Catherine Lombardi

Catherine Lombardi's family came to Brooklyn from Naples. Her cooking brought her whole extended family together every Sunday and every holiday from VJ day through the early 1980's. It's Neapolitan-based and heavily Brooklyn-influenced. Generations of Italian-Americans grew up on this food. You see the names of these dishes on restaurant menus today, but they are often pale imitations of the food that inspired them. It takes days to make the gravy just right, to make the eggplant just so, to make the bracciola sing and the mozzarella spring and spit.