When two great chefs-buddies and business partners for twenty-odd years-decide to write a cookbook about the simple Italian food they love, you get decades of experience, sage advice, and wonderful recipes. And you also get a few great arguments thrown in along the way, as Pino and Mark debate the right way to make everything from meatballs to pot roast to eggplant parmigiana. Of course, the issue is not whose recipes are better-Pino and Mark would be first to praise each other's food. And it's not about a right or wrong way. It's about preferences in ingredients, technique, and approach. Pino, a native of Tuscany cooking in America, is a purist. His food is grounded in tradition. Mark, a New Yorker, loves the Italian-American cooking he grew up with. Each has his favorite recipes (see back cover) and his own way, but they're bonded by a shared philosophy that the simplest food is the best, and a shared desire to please families, friends, and loyal customers with food that makes them happy. So here are nearly 150 delicious recipes representing the best of Italian and Italian-American cooking from not one master but two, with text that teaches, dialogue that's lively, and photography that's gorgeous. There's no question about who reaps the rewards of their friendly competition-it's the reader, hands down. Whether you make... Pino's Oven-Braised Lamb and Artichokes with Oven-Roasted New Potatoes and Spring Onions or Mark's Braised Holiday Capon with Sweet Potatoes and Roasted Brussels Sprouts Mark's Chopped Roman Salad or Pino's classic Caesar Salad Pino's Mushroom Risotto or Mark's Farro with Button Mushrooms, Cherry Tomatoes, and Goat Cheese Mark's Pears in Vin Santo with sweet Polenta or Pino's Neapolitan Cheesecake ...the end result is the same-unpretentious food that is timelessly pleasing. This is home cooking at its very best.

Introduction Who are the two meatballs? One of us is a native New Yorker, a nice boy from Queens with a culinary school degree and years of experience in some of Europe's best hotel restaurants. The other is an Italian immigrant, a former actor who learned to cook by watching and helping his mother in a typical Tuscan home kitchen in the 1950s. Our backgrounds and training could not be more different. One of us likes to play with rustic Italian dishes such as pumpkin ravioli, filling the pasta with pureed baby carrots for a dish with the same vibrant color and a fresh new flavor, and to rethink Italian-American favorites like lobster fradiavolo by way of bouillabaisse and sauce américaine. The other is so grounded in Tuscan traditions that he finds it inconceivable to cook with cilantro. Putting the two of us together in the kitchen may sound like a recipe for disaster. And it is true that during the twenty-plus years we've known each other and worked together, we've argued constantly about the right way to make everything from pot roast to eggplant parmigiana to meatballs, of course. But through it all, we've actually grown closer, bonded by our shared philosophy that the simplest food is the best, and our shared desire to please our families, friends, and loyal customers with food that will make them happy. Our unusual friendship, with all of its conflict, is the basis for this book. By setting down our best recipes for simple dishes, along with our arguments for why we think they're the best, we defend our often divergent styles. We'll never agree on the best method for making risotto, the best chicken broth to put into bean soups, the merits of fresh versus canned tuna, or whether meatballs should be fried in olive oil or simmered in tomato sauce. But our shared passion for unpretentious food that is timelessly pleasing always unites us in the end. We are two guys who love to go to the market, take in the possibilities, make our choices, and then go home and cook dinner. This book isn't for armchair cooks, but for people like us, people who find comfort and pleasure in shopping for and preparing food. Our story often splits into separate voices. Take our two points of view, and use them in ways that make sense in your own kitchen.