.
“When do you close,” I asked the young man who was chopping the pernil into pieces for me.
“When we run out of food,” he replied, his cleaver slamming into the very dense crackling of the pig skin. “Basically, my Mom cooks everything in the morning and when it’s gone, I can go home.”
I was lucky; he hadn’t gone home.
Trying not to be too bold, I peered into the kitchen hoping to catch a glimpse of Mom at work. But from what I could see, the kitchen was dark and quiet. Apparently Mom had gone home.
Sawing through the good stuff.
He layered a generous portion of pork on top of rice and red beans. An accompaniment of a homemade hot sauce; onions marinated in scotch bonnet peppers and vinegar set my mouth happily on fire while a drizzle of a tangy mojo (garlic sauce) just added to the gathering of fiery flavors now imbedded there.
Roast pork and rice and beans.
The traffic on 125th Street heading towards the Triorough (now known as the RFK) Bridge was bumper to bumper. Instead of Cuban-born Celia Cruz whose picture was adorned on the busy walls of the lechonera, or Tito Puente, who I once saw on 86th Street just after performing at the parade, sitting in the shade being fanned by a group of elderly ladies, the only sounds I heard while gnawing through the delicious cracklings, was that of honking horns. I really didn’t mind, the food provided all the music I needed.
A smile from Celia Cruz to help the pernil go down.
While Hallmark, FTD, Kay Jewelers, and others try to sell you on Valentine’s Day. When restaurants push overpriced and mediocre prix fixe Valentine’s dinners on you, I am reminded of the simple yet profound words of blues great, and alto saxophonist, Eddie “Clean Head” Vinson.
That there’s no need for caviar.
When “old kidney stew is fine. ”
“You can save your money, and keep your peace of mind.”
But the man himself can tell it much better than I.
On Friday I showed you these two photos of a place here in New York
Someone said that the place was the “Bellevue Hospital organ replacement room.”
Others recognized the Russian hats and presumed a Russian restaurant like either the Russian Tea Room or Firebird.
They were close, but the answer is…
AtRussian Samovar, 256 W. 52nd Street, the ginger root, whole lemons, slices of unpeeled pineapple, and horseradish root, that bathe in the vodka can take on that organ-like look. I personally like to drink various alcoholic beverages that have been naturally infused by funky fruits, tubers and roots that claim to make me “strong like bull.” After a few shots, I don’t care if I really know the claims are preposterous.
Lemon infused vodka.
It also helps that at the Russian Samovar, I can listen to Russian covers of 1960’s pop tunes like “Those Were the Days,” and “What’s New Pussycat” played by the house piano player.
The infused vodka experience at Russian Samovar is enhanced by the live entertainment.
As I said, there is food at Russian Samovar. Someday, if I can get past the extensive vodka menu, I plan on trying it.
I didn’t know when I walked into Eddie’s Pizza on Hillside Avenue in New Hyde Park that the place was some sort of Happy Days throwback. Gerry was at the bar, alone, sipping vodka and watching ESPN. The bar area was dimly lit. There were framed photos on the walls of Long Island celebrities like Boomer Esiason and a poster of the HBO series “Entourage.” The bartender was certainly a throwback; big frosted blonde hair, brassy nicotine ravaged voice and kiddingly friendly in that old school way.
And when I pulled up to the bar next to Gerry, she said, “What’ll you have, hun?”
For the first time in the almost ten years we have been convening, we were in Nassau County. This was Rick’s pick and he had taken us to the area where he grew up. Where, as he told us later, he and a few other friends, known as the Valley Stream “Fat Boys,” would cruise the strip malls in search of whatever place would satisfy their insatiable food cravings. That meant usually diners, but also, according to Rick, included Eddie’s Pizza.
Rick was stuck in the inevitable traffic on the LIE and Eugene was a late scratch, but Zio and Mike from Yonkers made it and after we all had a drink at the bar, moved to a table in a much more brightly lit area surrounded by posters from 1950’s teen rebel movies like Elvis’s “King Creole,” “Rock Around the Clock,” with Alan Freed, and of course, “Rebel Without a Cause.”
There were two televisions tuned to ESPN, but the sound was muted replaced by a stream of oldies. At first the music was just background noise, but soon it became intrusive not because it was too loud, but because there was something just not right with it. We were familiar with the songs, but they were off—remakes of the originals but meant to sound exactly like the original.
Though Rick was the man we needed at Eddie’s, we couldn’t wait much longer and ordered appetizers and by the time the sweet potato gnocchi and fried calamari ravioli arrived, so did Rick. The gnocchi was a nice balance of sweet and salty, but the fried calamari ravioli was an enigma. It was something deep fried stuffed with something else that had a briny, seafood flavor, more like the stuffing of a baked clam than anything reminiscent of calamari. We ate it anyway.
Our waitress, a brunette version of the bartender, suggested three pies. “They’re thin crust,” she said. “Kind of pizza on a matzoh.” The connotation was not the most appealing but we tried one tomato cheese pie, another white clam and a third tomato with anchovies. All three were regular-sized pies as opposed to the restaurant’s famous “bar pies” which were really just smaller, individual-sized pied that were said to fit perfectly on the bar. While we waited, glancing occasionally at the televisions, the music began to take over.
The “matzoh” crust of Eddie’s.
“Johnny Angel,” was the title of the female weeper about a teen rebel’s early death. Who was the singer?
“Lesley Gore?” Mike from Yonkers offered.
“No, not Lesley Gore,” Zio, the senior in our group, said adamantly.
“Connie Francis?” I tried.
Zio shook his head again.
Where was Eugene and his usually useless oldies’ knowledge when we needed him?
“I think it’s Shelly Fabares, but it’s not really her,” Zio said.
Yes,Zio, it was Shelly Fabares.
The pizzas arrived. The clams on the white pie were a bit tough, but the clam juice flowed through the grooves of the cheese which I thought was a good thing. The anchovies on the tomato pie gave it much needed flavor while the standard tomato and cheese pie was a disappointment.
We could hear “The Great Pretender,” playing in the background.
“That’s not the Platters,” Gerry said.
“That’s someone singing ‘The Great Pretender,’ I said. “Pretending to be the Platters.”
I poked at the matzoh-like crust to see if it would break. It didn’t. The sauce held to it. At the moment I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. There was one clam slice remaining. No one wanted it. Not even Zio.
The waitress returned with espresso. There were lemon peels with each demitasse cup. Zio was impressed. “They never give lemon peels anymore,” he noted. “You gotta always ask.”
At Eddie’s you don’t have to ask for lemon with your espresso.
“Here we always bring them,” the waitress said proudly.
“But what do you do with it?” Zio wanted to know as he tried to squeeze the thick peel, hoping to extract some juice from it.
“You rub it around the rim,” she said. And this she proceeded to do, working over his shoulder to show him and then spilling half his espresso. She returned with another espresso, but after two super-sized diet Cokes, more caffeine was something Zio did not need.
“Come Go With Me,” a doo wop made famous by the Dell Vikings played, but this wasn’t the Dell Vikings. Zio was listening closely.
“The scream’s off,” he muttered in disgust. “They couldn’t even get the scream right. Let’s get out of here.”
So went our Long Island strip mall experience at Eddie’s Pizza, Home of the Bar Pie.
I’m not sure why, but the chill in the air and the impending holiday season brings on a distinctive and maybe unnatural craving for the taste of saltfish. Also known to Italians as baccala,(a ditty to that Christmas Eve treat was published in these pages last year titled Baccala Blues )to those of Spanish background as bacalao, and to the Portuguese as bacalhau, Saltfish is the West Indian name for what we know as salt cod.
Not the most appetizing to look at or, for some, to smell, but after the dry, salted fish is soaked to rehydrate it to a moist tenderness and then simmered, a man can get very used to the taste.
“Very well I like the taste Though the smell, sometimes out of place It hard to take, but make no mistake I want you to know, it’s because it extra sweet it smelling so boy it’s
Saltfish”
The words above are from the great Calypsonian, Sparrow’s love song dedicated to saltfish’s wonderfulness named, appropriately, “Saltfish.” He does a much better job articulating the appeal of saltfish than I ever can, so I’ll let him do it for me.
Fried Neck Bones...and some home fries 