With one glance you know that this is not your average Italian cookbook. The cover photo isnt the usual beautiful food shot or pastoral Tuscan landscape. The cover of The Food Pushers Cookbook graphically shows the scant remains of what used to be a platter of pasta, apparently just decimated by a hungry horde.
The food pusher strikes again.
They are, by nature, good people. They live to feed you, says author Rick Melfi, an accomplished professional chef. We are unsuspecting of these kindly folks in their flowered aprons, who draw us into their world of sauces and over-stimulated taste buds.
The Food Pushers Cookbook: Recollections & Recipes of an Italian American Tradition, is a homage to one such pusher: the authors mother, Mama Melfi.
Maria Gracia Pozzolini was a 17-year old war bride, brought to the U.S. in 1947 by Frank Melfi, himself a native Italian who had been naturalized as an American citizen, only to return to Italy as a soldier to fight in WWII.
Now 81, Maria is enjoying the limelight that she is sharing with number two son, still using the birth order that she and her husband used to refer to Rick and his four siblings.
The cookbook was a labor of love for Chef Melfi, who spent over two years collecting his familys favorite recipes. "Most are my mother's and grandmother's original recipes, which were hand-written and no doubt went back countless generations further, he explains. The ingredients were simple, inexpensive, seasonal and local. It was really sustainable cooking long before we knew what that meant. Dads garden was a testament to that end.
Melfi also includes some of his own culinary creations, served with a full plate of recollections and family photos.
Its almost like being there. Along with a phenomenal amount of wonderful recipes emphasizing fresh ingredients and simple preparation, the reader gets a taste of what it was like growing up in a first-generation Italian-American family, in the Bronx and New Jersey, with five children, a stern father, and a classic Food Pusher.
If you were in the Melfi household near mealtime, you stayed and you ate. Our friends were always amazed at the care taken with the food as well as the amount of it. To turn down the pasta course with the idea of saving room for a later course was a disgratiatzza, and would incur the immediate scorn of Mama Melfi. The offending guests were made to feel guilty, and they would inevitably consume some pasta anyway.
It was one of those guests who coined the term Food Pusher."
The stories are as honest as the recipes. Two things arent on Melfis menu: political correctness and rabbit cacciatore. The first is Melfi making good on his vow to tell it as I saw it, in its entirety, with every graphic, calorie-filled detail. The second, not unrelated, involves pet Easter bunnies and a well-worn belt strap. Enough said here.
While theres an edge to some of the family stories, the recipes themselves burst with fresh, simple ingredients and a pure love for food. And the bounty extends to the number of recipes. From Antipastos to Zucchini Pomodoro, from From Zuppa to Apple Nut Torte, if its good and Italian, its here. The 175 recipes cover appetizers, pasta, pasta sauces, soups, salads, meat and chicken entrees, seafood entrees, pizza, backyard barbecues, sides and desserts.
Released in July, The Food Pushers Cookbook is enjoying brisk sales in the U.S., a surprising number of sales in Italy, and accolades from other chefs and restaurant industry professionals.
The selection of recipes is great, and I really enjoyed the family history and down-to-earth way its told, says Will Chizmar, CEO of Star Culinaire. Beth Brown, Chef at New Yorks organic-centric Great Performances catering, agrees. The recipes are great but I really love all the family stories...the book has soul!
I found 'The Food Pushers Cookbook' to be great fun to read, says Gail Phoebus, co-owner of Farmstead Golf & Country Club. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves cooking!
Eric Borgia, executive chef at The New Meadowlands Stadium, calls it, A must if you grew up eating American white bread.
The Food Pushers Cookbook is available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and AuthorHouse, and a growing number of bookstores in the New Jersey area.
Rick Melfi was trained at the Culinary Institute of America. As national director of culinary development for Marriott Management Services in the 1990s, he helped launch a corporate dining program that Nations Restaurant News hailed as leading the years #1 food trend. From there he went on to become the director of strategic culinary development for the largest food procurement operation in the world. He is currently the chef at The New Meadowlands Stadiums elite Coaches Club. A long-time resident of northwest NJ, he is president of the Andover Township Fire Department, where he has been a volunteer firefighter for over twenty years.
# # #
More Barnes & Press Releases
