To die for

Pasta With Homemade Ricotta & Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Two of my favorite Italian ingredients are oven roasted tomatoes and creamy homemade ricotta cheese, and I decided recently to combine them both in a pasta dish as I was craving a big bowl of comfort food. There are two ways to enjoy this pasta dish depending on what you prefer. I leave my ingredients separated, and enjoy the different flavors on each forkful as I eat my pasta, while my husband mixes the ricotta into the pasta with the other ingredients before he eats, creating a creamy, more blended pasta sauce.

Roasting brings out the natural sweetness of tomatoes through caramelization which once roasted, are wonderful used in many recipes. Although the cooking time is a long one since you roast them at a low temperature, it takes only minutes to prepare the tomatoes for the oven, so while they are roasting you can be busy doing other things. Homemade ricotta cheese can in fact be made in mere minutes, and is so much better than many of the commercial brands you buy in the grocery stores. The steps in this recipe may look long, but you can roast the tomatoes and make your ricotta cheese on one day, then cook and assemble your pasta dish the next.

To simplify this recipe, you can buy your ricotta cheese and pesto sauce if you are short on time, but do choose the best quality whole milk ricotta cheese and pesto you can find. I simply coarsely chopped my tomatoes after I roast them, but if you prefer, you could puree them into a smoother sauce. This “sauce” is great served on long pasta like the strangozzi pasta (similar to spaghetti) from Umbria shown in the photos, or on short pasta such as rigatoni or penne. You will have leftover ricotta cheese and pesto sauce if you follow the recipe below, but both can be used again for another recipe. Do bring all the ingredients to room temperature before preparing the pasta.

Pasta With Homemade Ricotta & Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Yield: Serves 4-6

Prep Time: 20 mins

Cook Time: 3hrs 30 mins

Ingredients:

Roasted Tomatoes:
10 To 15 Ripe Plum Tomatoes

2 Cloves Garlic, Finely Minced

1 Teaspoon Sugar

Salt & Pepper

1 Tablespoon Finely Chopped Fresh Thyme (Or Herb Of Choice)

1/4 Cup Olive Oil
Ricotta Cheese:
2 Quarts Whole Milk
1 Cup Heavy Cream
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
3 Tablespoons Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
1/4 Cup Chopped Pitted Kalamata Olives
2 Tablespoons Capers, Drained
Chunky Pesto Sauce:
2 Cups Fresh Basil Leaves, Packed
1/4 Cup Lightly Toasted Pine Nuts
2 Large Garlic Cloves
1/2 Cup Grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese
1/2 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 Pound Pasta of Choice
Garnish:
Fresh Basil Leaves
1/4 Cup Lightly Toasted Pine Nuts

Directions:

To roast the tomatoes, preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.
Halve the tomatoes, and place skin side down on a baking sheet.
Sprinkle over them the garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and sugar.
Drizzle with the olive oil and place in the oven.
Bake for about three hours or until they have shriveled yet still remain moist.
Cool, and coarsely chop.
To make the ricotta cheese, line a large sieve with a layer of cheesecloth and place it over a large bowl.
Slowly bring milk, cream, and salt to 195 degrees F. in a 6-quart heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring often to prevent scorching.
Add the lemon juice, then reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring constantly, just until the mixture curdles, about 2 minutes.
Remove from the heat, and let the mixture sit 5 minutes.
Pour the mixture into the lined sieve and let it drain 1 hour.
After discarding the liquid, chill the ricotta, covered in the refrigerator. (Fresh ricotta will keep in the refrigerator 3 days)
To make the pesto sauce, place all the ingredients in a food processor except the oil, and pulse.
Start to add in the oil slowly, pulsing continuously until you have a chunky paste.
Reserve 1/4 cup of the pesto sauce, then refrigerate the rest for another use.
If you do not plan to use it right away, store in a container with an additional layer of olive oil on top to prevent discoloration.
Cook the pasta in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water until it is "al dente".
Drain, reserving a small cup of pasta water, and return to the pot.
Add the roasted tomatoes, olives, and capers and toss with the pasta.
Return the pot to the stovetop and cook for a minute or two tossing the tomatoes and pasta along with a little of the reserved pasta water until everything is piping hot.
Serve the pasta in a large pasta bowl, or smaller individual ones topped with scoops of the ricotta cheese and a drizzle of the pesto sauce.
Garnish with the basil leaves and lightly toasted pine nuts and serve immediately.

Apricot and Chicken Bruschetta and a dead mobster

Apricot and Chicken Bruschetta

TOTAL TIME: 20 min.

Prep: 10 min.

ingredients

1/2 loaf ciabatta bread

1/4 cup olive oil

3/4 cup apricot preserves

5 ounces fontina cheese, thinly sliced

6 ounces roasted chicken breast, cooled and thinly sliced

3 ounces (about 5 slices) prosciutto, thinly sliced

Extra-virgin olive oil, to drizzle

 Directions

 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice the bread into 10 slices, each about 1/2-inch thick. Brush the bread slices with the olive oil and arrange on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp and golden. Cool to room temperature.

Spread each slice of the toasted bread with the apricot preserves then place a slice of the cheese on top. Arrange the sliced chicken on top of the cheese. Cut each piece of prosciutto in half and place on top of the chicken. Transfer the bruschetta to a serving platter. Drizzle with the extra-virgin olive oil and serve.

Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf and today's Mafia murder photo

Ingredients

I used ground turkey and it was a little over a pound but you can also replace with ground chicken

2 finely chopped garlic cloves

1/2 chopped onion

2 eggs

panko crumbs, enough to just soak up the moisture

1/2 cup marinara sauce, homemade preferred, additional for top and to serve with.

3/4 cup of small cubed asiago cheese

a handful of grated romano cheese fresh chopped basil and parsley

s&p, of course

Mix everything together and form into a loaf on a sprayed baking sheet. Bake at 375 for around 1 hour. Last 20 minutes spoon marinara over top and place fresh mozzarella slices over it. Garnish with fresh basil.

The mob hit that rocked New York

 When two innocent men were killed by mobsters in 1972 at a Manhattan eatery, the Mafia took a hit too.

"Yeah, I left it noisy. That way it scares any pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders away."

"The Godfather"was still playing in New York theaters five months after its release and audiences were still greeting that line with nervous laughter when, on Friday, Aug. 11, 1972, a hit man from Las Vegas walked into the Neopolitan Noodle, an Italian restaurant on Manhattan's East 79th Street, at the height of the dinner hour rush.

Mistaking four businessmen at the crowded bar for his actual targets, Colombo family acting boss "Little Allie" Persico and three mob lieutenants, the hit man opened fire with two long-barreled pistols, killing two of the businessmen — kosher beef wholesalers from Westchester County and Long Island — and wounding their companions.

The men were old friends meeting to celebrate a daughter's wedding engagement. They arrived at the Noodle as the Persico party was being seated for dinner. While the four wiseguys were out of harm's way at a table in the dining room, the hit man shot the four innocents who had taken their places at the bar. The businessmen were casualties of a Colombo family civil war that had ignited four months earlier in spectacular fashion when "Crazy Joe" Gallo was gunned down at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy.

The explosion of violence at the Neopolitan Noodle 40 years ago this week — one of the few times in the mob's long, bloody history when truly innocent bystanders were killed in a hit gone wrong — left in its wake an outraged citizenry and a city full of moviegoers who didn't find the reality of warring Mafia families as entertaining as it was on screen.

"The Godfather" celebrated the mob at the height of its wealth and murderous power. Gay Talese's nonfiction book about the Bonanno family, "Honor Thy Father," noted that the Mafia, with annual earnings that exceeded those of nine Top 10 Fortune 500 companies combined, was the biggest business in America at the time.

But if the movie made mobsters look like pious family men with fedoras and .45s, the Neopolitan Noodle killings exposed the vicious reality. The day after the mayhem, New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin condemned "The Godfather," which until then had been almost universally praised, as "hard-core pornography." And an angry New York Mayor John Lindsay demanded that "the romanticization of the mob must be stopped and the gangsters run out of town."

It took 20 years to accomplish the latter — mob godfather John Gotti's conviction and life sentence in 1992 more or less marked the end of the era when the New York Mafia reigned as an all-powerful and seemingly invincible force in New York's economic, political and cultural life.

As for Lindsay's hope that the public's romantic fascination with an enormous and highly organized outlaw gang of thieves would diminish, the mob's grip on the public imagination is arguably stronger today than it was 40 years ago when "The Godfather" was released.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the film's opening, Paramount Pictures held special screenings of the original, with prints restored by the film's director, Francis Ford Coppola, in theaters across the country in March. And the movie, along with"The Godfather: Part II" and "The Godfather: Part III," was the centerpiece of AMC's widely promoted "Mob Week," a recent festival featuring 19 of Hollywood's best-known mob-themed gangster films, each introduced by cable star Anthony Bourdain.

The shooting at the Neopolitan Noodle, by contrast, is hardly embedded in the public mind. The 40th anniversary on Saturday of the dimly remembered killings will pass with little fanfare or commemoration. And the names of the real-life innocent bystanders felled by a mob gunman — Sheldon Epstein, 40, of New Rochelle and Max Tekelch, 48, of Woodmere — will probably remain as they have been all these years, largely forgotten.

 

The murder of Chuckie E

On Feburary 13, 1985, Chuckie English, (Born 1915 as Charles Inglesia) a onetime Capo under Sam Giancana was gunned down as he walked to his car in the parking lot of Horvath's restaurant, 1850 N. Harlem Ave., Elmwood Park.

Under Giancana, English was the Outfits boss of jukeboxes, gambling, counterfeit music recordings, coin-operated vending machines, gambling and juice loans on the West Side in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. He had once owned Lormar Distributing Company, which sold phonograph records and tape decks but was largely a front for the collection of juice loans from gamblers. When, in 1950, English was called before the U.S. Senate Rackets Investigating Committee concerning the jukebox industry, then heavily influenced by the mob, he repeatedly took the 5th Amendment. Three years after Giancana's death, English was reported to be semi-retired, spending winters in the Hallandale, Fla., area, golfing and deep- sea fishing. During the summer and fall he ran small card games in Elmwood Park. Otherwise, he lived quietly in a 10-room, two-story, Mediterranean-style home, with a swimming pool at 1131 N. Lathrop Avenue in River Forest.  When English bought the home in the 1960s, a real estate agent remembered he put down $5,000 as earnest money, and said: "There is a lot more where that came from."

 He then peeled off more bills from several other large wads of money, the real estate agent recalled. The rumors about why the 70-year-old English was murder on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day were rampant. Some said it was because he was trying to expand his gambling rackets, which is doubtful. Others claimed that a group of young Turks within the organization had gotten permission to take him out and take over his operations. Perhaps Ferriola himself ordered the murder or, as others speculated, the imprisoned Joey Lombardo because English was too quick to turn his street tax over to Ferriola who was obviously pushing his way to the top of the organization. But Ferriola’s dislike of English was legendary. Chicago police noted that English had fallen out with the acting boss Joe Ferriola when they followed him to Bruno’s, a gasoline station frequented by the Outfit which was across the street from the Elmwood Park restaurant where English was gunned down.

Detectives who were tailing Ferriola recalled "There apparently was a very cold relationship between English and Joe Ferriola, who likes to take over everything. English was there. So were other regulars, among them Dominic Cortina, Don Angelini and George Colucci. Ferriola shows up and here's what he did: He walked right past English. Didn't look at him at all. Goes right into the gas station like English wasn't there. That meant a lot to me. It showed who was strong and who wasn't. English stood around a while alone. Then he walked away, got in his Cadillac and left. The boys weren't talking to him."

English arrived at Horwath’s restaurant in suburban Elmwood Illinois, at about 3:00 AM.  Horwath's was firebombed bombed on May 4 and August 8, 1982, for reasons that never known. (It was closed and demolished in 2004 and is now a Staples Supply store)

That afternoon at 3:30 PM, the restaurant’s owner, Charles Roumeliotis, served a roast pig for regular customers and had invited English to drop by to eat. Sharing the table with him were 13 other guests including two Cook County judges, Louis J. Hyde and Benjamin DiGiacomo as well as the village trustees Donald Storino and Louis DiMenna. Sitting with them was labor thug John Lardino. It was his birthday.  English was a former client of DiGiacomo’s when he DiGiacomo was a lawyer in private practice. At about 6:00 PM, English stood, patted his stomach, hitched up his belt, waved goodbye and walked toward his white Cadillac De Ville coupe. English left at about the same time as two other men, one of whom paid English's check, although they weren’t sitting at the table with him. One of the men, described as elderly and slumped, walked out with English but went to another car. As he reached for the car door, which was parked less than fifty feet from the restaurant, two men wearing ski masks pumped five shots into his body, one hitting him between his eyes, the forehead, nose, left eyebrow and right cheek, and once in the back, below the right shoulder.  Two men, the killers, were in the parking lot waiting for him. Police impounded a car that witnesses said the killers were leaning on before the shooting.   The killers left on foot and no shell casings were found on the scene, although several shots reportedly were fired, leading police to theorize that the murder weapon was a revolver, which does not eject casings. The government suspected that the gun or the silencer used in the killing was provided by Hans Bachoefer of Elk Grove Village who had a long history of dealing weapons.

Emile Puzyretsky

In May of 1991, while eating breakfast at the National restaurant in Brighton Beach, Russian gangster Emile Puzyretsky was shot nine times in the face and chest.  None of the 15 witnesses in the restaurant remember seeing anything, including seeing gangster Monya Elson crawl around on the floor for several minutes collecting the shell casings.