A Tough Act to Follow

Actor Frank Sivero has this terrific idea for a situation comedy. He calls it “The Neighborhood.” See, there’s this one guy, a rough-and-tumble ex-con who has inherited the family’s Brooklyn pizza parlor, Nino’s. Actually, he’s half-owner with his cousin, a “four-star” chef.

Sivero already has the chef cast: It’ll be his pal Vincent Schiavelli, an actor-cookbook writer. And the ex-con? That’ll be Sivero himself.

“Vincent’s like this four-star chef who can’t hold a job because of his temper. He has to do things his own way,” Sivero says. “Me, I’m like a guy who, you know, deals with people from all walks of life.”

Of course, to get the full impact of the idea, you’ve gotta hear Sivero explain it himself. A short, muscular guy with jet black hair like steel wool, Sivero is definitive Brooklyn Italian. Look up “red sauce” in the dictionary, and there’s his picture.

He’s parlayed those dems and doses into a solid acting career with more than 27 film and 100 television credits. He was--of course--in “GoodFellas” and “The Godfather, Part II.” In neither did he play a Presbyterian minister.

And when he cooks, as he frequently does, it’s definitive Brooklyn Italian food.

“Take a look at what I found here,” he says as he pops open a cabinet door. It’s jam-packed with Italian canned tomatoes. He opens the cabinet next to it. Same thing. The next two are similarly packed with boxes of dried spaghetti.

“It was a sale,” he says. “What am I gonna do? You don’t understand: I’m going to be selling these on the street. I got a whole trunk full of this stuff.”

Someone jokes that his stash is just his equivalent of a Brooklyn fallout shelter. But how long would it last him? “About 30 days,” he says, perhaps in jest.

Actually, that’s probably only if he went out to eat a couple of nights. Sivero’s cooking is built on red sauce. In fact, for this dinner, he makes three kinds: one with meat sauce, one with meat sauce and ricotta, and a meatless one he serves with sauteed eggplant. All are wonderful.

Although he lived for years in Brooklyn, Sivero was born in Sicily and lived there until he was 11.

“I grew up in a town called Siculiana, in the province of Agrigento,” he says. “My family were farmers; they had a lot of people working for them. My dad owned about 750 sheep. He had cows. He used to make his own wine, olive oil.

“What happened, without getting too involved, he had a difficult time living over there. . . . There were things he didn’t want his kids exposed to. So in July 1963, my father, myself and my two older brothers came here. My mom and six other kids came in December.

“My dad went to work for a dye factory. That lasted about five or six months. He had never worked for anyone before in his life. Then he decided to open his own business. My older brother was a hairdresser, so he opened up a beauty shop. Then he bought a house. From the beauty shop, he ended up getting himself involved in a pizza place. One pizza place became four pizza places. One was called Gaitano’s, one was called Nino’s, one was called Villa, the other one was called Nino’s, again.”

Sivero didn’t start cooking until years later, but it was those early years in Brooklyn that marked his style. “There was always food, always extra food,” he says. “My mom never cooked for one or two people; it was always 10, 20, 30. There were always leftovers. And the dogs ate pretty good, by the way. The cats ate pretty good. The neighbors ate pretty good.”

Sivero got the acting bug early. In his teens he started pumping iron and worked out at the gym with a relative of the actor Vince Edwards (born Vincent Edward Zoino and most famous for being “Ben Casey”).

“It was his nephew, Terry. He was a big gorilla,” Sivero says. “I was like 14 years old. Somehow I had this idea about going to Rome and doing Hercules movies. So I says to him, ‘Do you know your uncle, what school he went to?’ And he says to me, ‘I don’t know but I could ask him.’ ”

Edwards pointed Sivero toward the drama workshops on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Before he could start actually learning about acting, he says, his coach insisted on giving him three months of speech lessons. “Like I can’t talk,” he protests, “you know what I mean?

“But I swear, when I was done, I really lost the accent. From 1967 to ‘75, I had no accent whatsoever. I was doing plays in toilets, churches, garages, everywhere. Off-Off-Broadway. I was doing everything and nobody knew where I was from.”

Finally in 1977, he got a part in the Martin Scorsese-Robert DeNiro film “New York, New York” and really connected with a character--Brooklyn-born, of course. “It was great,” Sivero says. “I became so loose. It was all ‘Hey, ova deah or ova heah?’ I was into dis ting. Knowhadimean?”

The Brooklyn accent is still there, somehow, even in the clipped consonants of Sicilian, which he starts speaking when Schiavelli arrives. The one tall and nearly gaunt, the other short and burly, Schiavelli and Sivero make an odd pair (“We were the ‘l’ and the ‘i’ of crime,” Schiavelli quips in reference to one movie they made together).

And when a photographer starts snapping pictures in Sivero’s small kitchen, they can’t help hamming it up, rattling back and forth, sometimes in Italian so rapid it sounds suspiciously pidgin. They’re like a Sicilian Abbot and Costello.

“You going to wear occhiali [eyeglasses]?” Schiavelli asks Sivero of his upcoming picture.

“Whadayouthink?” Sivero answers back. “I’m going to wear a pistola. Fuggheddaboutit.”

The two cook together often, especially for holidays like St. Joseph’s Day.

“My family never really celebrated that once we moved to America,” says Sivero. “It was only at Vincent’s house that I learned about pasta con le sarde [the traditional Sicilian St. Joseph’s Day dish of fresh sardines, fennel and pasta] and all of that.”

But you get the feeling that, deep down, although he appreciates Schiavelli’s elegant style of cooking, there’s very little chance of its crossing over into his own.

“Vincent is an artist,” Sivero says. “He’s like an opera singer. I really like the opera. But I’m more like Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. And man, I love Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra.”

FRANK SIVERO’S RED SAUCE WITH MEAT

Sivero prefers serving this with rigatoni or another large, tube-shaped pasta. To make the sauce with ricotta, simply stir in 1 1/2 cups at the end of cooking. You may notice there is no garlic. “This is an onion sauce,” says Sivero. “Garlic is more of a northern thing.”

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 pork short ribs

3 sections oxtail

1/2 pound pork stew meat

1 onion, diced

4 (28-ounce) cans whole tomatoes

1/4 cup slivered basil

Salt, pepper

2 tablespoons sugar

Heat olive oil in bottom of large casserole over medium-high heat. Add short ribs and brown well on all sides and remove to plate and keep warm. Brown oxtails and remove to plate. Brown pork and remove to plate.

Add onion and cook until soft, but not brown, about 5 minutes. Return meat to casserole.

Puree tomatoes in food mill directly into casserole, add basil, salt and pepper to taste and sugar. Reduce heat to low and simmer until meat is falling off bones, about 2 1/2 hours.

Remove meat from bones and return to sauce. Discard bones. Add meatballs if using and continue cooking 30 more minutes.

8 servings. Each serving without meatballs:

210 calories; 100 mg sodium; 29 mg cholesterol; 8 grams fat; 23 grams carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 2.64 grams fiber.

FRANK SIVERO’S MEATBALLS

These meatballs can be served in the sauce or on the side. Sivero made a plate with a pile of rigatoni in meat sauce on one side, a pile of rigatoni with ricotta-meat sauce on the other and a big meatball in the middle. If you’re serving these in the sauce, use half the recipe and freeze the rest.

2 pounds ground meat, preferably equal amounts pork, beef and lamb

1 1/2 cups bread crumbs

1/2 (1-pound) loaf white bread, frozen

2 tablespoons minced basil

2 tablespoons minced parsley

1/2 cup grated Romano cheese

Salt, pepper

8 eggs

Combination olive and vegetable oil

Combine meat and bread crumbs in large mixing bowl. Rinse frozen bread under running water until soaked. Squeeze dry and add to mixing bowl. Add basil, parsley and Romano cheese and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add eggs and mix thoroughly until mixture will hold loose ball when rolled between palms.

Roll meat between palms to form egg-sized meat balls. Deep-fry meat balls in 350-degree oil until brown, about 5 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels. Add to meat sauce for last 30 minutes of cooking.

40 meatballs. Each meatball:

103 calories; 100 mg sodium; 57 mg cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 6 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 0.03 gram fiber.

FRANK SIVERO’S EGGPLANT WITH RED SAUCE

Serve this with spaghetti or another long pasta.

1 onion, diced

Olive oil

4 (28-ounce) cans whole tomatoes

Salt, pepper

6 to 7 Japanese eggplants, sliced lengthwise

1 1/2 cups grated Romano cheese

In large, wide casserole or saucepan, cook onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat until soft, about 5 minutes. Puree tomatoes through food mill directly into casserole. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low and cook 2 hours.

In large skillet, heat 1/4 cup olive oil over medium heat. Add as many eggplant slices as will fit comfortably in 1 layer and cook until just soft and barely browned, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Remove, drain on paper towel and continue with other slices, adding oil each time as needed until all have been cooked.

About 10 minutes before serving, distribute eggplant slices over top of tomato sauce. Evenly scatter Romano cheese on top and cook over low heat until cheese melts into sauce.

8 servings. Each serving:

253 calories; 284 mg sodium; 18 mg cholesterol; 16 grams fat; 22 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams protein; 2.86 grams fiber.

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Cassis and Company French serving pieces from In the House, Beverly Hills, and Chinzia, Santa Monica.