The Mafia Cookbook

by Joseph Iannuzzi

  Orecchietti With Peas and Prosciutto

  LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, 1978 LITTLE DOM’S CRASH PAD

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Dominick “Little Dom” Cataldo

  Wake up, Joey, I’m flying in tonight.” It was Dominick Cataldo’s voice on the other end of the phone. “Pick me up at Lauderdale at nine-fifteen. I’m on Delta. You got to do something for me. I can’t come dressed, so have some clothes for me and for you. Capisci?”

  Little Dom was telling me he couldn’t carry a gun on the plane and he wanted me to get us a couple. “What size jacket do you want me to bring?” I asked.

  “I wear a thirty-eight,” Dom said. “And listen, you know those slacks you got for my girl? She has a twenty-two waist. Bring them, too.”

  Later that night I picked up Dominick, he handed me an address in the Keys, and we drove south. I was packing two snub-nosed .38s and a little .22. Dom took one .38 and the .22 and stuffed them into his waistband.

  “Dom, what the hell is coming down?”

  “It’s nothing, Joey. I just have to talk to some guys. I just need the pieces in case they don’t hear so good. It’ll only be a couple of minutes. In fact, you don’t even have to turn the car off.”

  I found the place. Small ranch house-cum-fishing shack nestled inside a shadowy cove of bougainvillea. “Go around the block and park,” Little Dom barked.

  As I backed the car up, Dominick put on a long blond wig. Then he covered his face with a black beard and mustache.

  “You go ahead,” he said. “Drop me off on the corner, and after I go in, pull up in front of the house with the lights off and the car running. Don’t ask no ____ing questions.”

  I didn’t. I dropped him off and he minced up to the front door like a fag. I watched him enter, and once he got inside I began to pull up the car. I heard about twelve shots. Dominick came walking out and hopped into the passenger seat.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Take me to that safe apartment my famiglia keeps in Lake Worth and make me something to eat. That prosciutto thing you made last time sounds good.” Who was I to argue? Here’s my recipe for “that prosciutto thing.”

  Orecchietti With Peas and Prosciutto

  1/2 pound thick-cut prosciutto, diced

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

  1 tablespoon chopped onion

  11/2 cups fresh or frozen peas

  1 pound orecchietti

  2 tablespoons butter

  1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  Brown diced prosciutto in olive oil in a frying pan until crisp. Remove prosciutto with slotted spoon and set aside. Add onion to oil and cook until translucent. Add peas and cooked prosciutto and allow to simmer over extremely low heat while preparing pasta. Boil orecchietti until al dente. Drain pasta and place in large bowl. Add butter and cheese, a little at a time, while tossing pasta. Add pea and prosciutto mixture. Toss and serve. Again, this is a rich sauce—perfect for killer appetites. Ha ha. Serves 4.

  Over dinner Dom told me that a couple of Colombians had beaten him and his compare, the Colombo capo Allie LaMonte, out of $80,000 on a dope deal. “I needed the disguise in the event someone else was there,” he said. “And it was a good thing, too. There was a broad and two young kids.”

  “Dominick! You didn’t?”

  “Naw, Joey, I don’t hurt kids or women. But without the disguise, I wouldn’t have had no choice. Christ, I was hungry. Joey, this meal is delicious.”

  He just whacked a couple of guys and Dom was starving! Sometimes I couldn’t believe the people I was hanging around with. On the way home I drove over a bridge and dropped the pieces into the Miami River. Then I needed a drink. I stopped at the Diplomat Hotel, caught the last show in the Tack Room, met a good-looking chick, and spent the night in a suite. I always got a room at the Dip dirt cheap. They gave me convention rates.

  Pot Roast à La Joe Dogs

  WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 1969 MY APARTMENT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Bunny Mike “Midge” Belvedere (Colombo associate and bookmaker) Ann (Midge’s wife)

  My very first compare was Mike “Midge” Belvedere, a bookmaker from Long Island, New York. Midge was also connected to the Colombo crime family. Midge and his wife, Ann, were my son’s godparents. Midge was a very good-looking guy, a bronze Sicilian with thick, wavy black hair and dark, dark eyes. Almost black. When he stared at you, you felt like knives were going through your head.

  Midge’s wife Ann was beautiful. She looked like Elizabeth Taylor but had a better body. But once she opened her mouth, marrone, you’d think she learned to talk at truck driver’s school.

  Soon after Bunny and I had moved to Florida, Midge and Ann flew south for a visit. I was still getting established, we were living in an apartment, we hadn’t even bought our house yet, and money was a little tight. Not real tight, just a little. Anyway, the four of us were going out to see a late show, Sergio Franchi was playing a hotel in North Miami. But first I wanted to cook the Belvederes a great dinner.

  Pot Roast à La Joe Dogs

  Salt and pepper to taste

  1 (3-pound) chuck roast (with bone in it)

  5 carrots

  5 celery stalks

  1 large onion

  4 Idaho potatoes (or 8 new, or red, potatoes)

  1 (103/4-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup (Campbell’s preferred) plus 11/4 cans water

  11/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

  1 tablespoon Gravy Master

  Salt and pepper roast on both sides. Place roast in good-size pan and cook in preheated 400-degree oven for 20 minutes to brown. While meat is cooking, clean and cut carrots into 2-inch pieces. Repeat process with celery stalks. Cut onion into 8 pieces. Peel and halve potatoes. Mix mushroom soup and water in large bowl. Add mustard and Gravy Master for color and flavor. Mix well. Remove roast from oven and place vegetables around meat in pan. Pour sauce mixture over meat and vegetables, cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 2 hours at 350 degrees. Should be served with Dewar’s White Label scotch on rocks. Serves 4.

  Later, as the four of us were walking out of the Sergio Franchi show, the television actress Joi Lansing pushed through the mob waiting for the valet to retrieve the cars. Now Joi Lansing was best known for her, shall we say, awesome headlights. And as she approached our group, Joi smiled at Midge and sort of gave him the eye. Ann sidled up to her real slowly and said, “If you don’t take your ____in’ eyes off my husband, I’ll smack you in the face with your own big____, you ____in’ whore.”

  Ann was beautiful. And she set the tone that first night for a wonderful time.

  Chicken Cacciatore Northern-Style

  HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA, 1972 THE OLD PELICAN RESTAURANT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Louie Esposito

  Perfect timing.

  Louie Esposito was on the lam from another big robbery attempt. Louie was a great B&E man, and he’d gotten a tip about a house in New Jersey that was home to some $2 million in cash, stashed in some fake books in the library. Louie and a partner had dressed up as priests, faked a flat tire, and chloroformed the maid who let them into the house.

  “We saw the ____ing money, Joey,” he told me. “Stacked up in these empty books. A ____load. But we musta tripped a wire. Within two minutes there were sirens and squad cars all over the place.”

  Empty-handed, Louie and the other guy ran into some woods behind the house and split up, and Louie spent the night in the rafters of an empty construction site. The cops caught his partner. Louie told me he was on the lam because he didn’t know if the guy had given him up.

  Coincidentally, not two nights before, me and my crew had busted up a joint, the Old Pelican Restaurant, on orders from Tommy Agro. The two brothers who owned the place were late with their vig. We hadn’t torched the building, but it was closed. We’d really done a job—with sledgehammers and axes—on the bar and the dining room. But the kitchen was still intact. And there was
an office with a cot.

  Tommy Varaggo, one of the owners, had flown to New York for a sitdown with T.A. His brother Jimmy knew better than to come near the place. So I took Louie—who hadn’t been present at the bashing two nights before—to the restaurant, tossed him the key, and told him to make himself at home. Then I cooked him dinner.

  Chicken Cacciatore Northern-Style

  2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil (extra-virgin or virgin preferred)

  1 (21/2-pound) chicken, cut into pieces

  1 large onion, chopped into 1/4-inch pieces

  3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped fine

  2 shallots, chopped fine

  1/2 cup dry white wine

  11/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

  Salt and pepper to taste

  2 basil leaves (dried or fresh)

  Heat olive oil in large frying pan. Sauté chicken over medium heat, turning occasionally, for approximately 20 minutes. While chicken browns, add onion, garlic, and shallots to pan. After 20 minutes or so, add wine, vinegar, salt, pepper, and basil to mixture. Cover tightly, and allow to simmer for another 30 minutes. Serve with pasta, rice, or vegetable. Serves 4.

  Over dinner, something stuck in my craw (and not the chicken, which was delicious). Louie said he was on the lam from the Jersey robbery. Yet less than a year earlier his cut from the big Aqueduct Racetrack heist had come to close to a million bucks. When I asked him what happened to all that dough, a queer look kind of crossed his face.

  “Are you kidding, Joey?” he asked. “My share was only $800,000.1 went through that in a couple of months. Gee, though, I just wish I coulda paid off my house. Anyway, I have to find some work until I make another score. You got a job for me?”

  Nobody in our organization could ever hold on to a buck. We all threw money around. Broads and more broads. Lawyers for pinches, bondsmen for bail. The lawyers got the most, though. We called them whores. They got that name from jumping from one client to another. I had a good lawyer. I got sentenced to a month one time. He got me out in thirty days.

  Spinach and Eggplant Lasagna with Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce Peach Cobbler

  HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA, 1980 NENA’S APARTMENT

  PEOPLE PRESENT:

  Joe Dogs Tommy Agro Popo Tortora (Genovese soldier and dope dealer) Frank Dean (Genovese associate and Tortora’s muscle)

  It was our version of going to the mattresses. Popo Tortora was a big doper with the Genovese family in south Florida, and he was at war with us. The problem was Popo’s, though. He’d sold me some bad blow—six keys of coke—and I’d refused to pay. The crap wasn’t fit to stuff up your____, much less your nose, and I’d told Popo so. But he was making innuendoes like I’d switched his dope on him. Naturally, shots were fired. But nobody’d been hit. Yet.

  The situation got so bad, however, that Tommy Agro had flown down from New York with some muscle after I got word that Popo was going to make a run at me at one of my hangouts, a restaurant owned by a friend of mine.

  Anyway, six of us—all Gambinos—sat up all night at this restaurant, armed to the ____ing teeth, waiting for an attack that never came. Finally, one of Tommy’s sluggers went hunting on his own and capped one of Popo’s crew after a bar fight. That was enough for the big boys up in New York. This they didn’t need. The Feds were coming down on us hard enough as it was, and they didn’t want us fighting among ourselves and attracting attention. So T.A.’s compare, the Gambino family consigliere Joe N. Gallo (not to be confused with Crazy Joey Gallo of the Colombos), ordered a sitdown.

  We scheduled the meet at my girlfriend Nena’s apartment in Hollywood. By this time my wife, Bunny, had tossed me out of the house for cheatin’ like a jackrabbit. I was living with Nena, a real babydoll and a flight attendant for American Airlines with a body to die for. Luckily, she was on a West Coast turnaround when the meet went down.

  Popo brought one of his top sluggers, a nasty piece of business named Frank Dean. T.A. and I ushered them in and frisked them. We’d laid our guns out on the living room couch, and expected them to do the same. Tommy had just been diagnosed with a heart condition, and didn’t want any meat. So I went instead with a delicious, and meatless, lasagna. See how I looked after my compare? See what a nice guy I was? Minchia, if I had known how Tommy was gonna eventually look after me, I woulda shoved a twenty-ounce porterhouse down his throat. But I digress. Here’s the recipe for the tomato sauce.

  Spinach and Eggplant Lasagna with Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce

  TOMATO SAUCE

  8 cups chopped fresh plum tomatoes

  1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes (soaked in 1 cup water)

  1 red pepper, seeded and quartered

  1 onion, peeled and chopped

  1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped fine

  2 cups vegetable broth (or water)

  1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

  1/2 teaspoon black pepper (or to taste)

  1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

  Combine plum tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes (and their liquid), red pepper, onion, garlic, and broth in saucepan. Allow to simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. As sauce is simmering—say, every 15 minutes or so—add basil leaves until all are used. Makes 6 cups sauce.

  The sitdown wasn’t as harrowing as I thought it would be. Granted, Frank Dean had a face and an attitude that could stop a train. But Popo was all smiles and backslaps. Popo was a scrawny old man, in his mid-sixties, and aside from dope he had a nice business going in forged airline tickets. He had someone inside at the airlines, and he could get you any ticket you wanted, on any carrier, at half price. As I was running back and forth between the kitchen and the living room he must have offered me free tickets ten times. I also heard him telling Tommy that he was sure our “little squabble” could be solved amicably, and after it was, he was going to call over the most gorgeous hookers either of us had ever seen. Now, because of his doping, Popo always had broads galore. And I liked a good hooker as much as the next guy. But this wasn’t a good sign. If there was one thing I’d learned by now about T.A., it was that his little head always did all his thinking for his big head. And I didn’t need his little head getting in the way of any negotiations. This was as good a time as any to put together the lasagna.

  LASAGNA

  5 medium eggplants, cut into 3/8-inch rounds

  2 to 3 teaspoons salt

  2 teaspoons fresh thyme (or 1/2 to 1 teaspoon dried)

  1 bunch spinach, stemmed, washed, and lightly steamed

  4 cups low-fat ricotta cheese (Polly-O brand preferred)

  2 cups chopped fresh basil leaves

  1 egg

  1 teaspoon black pepper

  Tomato Sauce (recipe above)

  12 dry lasagna noodles (or pre-boiled, if preferred)

  1 (8-ounce) package mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced (optional)

  Sprinkle eggplant with 2 to 3 teaspoons salt (depending on taste and heart condition). Set aside in colander to drain for 30 minutes. Rinse and pat eggplant dry. Combine eggplant and thyme in nonstick frying pan over medium to low heat. Cook, a few at a time, on both sides until barely tender. Place in bowl and set aside. Also set aside lightly steamed spinach. Combine ricotta, basil leaves, egg, and salt and pepper to taste and set aside. Spread 2 cups of tomato sauce along bottom of 9- by 9-inch baking dish. Place 4 uncooked lasagna noodles over sauce. (Note: Pre-boil if pasta is preferred well done, as noodles will be al dente if cooked dry in recipe.) Top with a third each of spinach, ricotta mixture, and eggplant and 1 cup sauce. Repeat procedure twice, ending with a layer of sauce. Add top layer of thinly sliced mozzarella (optional). Cover with foil and bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 to 20 minutes.

  During dinner Tommy started bragging to Popo about how healthy he’d been eating. “How do I look, Popo?” he’d ask. “Don’t I look thinner?” Popo, who wasn’t much interested, nodded his assent. Then, after we were done, Tommy said—in all seriousness—“We
ll, I may be thinner, but I feel like I’m eating like a ____ing rabbit. Joey, you got any bacon and eggs and toast back there? I need some meat.” About this time I was wishing he’d die of a heart attack right there.

  As it was, we straightened out the dope dispute over dessert, a tasty peach cobbler I’d thrown together especially for the occasion. Popo agreed to call a truce if we could help him lay off the bum dope. T.A. knew a couple of knockaround Lucchese guys who sold to college kids—college kids never know good dope— and agreed to contact them. The hookers showed in time for coffee and the cobbler. Sweets for the sweet, right? A week later all was back to normal.

  Peach Cobbler

  6 to 8 fresh peaches, peeled

  Confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon to taste

  1 cup flour

  1/2 teaspoon baking powder

  1/8 teaspoon salt

  1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, softened

  1 cup granulated sugar

  1 egg, beaten

  1/2 teaspoon vanilla

  Mix peaches with desired amount of confectioners’ baking pan. Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream together softened butter and granulated sugar and add to flour mixture. Fold in egg and vanilla. Spread cobbler mixture over fruit and bake in preheated 375-degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes. Dust with additional confectioners’ sugar and serve with ice cream while cobbler is still warm.