A taste of our Italian American spaghetti and meat lidia Bastianich

　　Lidia Bastianich is widely considered the queen of Italian cooking, and with good reason: her recipes have taken us from the most authentic dishes of the Italian countryside to the most beloved dishes of her family kitchen. In her latest book, Lidia’s Italy in America, Lidia and her daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali take us on their most exciting journey yet: a road trip across America, into the heart of Italian American cooking today. As Lidia shows us, every kitchen and community has produced something different, with little clues hidden in each dish: the Sicilian-style semolina bread of the New Orleans Muffuletta sandwich, the crunchy Neapolitan crust of New York pizza, and the multitudes of breadcrumb-stuffed vegetables that came to our shores long before fresh peppers or tomatoes ever did. “Food, after all, is the blueprint of who we are,” says Lidia. “The food of our culture gives us strength and identity as a group and as individuals…Today, this country’s Italians are truly as American as apple pie, but they have also held on to the traditions of their heritage.”
Italian American food has its own distinct culinary traditions, and its own special flavors. So to feature those flavors, what better dish to make than spaghetti and meatballs, complete with a side of crispy garlic bread? Sit down to a table with these dishes and you end up devouring not only a fantastic meal, but also a history of American cuisine that evolved out of necessity, ingenuity, and a love for delicious food.

　　Start your meal by getting your garlic bread ready to go–in Italy, this dish was called bruschetta or fett’unta, an appetizer that took leftover bread and put it to good use with a coating of olive oil and fresh garlic. In America, this became garlic bread, and rarely do you find an Italian restaurant that leaves it off the menu. For Lidia’s version, peel a few cloves of garlic and let them soak in a small bowl of olive oil for 30 minutes (to let the garlic flavor soak into the oil).
Time to start your meatballs! (Lidia’s recipe makes a lot of meatballs, making three extra quarts, so you can either scale the recipe down by half, or just make a big batch and freeze the rest.) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Get out your food processor and pulse together some carrot, celery, and onion until they make a fine-textured paste, or pestata. (This will help keep the meatballs light and juicy.)