By Anita Mortimer

From the February 1980 issue of Yankee.

You are in Boston's North End when your guidebook directs you to Paul Revere's House, Old North Church, or Copp's Hill Burying Ground, but your nose sends you instead scurrying along narrow streets searching for cannolis, marzipan , hot slices of pizza, and fresh loaves of Italian bread with the crust still warm.

The North End of Boston, commonly called "Little Italy," is the most ethnic of Boston's neighborhoods. Its one square mile is thick with open storefronts where blocks of chocolate must be chopped with butcher knives and weighed; where vendors display a dazzling array of sausages, cheeses, fresh fruits, and vegetables. There are other places in Boston to buy frozen yogurt and bean sprout sandwiches; but in the North End food is king — hot and spicy and filling.

It would seem unlikely that from the plethora of good cooks in the North End one could emerge with a singular reputation as perhaps "the best." But Marguerite Dimino, a vivacious mother of four grown children, has done just that.

Her ravioli is a culinary celebrity in Boston. She has prepared her ravioli for a television audience — during an ethnic week demonstration at the Museum of Science, and during an Italian festival at a leading department store. When the Consulate-General of Israel was served a North End specialty during Jerusalem month, it was, yes, Marguerite's ravioli.

Several years ago a Boston newspaper featured Marguerite's ravioli and included her recipe. Soon she was inundated with calls and letters from people homesick for "a ravioli like their grandmother's."

"There are some things you know you can do well," she says about her ravioli fame, "and ravioli is one of mine." Because ravioli making is time-consuming, Marguerite likes to make it in big batches and serve it on festive occasions. There are three steps to successful ravioli making: the dough, the filling, and the sauce. Though she hopes one day soon to find enough time from a hectic schedule as administrative assistant of the North End Union, a community landmark and famed settlement house, to write a cookbook, Marguerite is not one to keep her cooking secrets and recipes to herself.

This February will begin her fifth year of teaching "The Art of Italian Cooking."  The classes run eight weeks twice a year, and are filled with fifteen students.  Sometimes they are held at her home, in the heart of the North End, sometimes at the North End Union, but wherever they're held, ravioli night is a highlight of the course.

"I've cooked all my life," she tells her class. "I'd come home from school and do my homework on the kitchen table. I had half the table and my mother worked on the other half. Even if I didn't want to look, it became embedded in my mind."  She stresses that "cooking means making mistakes. I want to encourage my students not to be afraid to try new things."

Every week the class learns a specialty: eggplant Parmesan, chicken cacciatore, stuffed squid, cannolis (a delightful ricotta cheese or custard filled pastry for which the North End is justly famous). By the time the eight weeks have passed "we've become a family,"
Marguerite says.

"My classes are successful," she says, "because I teach them how to cook so that the food tastes as if it was cooked by an Italian grandmother without their having to be slaves to the kitchen."

The heart of Italian cooking is of course savory sauces, what Marguerite calls "gravy." And one of the first things Marguerite tells her class is to forget their mental image of their grandmother working all day on a sauce.

"There's no need for the gravy to cook for hours," she says. "Our mothers did it only because they had to be home all day. They would put the pot of gravy on the oil stove, and would come by and stir it all day long.

"But nobody wants to do that today. My class is only one and a half hours long. And in an hour we can prepare a gourmet meal, with the gravy thick with meatballs and sausage, and we can pour it over our own homemade noodles."

Never overlook the conveniences found in a local supermarket, Marguerite says, especially in making a full-bodied sauce. "Our mothers had to pour tomatoes through a strainer, then put them in a grinder to get the proper consistency," she says. "I, on the other hand, buy Pastene 'kitchen-ready' tomatoes. I wouldn't use anything else. The tomatoes are already ground and peeled. I won't use canned Italian tomatoes because they're filled with water. I want the body of the tomato. When I add a can of water to the tomatoes I've got a good body to my gravy to start with."

It upsets Marguerite that so many people" shy away from cooking food they're unfamiliar with," thinking its intricacies are beyond them. "If I can give them confidence to try anything, then I've succeeded," she says. Her classes, which often include men, attract many young people of Italian descent "because they've lost the old world ways in their homes. When we've prepared a meal here, they go home and cook Italian for their mothers, and they call me up so excited."

There are some Italian specialties, notably cannolis, that almost demand hands-on teaching before a novice will succeed with a recipe, but for the most part, "my students can't believe how easy my recipes are, and how good the food is."

For example, the famous ravioli "is more tedious than difficult. So I tell them, invite your friends over and make it a ravioli party. Let them bring rolling pins, and make enough for everyone to take home. I suggest they make the filling the night before and let the flavors mix. Or they can make the dough one day and roll it out the next.

"The big secret with dough is a positive attitude. Don't be afraid of it! If it's mushy, throw in the flour. It's not fragile. When you've learned how to make ravioli dough, you've learned how to make all pasta. Just cut the dough in different thicknesses as you like.

"A lot of cookbooks tell you to dry out your homemade noodles. I tell my students the opposite. If you dry your noodles out, they'll break apart when they're boiling. I make my dough and throw it right in the water. And it comes out tender, light, and fluffy."

I asked Marguerite how I could tell when my noodles were just right, what Italians call "al dente." She said, "I've acquired a feel for it, but taste it on a fork right from the water. If it tastes just right then, let it boil another five or ten seconds. Then it will be just right, since it always tastes more tender in the water."

Does she rinse her noodles?  "Never," she told me. "All rinsing does is cool the noodles off. People got in the habit of rinsing noodles because they tasted starchy. The secret is to boil them in a big enough pot so that they really roll around. Keep the water at a rolling boil. Don't let it simmer, because then the starch settles back onto the pasta."

To understand Marguerite's importance in the extremely close-knit North End, take a walk with her sometime. "I live only three minutes away from work," she says, "but it may take me half an hour to get there." No wonder. Our tour of the North End was punctuated with cries of "Hey, Marguerite."  "Yo, Marguerite." Each call was followed by animated discussions. We no sooner left Marguerite's favorite restaurant where we ate lunch when we were rushed back in for dessert by her friends.

"You know," she says, "my own aunt calls me up: "Tell me, Marguerite, to make the broccoli with the cheese sauce, how do you do that?" That's my greatest compliment — when the people who showed me how to cook are learning now from me."

Ravioli
Little cases of dough containing a savory filling — this is the definition given by Webster's Dictionary. But Marguerite Dimino defines ravioli as "the one Italian food that everyone loves." The following is a step-by-step recipe for, as many have called it "the best ravioli in Boston's North End."

Dough:
2½ pounds (about 10 cups) unbleached, unsifted flour (Marguerite prefers King Arthur)
1 tablespoon salt
3 medium eggs
Boiling water as needed

Make a well in the flour on a pastry board. Add salt. Partially beat eggs before adding to flour. Add eggs gradually, mix with fingers until dough resembles the texture of cornmeal. Sprinkle on the boiling water starting with only ¼ cup, and work well into dough. Add more boiling water as needed until dough is smooth and pliable, but not too soft. Knead dough for about five minutes. Pat with some water, cover, and let sit for about half an hour. Prepare filling and meat sauce while waiting for the dough. You could even make it the day before.

Filling:
2 pounds ricotta cheese
5 medium eggs
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
1 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 small clove garlic, pressed
8 finely chopped parsley sprigs
Blend all ingredients together.

Meat Sauce:
Oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
Dash: sweet basil, red pepper flakes, oregano, and bay leaf
(Remove bay leaf before serving)
½ pound lean ground beef
½ pound ground pork (beef may be substituted)
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste
1 can (1 Ib. 12 oz.) ground peeled tomatoes (kitchen-ready)
1 can water (using tomato can)

Put enough oil in pan to coat bottom.  Saute garlic, onion, and seasonings over medium heat until onion is lightly golden. Add all the meat. Cook until slightly browned. Blend tomato paste in well; stir a few minutes. Add tomatoes and stir. Pour in water. Reduce heat and allow sauce to simmer for up to one hour, stirring frequently.

To Assemble:
Divide dough into fourths and roll out only one-fourth at a time, keeping the rest covered. Roll dough as thin as possible. Place heaping teaspoons of filling 1½ inches from edge of dough. Continue to place filling in straight rows on the dough, being careful to leave 1½ inches between each spoonful. Fold over the edge of the dough to completely cover the first row of filling. With your fingers, gently press down on dough around the mounds of filling. Using a 2½-inch ravioli cutter, cut around the mounds. A pastry cutter or small glass may be used instead — but be sure to seal the edges with a fork. Continue in this manner until all the dough is used. (The dough that you don't want to use may be frozen in a plastic bag and used at a later date to make more ravioli or even pasta. It may also be kept in the refrigerator up to 5 days.)

To Freeze:
This recipe may very well make much more than you will want to serve at one time. The ravioli can be frozen before it is cooked. Sprinkle flour or cornmeal on cookie sheets and place ravioli in a single layer on the sheets and freeze. This takes about 20 minutes. After the ravioli is frozen it may be placed in plastic bags. This way the pieces won't stick to one another.

To Cook:
Bring 6 to 8 quarts of salted water to a boil. Gradually add the ravioli and cook until tender (15 to 20 minutes) . It is best not to overcrowd the pot, because you will need to continually press ravioli to bottom of pot so that they will cook evenly.

To Serve:
Carefully remove ravioli and let them drain well. Place them in a serving dish and cover with meat sauce and a layer of grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.  Continue in this manner until you have used all the cooked ravioli. Serve with a tossed salad, garlic bread, and wine. Enjoy your meal and all the compliments you will receive!

Stuffed Artichokes
Soak 6 medium artichokes in cold water for about 1/2 hour to release dirt. Stand on counter and trim points off leaves with scissors; cut off bottoms so they will be flat to sit in the pan. Stand artichokes upside down and give them a firm whack so that the leaves will open slightly to put in stuffing.

Stuffing:
1½cups soft Italian bread, grated
¼ cup freshly chopped parsley
½ cup grated cheese (Romano)
Salt and pepper to taste
clove garlic, finely chopped
Oil

Mix enough oil with bread to moisten: Add remaining ingredients, mix well, and fill insides of the leaves.

Place stuffed artichokes in pan of water (1¼ cups) to which 1 teaspoon of salt and 3 cloves of crushed garlic have been added. Sprinkle more oil on top of artichokes and simmer slowly for about ¾ hour.

Lentil Soup
½ pound lentils
1½ quarts of water
2 or 3 stalks of celery and leaves, chopped fine
2 small carrots, chopped fine
Chopped parsley (sprinkle)
1 whole onion , chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 large tablespoon oil
3 fresh ripe tomatoes or ½ cup canned tomatoes
Bay leaf

Cook all ingredients in heavy saucepan till mixture comes to a boil. Let simmer for ½ hour or longer if desired. Oil in recipe accelerates cooking time.

Cook 1 pound small shells or 1 pound elbows or ditalini macaroni according to package. Strain . Add to lentil soup. Cook for 5 minutes more. Serves 6.

Lobster fra Diablo
"You'll never want lobster any other way."
Few drops Tabasco sauce (optional)
Enough oil to coat bottom of pan
1 whole onion, chopped
1 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Pinch of oregano
3 bay leaves
1 cup chicken bouillon
¼ to ½ cup sherry
Salt to taste
½ dozen clams in shell
½ to 1 pound shrimp in shell
2 to 5 lobsters
Simmer all ingredients except lobsters, clams, shrimp , and sherry in oil until transparent. Add chicken bouillon and lobsters. Sprinkle with sherry and salt then cover to steam for about 20 minutes.

Add clams and shrimp in shells for last 15 minutes, (Leaving them in shells keeps juices in.) Simmer, covered, till shells open.

Chicken Cacciatore
1 chicken, cut in small pieces
Oil to cover bottom of pan
1 large onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 medium can crushed tomatoes
1 large can peas
2 or 3 green peppers, sliced thick
½ to ¾ pound mushrooms (if small don't cut; if large, cut in large chunks)
Parsley to taste

Fry chicken in heavy skillet in oil. When all pieces are golden brown add
onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Saute until slightly browned.
Add tomato paste and mix well. Add tomatoes and turn till all pieces are well
Coated. Add juice only from can of peas. Lightly salt and pepper again. Saute for
25 minutes.

Add peppers and mushrooms and saute for 10 minutes. Add can of peas,
Do not mix or cook anymore. Turn off stove and let sit for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley. Serves 5.

Tomato Sauce
¼ onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Bay leaves
Dash of oregano
2 tablespoons oil
1 medium can of tomato paste
1 can of tomatoes (large kitchen ready)
Salt and pepper to taste
¼ to ½ teaspoon basil

Saute onion, garlic, and spices in oil until transparent. Add tomato paste and stir until well blended, Add tomatoes and stir well. Add tomato can of water. Let mixture come to full boil and add salt, pepper, and basil leaves.

Meat Sauce
For a meat sauce, fry sausages and pork in skillet with enough oil to cover bottom of pan. Remove when slightly browned. Add onion, garlic, and spices and continue in same manner as above recipe for tomato sauce. When sauce comes to boil add browned meat and meatballs.

Meatballs
2 pounds hamburger
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup grated cheese
3 sprigs of parsley, chopped fine
3 eggs
Enough bread crumbs to make meat firm enough to roll

Mix together and form meatballs. Drop into sauce when prepared.

Biscotti (Italian cookies)
Measure and sift together the following ingredients:
2 cups sifted flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Combine:
3 well-beaten eggs
1 cup sugar
½ cup margarine, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon anise extract
1 cup chopped walnuts

Add flour mixture to other ingredients and beat until smooth and satiny. If too soft, work in more flour. Roll into little loaves 3" x 1"). Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until brown (about 15 to 20 minutes). When cool, slice into ½ inch slices. Arrange slices on baking sheet and return to oven to dry out (about 10 minutes longer). Cool, put in covered container. Makes 6 dozen cookies.

Italian Twists
½ teaspoon salt
4 egg yolks
1 egg white
½ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon rum
1 - 1½ cups flour
Add salt to eggs and beat 10 minutes. Add sugar and flavorings and beat until well blended.  Fold in flour a little at a time until dough can be kneaded. Transfer to a well-floured board and knead until the dough blisters. Cut in halves. Roll very thin and cut into strips about 4 inches long. Slit each piece in center and pull one end through slit. Make sure knot is in center. Fry in hot Crisco until lightly browned. Drain on paper towel. Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar.