Chef-restaurateur Steve Martorano’s eponymous Fort Lauderdale restaurant is known to attract everybody from slumming celebrities to regular folks hungry for the hearty, homey Italian-American dishes he grew up with in his hometown of Philadelphia.
Now you can get his cooking tips too, via a nine-part series of professionally shot and produced videos playing once a month on the Cafe Martoranowebsite (http://cafemartorano.com/). Titled Yo Cuz: The Italian-American Cook, Martorano mixes a little Oprah with a lot of tough guy in explaining how to prepare and use ingredients common to the Italian-American dishes we’ve all come to know and love.
The first episode is all about making your own mozzarella, though you will have to find a source for the fresh curd that starts off the process. Martorano’s explanation is simple and straightforward, easy to follow and understand, and makes a pretty good argument for doing it yourself instead of spending five or six bucks for a ball of middling-fresh mozz at your local supermarket.
The next episode, roasting peppers, plays on Saturday, Aug. 13. You gotta problem wit dat?
