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(AOL sound)
(background Italian music)
Anthony: Oh, you're not patient?
Nonna: No, no tengo.
Anthony: All right, okay, all right, hold on!
You don't got to get violent with it now, Momma Nonna!
(music)
I'm Anthony Anderson and I'm on a mission
to find the best home cooks in America.
(music)
I'm in Livingston, New Jersey
to get into the Italian kitchen of Nonna and Nellie.
(buzzer)
Nellie?
Nonna: Nella.
Anthony: Nella.
Nella: Yes.
Anthony: Nellie is somebody else.
(background Italian music)
Today, we're going to make hand-rolled gnocchi,
with a pork Ragu sauce made with lamb, veal and pig neck bone.
Nonna, she doesn't speak a word of Enlgish.
Nella, she barely speaks Italian.
(women laugh)
And that's her mother.
Anthony: Now, you're from a small town, [Satriano]?
Nella: Very small town.
Anthony: Columbia.
Nella: In Columbia, [Satriano].
I was very little when my father passed away.
The fate of the ladies in my town that had become widow
was always to become like cleaning ladies.
Anthony: I heard that your mother was a little too feisty for that.
Nella: Yes, she was.
Anthony: So I hear when your father passed,
that she opened up her kitchen.
She would serve 100 people at a time
Nella: Within a week she would make a living
that was supporting us for about 6 months.
Anthony: Just cooking.
Nella: Just cooking and so she became famous for that.
Anthony: I have your onions chopped up.
Nella: You did a great job, Antony.
Anthony: Oh, I got to do some boom, just bam?
Nonna: Yeah.
Anthony: All right, bam.
(music)
Veal neck bones, lamb neck bones, beef neck bones.
Them bones, them bones, them meaty bones,
that's what we got.
(music)
Nella: My mother got very, very ill.
I must have been about 12 years old.
We were about to cancel all the guests coming to eat,
and she convinced me that I could actually cook.
Anthony: Story goes, every step of the way,
you go up to the room and have your mother taste it,
and before you could serve in the next ingredient,
she had to approve it.
Nonna: [Italian]
Anthony: She made it perfect.
Nonna: Perfect.
Anthony: Perfect.
She had a great teacher.
Curly-haired man: Scene two.
(Italian music)
Nella: She's going to add the wine in there now.
Once the wine evaporates, we want to add the tomatoes sauce.
Anthony: Can your mother drink wine?
Nella: Yes, she does.
Anthony: Here, Momma, drink some wine, Momma, drink some wine.
That's how we do it on Anthony Eats America.
(pounding music)
I'm in gnocchi class 101.
Hold on.
Nonna: That's it.
Anthony: All right that's a bad gnocchi
Anthony: That's a bad gnocchi.
Nella: You need to caress them, that's what she said.
Anthony: I'm caressing them.
Nella: Yes, exactly.
Nonna: [Italian]
Anthony: What?
Nella: You understand what she's saying?
Anthony: I understood that sound.
Nonna: [Italian]
Anthony: All right, the sauce is still cooking.
The gnocchi is prepared.
And, surprise, we're making our own sausage meat.
What meat do we have here, Nella?
Nella: It's a pork shoulder.
Anthony: Pork shoulder.
This is old school right here.
(Italian music)
Nella: I think it's the other way.
Anthony: I'm going the wrong way.
Hold on one second.
Nella: I got it, Ma!
(pounding noise)
Anthony: Don't worry about me.
Go on, just talk about what you got going on.
It doesn't work!
(pounding music)
Anthony: (laughs) Just going to let Momma Nonna do what she does.
Nonna: Momma Nonna, yeah.
Anthony: (singing) Momma Nonna, Momma Nonna, Momma Nonna, Momma Nona
Nonna: Nonna [Pina].
(music)
Anthony: All right, now that we have our freshly rolled sausage
in parchment paper and tin foil, we put it on the bed of ash.
(Italian music)
We put the sauce in the bottom of the bowl first.
Put it all in here.
Nella: A few pieces of butter.
Anthony: A few pieces of butter.
There she go with that loving touch again.
Nonna: I caress.
Anthony: Gently caressing it.
Nonna: I caress.
(pounding music)
Nella: Okay.
Anthony: Mm, delicious.
Mm, that is delicious.
(kiss smack)
Thank you, Momma.
Nonna: Thank you.
Anthony: All right, everybody!
Come eat!
(pounding music)
(click)
Anthony: Whew!
Nonna blowing the sausage skin on camera!
(swoosh)