Scorsese Cookbook: How to make the prison tomato sauce from ‘Goodfellas’
Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas is one of the greatest crime stories ever told in cinema, an indisputable classic, and one of the many phenomenal features to be directed by one of the greatest directors to ever pick up a megaphone.
There are plenty of lessons to be learned from watching the rise and fall of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill unfold, but the filmmaker probably wasn’t expecting cooking lessons to be one of them. Then again, based on his family history, maybe it was an intentional method of setting the stage for what was to come.
In 1996, his mother, Catherine Scorsese, published Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook, which uses a picture from the Goodfellas dinner scene where she starred as the mother of Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito on the cover, just one of several guest appearances she made in her son’s work. There’s also another memorable scene of communal dining in the film, although this one happens from behind bars. Despite his predicament, though, Henry still places a huge emphasis on the importance of a good meal.
“In prison, dinner was always a big thing. We had a pasta course, and then we had a meat or fish. Paulie did the prep work,” he says. “He was doing a year for contempt, and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor, and he used to slice it so thin that he used to liquefy in the pan with just a little oil. It was a very good system.”
Of course, Paul Sorvino’s Paulie Cicero is hardly abiding by the standard ‘three hots and a cot’ system typically used in prisons, relaxing in a robe and being offered a selection of accompanying meats, cheeses, breads, and wines to go along with his razor-thin sauteed garlic. Quite frankly, it looks delicious, and it’s unsurprisingly easy to make, even for those who haven’t adopted a life of crime.
All you need to do is heat oil on medium-to-high heat, brown the meat of choice – veal in Goodfellas‘ case – and set it aside for the time being. Toss in the garlic, throw in some onions and tomato paste, sauté it until the onions become translucent, deglaze it with a splash of wine, launch in a couple of cans of tomatoes, sprinkle in some herbs, and let it simmer for a couple of hours, re-add the meat during the final stretch so it’s deliciously tender, and it’s a meal fit for a criminal kingpin.
Crime doesn’t pay in Goodfellas, as the death, despair, and double-crossing make patently clear, but it does offer some handy cooking tips thanks to a cadre of hardened criminals who still get to enjoy the good life despite being locked up in the slammer.
