8 Italian pop culture perfect recipes that you can’t refuse

Goodfellas

Recipe: Tuscany style veal chops 

The movie Goodfellas seems appropriate to come next in line to The Godfather in American cinema history and in Italian food recs as well.

In case any of you have been living in isolation or for some reason haven’t seen Goodfellas, it’s a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. The film is an adaptation of a non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill from 1955 to 1980.

The film boasts an incredible trio of actors: Robert DiNero, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta as Henry Hill. In preparation for their roles, the trio spoke with the author who shared additional research materials from his book. According to Pesci, Scorsese let the actors improvise lines during rehearsals and then kept the ad-libbed lines in and revised the script.

The scene that may give you a mouthwatering memory is a scene in the prison when they have “prison dinner.” Now, whether this is a dramatized version of how wise guys ate in prison or if it’s real, I guess we’d have to be wise guys to actually know. This scene starts off with someone razoring off garlic, which seems like the right way to start off a prison scene with gangsters. If you don’t have a spare razor around the house but want to try cooking some veal (mentioned in the scene) refer to this recipe.