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

The Sopranos

Recipe: Baked Ziti 

The Sopranos is widely regarded as one of the best television series of all time. It’s not only a favorite American show, but it’s the only one that personified the modern day mafia well. The American crime drama was created by David Chase and revolves around Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster.

The story unravels through sessions with his therapist Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco, who also played Ray Liotta’s wife in Goodfellas.) The late James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) and Carmela Soprano (Eddie Falco) invited us into their warm and dysfunctional Italian household for six seasons. Which, aren’t most Italian-American families a bit warm and dysfunctional? If you don’t have personal experience on this, do some research and watch the reality show Mob Wives.

Any Sopranos fan knows that food plays a big part in the show and sometimes after watching you’re hungry and don’t know why. This is why the compilation video above exists — there is so much food inspiration from this show.

The best place to start is the pilot episode. Tony tells his mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand) that she’s expected to be at A.J’s birthday party with her baked ziti. She later calls crying to cancel and A.J. responds appropriately with “So, what, no [expletive] ziti now?”