- Italian immigrants came to this country as so many did, in search of a better life.

And it's because of their hard work that we live, the lives we do.

Like this beautiful place that started as a produce stand and now is one of the hottest Italian coffee shops in Philadelphia.

Today we'll meet the owner and sample some of the best coffee here and in Naples.

(upbeat music) (people faintly speaking) (upbeat music fades) - [Narrator] Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by Finamill, the flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable swappable pods, Finamill.

And by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings, Suzanne's specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by.

- Hi, I am Christina Pirello.

And this is "Christina Cooks," where each week we take fresh, seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant-based?

Yes.

Will they all be delicious?

Absolutely.

And we will make you fall in love with cooking, eating, and wellness.

One of the things I love about the Italian American community that I live in is how much history and story and even legend comes with it.

I'm with my friend Anthony Anastasio today, who owns Anthony's Italian Coffee Shop in South Philly.

And your story is one of the most amazing, but I have a surprise for you.

- Okay.

- I am making the broccoli rabe fritters that your great-grandmother used to make.

- Oh, that's awesome.

- We're gonna make them plant based.

- Okay.

- And we don't have dandelion.

- Alright.

- We're using broccoli rabe.

Didn't she make it with dandelion?

- That's right.

The original recipe was with dandelion, a wild dandelion.

- My grandmother used to take us foraging for dandelion.

As a teenager, I had my hat pulled down so my friends wouldn't see that we were poor.

Now I know how good dandelion is, but that's a whole other story.

So if you would hand me that bowl, what I would like you to do for me, Anthony, is kind of, your story's so amazing of your family.

And how you ended up doing what you're doing.

So while I mix and interrupt you while I put ingredients in, tell me, tell me.

So these are mashed potatoes, first of all.

- Ooh, very nice.

- Yeah.

- So back in the day, let's say, you know, I'm the fourth generation now here in Philadelphia.

- The fourth?

- The fourth generation.

My great grandparents came here in 1906.

- Really?

- So a little over 120 years ago.

And again, from Sicily, right outside of Katanya.

And they didn't have much other than- - Maison cheese.

- You know, the will to, for the American dream and to do better.

- Yeah.

That's why they all came.

Yeah.

- They all came right?

And the traditions that they brought with them were just, you know, truly amazing.

And most of it is centered around the, you know, around food and the kitchen.

So they settled on Ninth Street with a push cart.

And a push cart was something that they walked throughout the neighborhood and then eventually on the Italian market, they parked these carts and people from the neighborhood would come in by, you know, whether- - Wait, so there weren't stores?

- There were some stores.

- I mean, but wow.

- There were stores, but really, there was push carts.

- So it was push carts.

- It was push carts.

And in Philadelphia, there were curb markets throughout the city.

And Ninth Street is the last remaining curb market in Philadelphia.

So in 1906, when they came over, they got a push cart, and over time they started with seafood.

And then it was produce.

So my great grandparents really just, they wanted their children to assimilate to the American way.

Of course, you know, of course everything was around the kitchen and eating.

- Right.

- [Anthony] So they started with the seafood.

And then they moved into produce.

And then my grandfather opened up a produce store, he got married, and my father and his brothers were also part of the business.

And we've been on Ninth Street ever since.

- Okay.

Before you tell the next part, what I've done is added some white miso to give us the flavor of cheese, some finely chopped broccoli rabe, some olive oil, some potatoes.

Now I'm putting in some baking powder to give them a little bit of lift, a little flour, maybe less than a quarter cup, about three tablespoons.

And now I'm gonna get my hands dirty while you talk and mix this.

And if I need you to add some water, I'll ask for your help.

- Please.

Okay.

- But I'm gonna get my hands dirty.

So go ahead.

Back to your story.

I love this story.

Go ahead.

- So on Ninth Street, on the first floor was the retail store.

In the second and third floor is where you would live.

- Okay.

- So it was an apartment, you lived in an apartment.

But on the back of the first floor was the kitchen.

So the back of the store was an actual kitchen where my great-grandmother used to be.

She'd cook, she would cook for the family.

So anybody coming in, of course they, she would have to, you know, she would have to feed them of course right?

- So customers, even?

- Customers, whoever, you're coming in, you're part of the family.

And then if she's cooking something, you taste it.

And one of these items would be- - Would you dump that in here?

This is a powdered vegan egg replacer blendy.

- So the kitchen was in the back of the store.

So whenever people would come in and she'd be cooking, you know, she'd let them eat.

- You're kidding right?

- No, no, of course not.

- Oh my God.

- I mean, everyone coming in is like family 'cause everyone was in the neighborhood.

They were shopping every single day.

Back then, you know, when they needed to, when they needed to go to the market, they to eat, they went to the market every single day.

- That's right, and which they still do in many parts of Italy.

- Correct.

- And even on Ninth Street, there's still a lot- - Ninth Street to some extent.

- Yeah.

- To some extent.

Now you see people maybe once a week.

- Yeah.

- That's the great thing about growing up on Ninth Street.

You get to see, you know, the same people practically every other day.

And just to experience the traditions and the culture and the foods.

- But your store didn't open as a coffee shop?

- No so after the produce store had closed and had moved, I had transferred, transformed it into a coffee shop in 1995.

- Okay.

- And in the beginning, I mean, it was tough.

I mean, there was no new coffee shops open.

Everybody didn't have, this is before there was a Starbucks and even in Philadelphia.

- Oh, people didn't go out for coffee.

- They did not.

- Like in Italy.

- No.

- They made coffee at home.

- Back in the day they did.

And then a lot of those shops had closed, whether it be in the seventies, in the eighties.

- Right.

- And then by the nineties there was nothing there.

So it's great when I first opened, when we would sit there for hours hoping somebody would come in and we'd hear people walk by and say, that's the store.

That's those the little baby cups of coffee for a dollar- - Could you take that top off 'cause my hands are dirty.

- And we used to to say, ugh.

- That was your reputation.

- That was the reputation.

- Don't go there because they make the little coffees.

- The little cups of coffee.

You know, our real mission is to preserve and to enrich and to continue our family traditions on Ninth Street.

- [Christina] So now you can add this to your new traditions.

- Yes.

- So what I'm doing, which I never do, I'm heating olive oil.

- Okay.

- So that these little fritters don't stick.

This is how you know that your oil's hot enough for these fritters to cook.

So we're gonna take these now, form them.

This is a messy job, but you know, like my, I remember my grandmother made a version of these.

She used regular broccoli.

- Okay.

- But like, it was really about getting your hands dirty.

And I remember going to Sicily to visit Robert's Aunt Pina and she was, you know, she was a wreck because she didn't cook meat.

What am I gonna make for them?

I don't cook meat.

So we got there and she had made fritters and I could see greens in them and they were delicious.

And I said, "Aunty Pina, I don't know what you did, but these are amazing.

You're complaining you can't cook with meat.

These are sensational."

And she goes, "Ha, there's cheese, there's eggs, there's tuna."

Oh, and by the way, there's broccoli rabe.

You're like, great, thanks.

She goes, "What?

You said you don't eat meat."

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So you can see there's a nice sizzle that happens and then while I clean my hands, they're just gonna sort of simmer in the oil.

And you really, the potatoes are cooked.

The broccoli rabe doesn't need to cook very much.

So it really is just letting them kind of brown.

And if you move them too soon, they will stick.

So you don't rush them.

If you go like this and they don't move, you need to let them sit.

And then we move them.

(food sizzling) - Oh, they smell amazing.

- They do smell good, don't they?

And I'm not a big non-stick person, you know, in terms of pans that way.

You could do this in a non-stick and have none of these struggles.

But we'll see what happens.

My grandmother would say she used to cast iron actually, which is almost better than non-stick.

Once they start to brown, we just start to move them, they need to cook a little bit.

So now when did it change from that's the store that makes the little coffees to the acceptance of it?

- Truly after 9/11.

- [Christina] That short ago.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So we opened in 95, but I wanna say by 2001, Ninth Street started to see, as well as Philadelphia, an uptake of more people staying local and just trying to get back to their roots.

There was that sense of pride and of our neighborhoods.

- Yeah come here.

Just smell these.

Just smell how they smell.

- Incredible.

- I know, right?

The sizzle is there and they're still soft.

So we're gonna plate these up.

They say it's good luck to do an odd number, but only four fit on the plate.

So we're gonna taste from these Sir!

- Thank you.

- Tell me how close these are to your nana's.

Aint they amazing?

- Perfect.

- You could finish 'em with a little salt, but I tend to not do that, they're amazing.

My friend.

Thank you so much.

I am off to Naples to learn how to make cold coffee on a machine.

- Nice.

(upbeat music) - They say that the coffee in Naples is the best in the world.

They say there's a secret as to why that's true.

I'm here at Centrale De Cafe in Naples to discover why the coffee in Naples is just so great.

Luigi ciao.

- Hello Christina.

(Christina speaks foreign language) (Luigi speaks foreign language) - Very well.

I mean, I'm in a place where we make coffee.

My favorite thing.

Okay, so first of all, why is the coffee in Naples so good?

It's strong.

It's delicious.

It's not acidic.

It leaves a wonderful taste in your mouth.

Why is that true?

(Christina speaks foreign language) - Yeah.

- Okay.

- So in Naples is good.

The coffee for all for traditional.

- Yeah.

- Is good for the water, for the coffee.

- Yeah.

- For all.

- Is the water filtered in the machines?

- Sorry.

(Christina speaks foreign language) Okay.

So the water's filtered, okay.

- Yeah.

- So it's very pure.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So I have the cups.

If you look inside this one for 100 Celsius degrees.

- So the cups are boiling in water that's a hundred degrees Celsius.

Very, very hot.

And why is it important that the cup is so hot?

- When the cup, because when the coffee is coming out inside the cups, it's coming because the cups is in the hot, the coffee when it's coming out is very strong.

- Ah, so the hot cup helps the strength of the coffee.

- Exactly.

- Oh wow.

Okay.

- Now you ready?

- I am.

- Okay, come on.

- Let's learn.

(metal thuds) - Okay.

So one scoop.

- Yeah.

- See?

Okay.

- Like this.

- Inside.

- Okay.

Little bit.

- Little more.

- One more.

A little bit.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- For that press strong, - Really strong.

Like that.

- Exactly.

One more.

- One more.

- And when you press strong, what does that do before we make it?

Why do you press so hard on the coffee?

- Yeah, because when it, for the coffee to be dense.

- Okay, ah, okay, okay, okay.

So does that help to create the crema?

- 'cause if we do not press, it's coming out the water.

- Okay.

If you don't press the coffee, you'll get water.

Got it.

Okay let's go.

- Inside.

Come with me.

- Okay.

- Ready?

- Yeah.

It's not so easy.

- Okay.

Now put the cups.

- It's slow when it comes out.

Yeah?

- [Luigi] Yeah.

Look.

- Okay.

- Take the hand here.

- Yeah.

- Push lightly, okay.

- Now let go?

- Exactly.

- And so it finishes on its own and then the coffee comes out and you can see the coffee changes from dark to the crema that's gonna form on top.

It's so nice.

Okay.

Wow.

Oh my goodness, it smells like heaven.

If you're a coffee lover, this smells like heaven.

And now you know why, you can get such great coffee in the city of Naples.

Oh my goodness.

Grazie.

- Thank you.

- Wow.

So good.

(upbeat music) So that was amazing in Naples.

Don't you think?

- It's great.

- Like just the, it's like a dance, the way they pull the machine down, it goes partway up, they pull again and they said that, of course it's the water off the base of Vesuvius that makes the coffee in Naples so great.

Plus they boil the cups.

In some shops, Anthony, you have to hold your cup with your scontrino, your receipt 'cause the cups are so hot.

But in Naples that's the only way you drink coffee.

- Gotcha.

- It has to scald you.

Anyway, alright, so we're gonna make what in America is known as biscotti but they're actually called cantucci.

If you go into a bakery in Naples and order biscotti, they're gonna say what kind?

'cause biscotti means cookie.

So you'll say, I mean biscotti.

And they'll say what kind biscotti, what kind?

This is a cantucci because it looks like a little horse hoof and they're crunchy and hard and they're loaded with eggs but not mine.

- Gotcha.

- All right.

So in here we have our fat from the recipe is eight tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, which you will not taste.

Then this is my husband's and I know your favorite.

Some anise extract carefully measured, some brown rice syrup, which is going to give me some sweetness.

And that's gonna be a very scant quarter cup 'cause it's really just going to give me like a butter scotch flavor, which I know sounds a little strange, but that's it.

Then we have chia seeds and chia seeds are my egg.

But in a whole batch of cantucci, there's a half teaspoon and you kind of put those into the liquid, which is your oil and your brown rice syrup, then anise seed, which you can crush or you can put in whole.

I usually don't work that hard, I just put them in.

Then we take a spoon and we start to mix and this just sort of starts to come together.

Then I add a little vanilla extract because the anise can be like so much anise.

Again, about a teaspoon.

- To taste.

- Yes.

And you know, I know vanilla's expensive, so not everybody wants to use a lot of it, but there's something about the flavor of vanilla.

When I was a kid, I used to wanna make a perfume out of it and put it behind my ears to wear and smell like cookies all the time.

Then I'm gonna add about six tablespoons of coconut sugar, which is a granular sugar made from coconut sap that doesn't, thank goodness, tastes like coconut.

It actually tastes like brown sugar.

And you're thinking, why don't you just use brown sugar?

Because this is a low glycemic index so it doesn't cause the insulin reaction that you get from regular sugar.

So then we just make sort like a slurry.

Now you can do this in a stand mixer.

I have been known to do it in a stand mixer, but I've also been known to just do it like this.

Then we add for crunchiness, this I came up with, I'm so proud of this, two tablespoons of arrow root powder and four tablespoons or a quarter cup of water.

(water sloshing) And that's all of our sort of liquid ingredients to this.

And once you create this little bit of a slurry, you can whisk or I don't whisk, I don't sift, I don't do any of those things that you're supposed to do when you bake, I don't do any of 'em, but I know you've tasted these so I know they work.

All right, now we're gonna add to this two cups of flour.

Now I have a very strange thing that I do when I bake.

I do everything in half cup measures when it comes to flour.

I don't know why.

I'm using sprouted whole wheat flour, which is flour that's made from the sprout of the wheat.

So it actually is lower in carbohydrates than flour and digests in the body more like a vegetable than a carb.

Talk about having your cake and eat it.

Now we start to mix and this will come together and create a sort of a soft stiff dough.

I have to add a pinch of salt, just a pinch, which actually makes things sweeter, which I know sounds bizarre, but, and you just kind of do this until you pull all your flour in and you see how the dough is becoming like a little harder to mix.

So you just keep pulling it together.

Anthony, while I do this part, which is like watching paint dry, talk to me about like you built Anthony's on the coffee culture of Italy.

- Yes.

- Right being an Italian family.

Talk to me about how you've seen it change and does it feel the same to you?

Not the same, but you know what I mean.

How you've, because your place is like a little community place.

- Right so we have generations of people.

They've started out maybe 20 or 30 years ago and now they're bringing the next generation.

It's so awesome to see.

- It's so nice.

- And to hear people say how we've become part of their traditions.

Whether it's just, you know, their family tradition, their holiday tradition, or just, you know, just their part of what they do and how they meet.

And you know, even you, we see you bring friends and- - Yeah, yeah.

- Just coming together - Outside of, but it's become like Italy has this amazing culture of coffee.

You don't do anything in Italy that isn't done over coffee.

You need to make a bank deal with me for coffee.

You need to make a business deal.

You go for coffee.

So now you have this dough, right?

And you can see that it's stiff but not sticky.

And this is gonna go onto a sheet tray and get divided into three logs or two depending on the size of the cantucci that you wanna make, you decide how much of these you wanna do.

So this is one time, usually when they say, you know, you don't wanna touch a lot of things with flour 'cause you make the gluten too active.

I want the gluten active 'cause I want hard biscotti.

So I usually take these, we're gonna divide these into two logs and you try to get as even as you can.

And if your dough is perfect, which this one is, you kind of mess around with it.

And then you start to make logs and you press them and you move them so that they form a log shape.

(wrapper rustling) And a log that's sort of fatter, like this one if you will 'cause they're gonna at least double in width and length, not length, width.

They'll make bigger biscotti.

Bigger cantucci.

If I make this into three or four logs, it would make cantuccini the little ones, which I also love.

So you just form these.

I know these seem like work, but they just, because I make so many of them, they are such an easy forgiving cookie.

(wrapper rustling) And actually the more you play with them, the more they get crunchy.

And the point of a crunchy cantucci, you're thinking, why do you want a hard cookie?

You want a hard cookie because you're gonna dip it into coffee while you have coffee with your friends, wherever you have them.

And I never get them quite equal, but it doesn't matter.

So now these will go in the oven at 350 for about 23 minutes and then they come out and you have to do what's known as the second bake.

So you have a cooled log like this.

It's very firm.

You need a serrated knife, like a bread knife.

- [Anthony] Sure.

- And you just cut them and if you've done it properly and they're cooled, if you do this while they're hot, they're gonna break because there are no eggs really.

Then you take these, and they get placed onto a baking tray cut side up.

Now it used to be when you made cantucci that you did this for nine minutes.

Then you flipped them and did the other side.

An Italian chef friend of mine said, "Why are you wasting time?

Put 'em in the oven for 18 minutes and they come out perfect."

So you lay these cut side up and these will go in the oven for 18 minutes.

Anthony, I think we worked hard enough to earn ourselves a coffee, so let's have a coffee and a cookie.

The other thing I find in Italy is if people don't go out for coffee, they make it in a mocha.

There's not a lot of fancy equipment.

Coffee, my friend.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much for meeting me.

- Pleasure.

- And coming to tell your story.

A cookie.

- It's been a pleasure and they're perfect.

- Nice crunch.

They're like, they're the perfect treat.

They really are.

Thanks honey.

- Thank you so much.

- I'll see you on Ninth Street.

- Ciao.

- Ciao.

(upbeat music) We live in a time when more than 30% of people live alone.

That's not to say they're all lonely, but we read constantly about loneliness and it's toll on our mental health.

In the theory of Chinese medicine, people in society show their health by their sense of communal togetherness.

In our modern world, we experience the effects of overcrowding and total isolation.

A paradox unique to these times of connectedness.

Just thinking out loud here, what if we committed to putting down our devices and actually meeting other people face to face?

No filters.

Just doing what humans are designed to do.

Really connecting with someone changes everything.

Here's what I propose.

Once a week, commit to meeting someone for coffee, a chat, a connection, or better yet, cook a meal with someone and eat together.

Your life will change in an instant.

So think about that and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by Finamill, the flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods, Finamill.

And by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by.

You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at christinacooks.com and by following Christina on social media.

(pleasant music)