Centolire « Pino Luongo

Centolire

May 26, 2007

CENTOLIRE is located on Madison Avenue, between 85th and 86th Streets, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Our address is 1167 Madison Avenue and our phone number is 212.734.7711.

The Upper East Side is home to a majority of the city’s major art museums including
The Cooper Hewitt, The Frick, The Guggenheim, The Jewish Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Gallery and The Whitney.

You will also find here a large upscale residential community centering on Fifth and Park Avenues, and to support it, the upscale shopping of Madison Avenue and the too few private schools over which residents vie for space. Peppered throughout are restaurants and services in keeping with the neighborhood: fancy and fancier. The Upper East Side contains the smaller neighborhoods of Carnegie Hill and Yorkville.

Carnegie Hill is the area between 86th and 96th Streets, and between Third and Fifth Avenues that is home to many of the city’s private schools and the families whose children attend them. The neighborhood derives its name from the Carnegie Mansion, former home of Andrew Carnegie and current home of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, well worth a visit at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue. In this neighborhood you will find wonderful shops: clothing and shoes for women and children, gourmet food and wine stores, bookstores and toy stores–each with its own personality and fine service, as they are often proprietor owned and operated.

Yorkville is the slightly lackluster residential neighborhood, formerly of the working class. At this point with Manhattan real estate what it is, the working class bus themselves in from the outer boroughs and neighboring states. The area runs from 79th to 96th Street east of Third Avenue. Here you will find the practical and mundane: high-rise housing, dry cleaners, supermarkets, drug stores, and video rental shops. You will also find the little gem: Gracie Mansion, the official home of the mayor of New York–though not our current mayor who maintains his own larger jewel further southwest.

Our Menu
We offer a seasonal menu at Centolire, taking advantage of nature’s bounty and diversity. We do have several signature dishes: Caeser Salad, Spaghetti alla Rustica, Melanzane al Modo Mio (Eggplant Parmagiana), and Cacciucco (Tuscan Fish Stew). If you come to Centolire, I will make these for you.

You can also find these recipes here on my site, and in September 2007, published in Two Meatballs. In this cookbook my partner & Executive Chef at Coco Pazzo, Mark Strausman and I share from the recipes we enjoy at home and in our restaurants.

Caeser Salad was invented by an Italian Chef, Caeser Cardini who worked in Tijuana in the early 1900s. The salad was loved as much for the taste as for it’s theatrical presentation. Our customers love to watch this salad come together tableside. It’s a simple salad to make
and delicious.

Try it at home.

Melanzane al Modo Mio, Eggplant Parmagiana, my way.
I put this dish on the menu of Centolire at the request of my customers, but wanted to make the dish light like it was from Italian eggplants, not bricklike, the way it often is here in Italian restaurants. The trick to a lighter, more flavorful eggplant parmagiana is to salt the eggplant and draw the water out. I do this by pressing the salted eggplant between cooking sheets made heavy with copper pots.

The finished dish is moist and firm.

Cacciucco, Tuscan Fish Stew
I’ve been making Cacciucco for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a fisherman and we ate what he caught. A great Cacciucco depends on the variety of flavors and textures among the fish and shellfish. You’ll find local versions of Cacciucco all over the Mediterannean, the Tuscan version is my favorite.

Click the link for the recipe, or come to Centolire and I’ll make it for you.

Spaghetti al Rustico di Cipolle (Spaghetti with Onion and Tomato Sauce)

This is a classic Italian dish. When you drop in on friends unannounced, you will be greeted warmly and offered a meal. If nothing was cooking at the time, it will be this simple and delicious pasta. You can make it from fresh or canned tomatoes with success. The sauce is prepared in less time that it takes to boil the water for the pasta. Try it at home the next time you think you have nothing to serve for dinner.

Espresso Granita

I love to have a macchiato after lunch. But in the summer, which it feels like already in New York, it’s too hot. So I have an Espresso Granito instead.

Make strong espresso and blend in liquid sugar. Freeze for several hours in a shallow metal pan in the freezer. Shave the frozen mixture off with a metal spatula, and spoon into a glass. Top with cream.