Angie’s list of authentic traditional Italian recipes from her own collection of hand written notes.

Beef

Pot Roast with Dill Pickles

Rolled Beef

Sauerbraten

Seafood

Fillets with Sesame Seeds

Orange Roughy

Shrimp and Mushrooms Over Rice

Shrimp AuGratin

Shrimp Pizza

Shrimp Scampi

Stuffed Clams

Stuffed Flounder

Chicken

Chicken Breasts with Spinach

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Chicken Livers with Tomatoes and Noodles

Chicken Piccata

Chicken Reuben

Marinated Chicken

Pork

Pork Piccata

Pork Chops with Devil Sauce

Roast Pork Loin with Sauer Kraut

Pastries and Desserts

Almond Cake

Anise Cookies

Apple Cake

Blueberry Surprise

Bread Pudding

Cheese Cake

Chinese Laughing Balls

Chocolate Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons with Cherry

Crumb Cake

Double Chocolate Bisquick Cookies

Easter Biscuits

Eels

Fig Cookies

Frappe 

Hungarian Cookies

Italian Honey Cake

Lent Cookies

Noodle Pudding

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pineapple Topping for Cheese Cake

Pinole Cookies

Pudding Bisquick Cookies

Pumpkin Pie

Rice Pudding

Rugelach

St. Joseph Zeppoli

Strufoli

Sweet Ravioli

Tiramisu

Walnut Almond Torte

Walnut Balls

Salads

Artichoke Salad

Cabbage Salad

French Salad

Fresh Broccoli Salad

Seafood Salad

Shrimp and Cashew Salad

Tortellini Salad

Zucchini Salad

Anchovy Zeppoli

Bread Stuffing

Cheddar Puffs

Cheesy Muffins

Clam Fritters

Crab Dip

Egg Roll Filling

Escarole Mashed Potatoes

Pizza Dough

Potato Cake

Potato Casserole

Salmon Spread

Sausage and Apple Stuffing

Shrimp Toast

Smoked Fish Pate

Spinach Pie

Ricotta Fritters

Zucchini Pie

Soups

Angie’s Potato Soup

Black Bean Soup

Broccoli Soup

Clam Chowder

Escarole Soup

Sausage Jambalaya

Chili 

Pasta

Fettuccini

Spaghetti Frittata

Celebrating Italian Christmas Traditions with Friends and Family

Traditionally, for many families around the world, Christmas is the most celebrated religious holiday of all. Being from a large Italian family and celebrating Christmas has always been special with the traditional things we do to celebrate. My mother would invite family, friends and neighbors over for Christmas Eve dinner, as she loved cooking and watching everyone enjoy her food. For the guests this would definitely be a night to remember for life. For my brothers and me growing up with this tradition of celebrating Christmas Eve this way, we sometimes took for granted of how special this night was. My friends would come over for Christmas Eve dinner and were amazed with how many different courses of meals that were served. Not all nationalities go to the extremes as the Italians do to celebrate Christmas. As each of us got married, my mother would include all of our wives families to join our family so they could experience and learn from this Italian tradition about good food, good people and good conversation.

Our kitchen would always be filled wall to wall with people and food on Christmas Eve. The quests would be seated first around the table because once you were seated you were not getting out until someone else got up. The mixing of Christmas traditions between the families was fun. My mother knew how much everyone loved her cooking and this was her Christmas gift to all as she bought and prepared everything herself. It was funny to see everyone tasting the different types of fish like; squid, calamari, lobster, shrimp, baccala, mussels and smoked whiting as most of them experienced new tastes and types of food they never had before. After this first portion of dinner was done the table would be reset with homemade deserts covering the entire table. At midnight another meal was served of filet mignon and other types of meat. The tradition continued until my mother passed away and anyone that ever attended one of these dinners would never forget Christmas at Sam & Angie’s. Still to this day our friends recollect the memories and talk about those holiday dinners of past.

Most of the friends and neighbors were of mixed nationalities and most of them had no special traditions for celebrating Christmas. For most of them the holiday meant Santa Claus, gifts, Christmas trees and a turkey or ham dinner on Christmas day. My parents were the first generation of their families born in America, so old world traditions were instilled in them and that’s the way we celebrated. Christmas eve was the pre celebration of the birth of baby Jesus and the meals that were prepared on this day before was traditionally all fish, as Catholics believed in fasting of meat on Christmas eve to honor baby Jesus arrival. After midnight the fasting of meat would end and the celebration would start with eating meat. The guests just thought this was a holiday dinner and was great because of the many types of fish served.

This feast was second to none and people that heard about Angie’s Christmas Eve dinner prayed that they would be invited the next year and others that weren’t wished they were. Angie’s cooking was the standard by which all was compared to and sharing this night with our family was a privilege. The guests would ask, what they should bring, knowing that they couldn’t bring food to compare with Angie’s, so they would bring wine or liquor. They all learned that love is an ingredient not to be left out when preparing dishes and Angie loved cooking. There weren’t too many traditions that we learned from the others families, but we did learn how fortunate we were to have a mom and dad like ours. To this day my brother’s families and mine carry on the same traditional Christmas Eve dinner that we grew up with, knowing that the spirit of mom and dad is with us in the kitchen on this day. 

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