Thursday, January 13, 2000

'Sopranos' returns to serve up the saucy dish on fat-cat wiseguys

   HBO's delicious look at mob family life, "The Sopranos," returns at 9 p.m. Sunday with the first of 13 new one-hour episodes - merely an appetizer for a second season of the R-rated drama that's been hailed by many critics as maybe the best TV series of all time.
   Since its last installment in May, fans have been hungry for news about this zuppa opera, which focuses on a fictional family of organized crime figures. Did evil Livia really try to have her own son whacked? Will Uncle Junior be subjected to "the penal experience"? And did Bompansiero really turn rat and flip to the Feds?
   All is not resolved on tonight's opener. This is, after all, a series whose plot takes more unexpected detours than the New Jersey Turnpike. But all the main characters are back in fine form, with the addition of some new faces, Tony's hippie sister Janice and just-paroled street boss Richie Aprile, to name two.
   Full meals
   From the beginning, the show has been about much more than the ins and outs of modern day mobsters. It's also about food. Lots of food. Plates of calorie-laden ethnic specialties dripping with garlic and fresh basil and swimming in "Sunday gravy."
   In every episode, characters toss off references to "capagool," "sauseech," "moozarel" and "sfugliadelle." They nosh on sweet treats like macaroons, cannolis, zabaglione and "bicote." They sit down to bowls of spaghetti with fist-sized meatballs and argue about which local trattoria serves the best pancetta. When Uncle Junior (bald-pated Dominic Chianese) wanted to teach his girlfriend a lesson for talking too much about their sex life, he smashed a meringue pie in her face.
   With so much food on the set, "The Sopranos" is certainly TV's best-fed cast. Guest actors Bill Cobbs and Bokeem Woodbine both proclaimed the production's mealtime spreads "fantastic."
   "All good Italian food," said Woodbine, who played a Puffy-esque record exec last season.
   The show's biggest appetite belongs to Tony Soprano (played by well-fed actor James Gandolfini), a 40-ish mob boss so conflicted about his role as head of two families - his own, which includes a wife and two teen-agers, and his "crew" of thick-headed enforcers - that he's in therapy.
   With his shrink, Tony's most revealing memories always seem to have happened in the family kitchen: his agita-making mom stirring "red lead" sauce on Sundays and later threatening to stab herself with the knife she used to cut Virginia ham, his mobster father teaching Tony to down raw oysters dipped in "Worchesser sauce."
   Popping Prozac like M&Ms, Tony conducts all business transactions in the presence of food. At his headquarters, Satriale's Pork Store, he barks orders to his wiseguys while sitting under a sign that says "Any Size Suckling Pigs." At his nightclub, the Bada-Bing!, Tony feeds his buddies pizzas and hero sandwiches and occasionally lets them nibble on the exotic dancers for dessert.
   At home, Tony interacts with his family only at breakfast or dinnertime. A glimpse inside the Soprano family's fridge reveals an eclectic collection of edibles, including Cajun-stuffed olives, bowls of red pepper strips, slices of prosciutto (called "pro-ZHOOT"), cans of Diet Coke, cartons of OJ (which Tony swigs directly from the container) and plenty of ice cream (Tony and son AJ's only father-son bonding moment last year was making sundaes together).
   Solo scenes
   Tonight's "Sopranos" opens with a montage (underscored by Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year") showing each character solo doing something unique to him or her. Tony's mother Livia (played by Nancy Marchand), who tried to bump off her son last year, lies in her hospital bed, watching TV chef Emeril Legasse bump it up a notch.
   The camera catches Tony's wife Carmela (Emmy winner Edie Falco) repeatedly lifting enormous dishes of baked ziti out of the oven. (Last season, you might remember, she revealed her recipe secret, red pepper flakes.)
   Carmela's the type of shrewd, sturdy woman who keeps her family together by keeping them fed. She seems always to be hauling in bags of groceries (including Cheerios and Pringles) or toting casserole dishes of low-fat "rigote pie" as a peace offering to her ailing mother-in-law. Carmela's relationship with a young priest grew uncomfortably close last year simply because he couldn't resist her cooking. They almost canoodled over the noodles, but the flirtation ended when Carmela spied him forking a neighbor lady's lasagne on the sly.
   This season finds Carmela's busy kitchen crowded by houseguest Janice, Tony's sister (played by Aida Turturro), a Seattle-based New Ager who insists on being called "Parvahti." She eschews the Sopranos' prozhoot and ziti for her own miso soup and tofu, a sure sign her family ties aren't what they used to be.
   Here are more of the delicacies you're sure to find on "The Sopranos" menu this season:
   biscotti - dry, toasted, almond-flavored biscuits used for dunking in espresso.
   cannoli - crisp, tube-shaped pastries stuffed with sweet cream filling.
   capagool - (pronounced cap-uh-GOOL) capicola ham.
   moozarel - (pronounced MOOT-zuh-RELL) mozzarella cheese.
   pancetta - dried, smoked ham.
   prosciutto - another type of specially cured ham, always sliced paper-thin.
   red lead - homemade, slow-cooked tomato sauce for pasta, also referred to slangily as "Sunday gravy" or "ginzo gravy." NEVER from a jar.
   rigote pie - casserole made with ricotta cheese, tomato sauce and flat lasagne noodles.
   sauseech - Italian-style pork sausage, either hot or sweet.
   sfugliadelle - (pronounced SVOO-ya-DELL) a flaky, fruit or cream-filled pastry similar to a popover.
   zabaglione - sweet dessert sauce made of egg yolks, sugar and vanilla, poured over fresh berries or slices of angel food cake. Sometimes flavored with liqueur.
   ziti - small, angle-cut, tube-shaped pasta, either smooth or ridged, and served baked in a casserole or simply boiled and covered with tomato sauce and cheese.
  
  
  

 
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