Welcome to the best Italian,  recipes that are easy to make authentic, recipe from Italy.Angie's cookbook and homemade pasta the best homestyle cooking gourmet traditional garlic bread with tomato sauce, imported cheeses.  Italy's best, holiday baking, Angie, What's the Story, made from scratch, dessert. Products from Italy, classic cooking, made in Italy, imported olive oil,  homemade  bread, Italy’s best, espresso, wines, breads, sausage, pizzas, meats, pastry, pastries, Aruba Jerrytruffles, white truffles, black truffles, porcini, mushrooms, pastry, pastries, zucchini. Angies list recommends, listings, Angie’s lists.. referral, recommend, , recommend, best contractors, improvement.

Unique Classic & Traditional Cooking, Recipes and Specialties

Angie’s Italian Recipes are unique recipes passed down  from many generations of homestyle cooking. This site is dedicated to my mother Angelina Mangarella Sacca. Her maiden name was Angelina Mangarella and most of the recipes are original of the Mangarella Family and many have been improved  with Angie’s Gourmet Touch. Angie was born in New Brunswick N.J. along with her other 14 brothers & sisters. Her recipes at this time are being edited and translated for publication. Her recipes will be published on this site as they are completed. Until then enjoy the other traditional products offered here.

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. 

 Angie’s Recipes, classic traditional cooking, homestyle, family traditions, Recipe From Italy, and Cuisine Italiano feature all of the best imported products from Italia including : foods, cheeses, pasta, meats, specialties, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, home made desserts, breads, sauces, tomato sauces, holiday recipes, baked goods, baking, family style dinners, leftovers, restaurant, cook at home, favorite cook book, chef,  and many other product. Pastries, cannoli, anisette, anise seed, garlic, cloves, romaine, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, string beans, flour, sugar, fettucini, lasagne, macaroni, spaghetti, pasta dishes, leftovers, Italian - American