Manhattan’s Little Italy is the setting for this episode of Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking. Join host Pete Evans as he explores this famous neighborhood with Gabrielle Hamilton, best-selling author and owner of Prune restaurant, and chef, author, and restaurant owner Marco Canora, of Hearth restaurant. The culinary trio starts off at Sofia’s of Little Italy on the famed Mulberry Street for an espresso and a shot of grappa, then onto legendary Di Palo’s, an Italian food market dating back to the early 1900s, for ingredients to make fresh pasta and an amazing antipasto. To round out their adventure of Italian purveyors, the chefs visit a gelato maker to pick up dessert. On the menu tonight: a Negroni cocktail; Pork Chop Milanese with Endive and Treviso Salad; Bagna Cauda; Fresh Pappardelle with Peas, Butter, and Parmigiano-Reggiano; and Lemon Sgroppino. This is a true Italian feast—mangia!
Little Italy, NYC (203)
Chefs & Artisans from this Episode
Recipes from this episode
A prosciutto rind infuses the broth with flavor—ask your deli person to cut you a chunk of rind from the back of the prosciutto. For the broth, you can also use a combination of chicken, beef, and turkey, as Chef Canora did, to add a touch of smokiness to the dish.
“Gremolata,” says Chef Canora, “is like Italian MSG. It makes everything taste good.” It’s important, he adds, to chop the parsley, lemon zest, and garlic cloves together, not separately. Ready-made parchment packets are available in the supermarket’s foil-and-plastic-wrap aisle, but if you can’t find them it’s easy to fold your own. Watch our video to see how.
Using the highest quality ingredients is key to this salad. Chef Evans used Di Palo’s cacciatorini (hunter’s sausage) that’s rich with red wine and garlic. A tip for easily removing a dried salami casing: soak the links in warm water for 10 minutes to loosen the casing. Sicilian Castelvetrano olives are a good choice for their meaty, fruity, buttery flavor.
Chef Hamilton’s pork chops were bone-in and cooked in clarified butter. However, it’s often difficult to thoroughly cook the meat close to the bone in bone-in chops, so we swapped them for boneless versions. You can also used olive oil instead of clarified butter to cook the pork. It doesn’t produce a chop that’s as rich and juicy as Chef Hamilton’s, but it’s a leaner alternative.