Twenty years after Paul Sorvino made America salivate by preparing a jailhouse feast in “Goodfellas,” he’s getting ready to do it again in real life.
Fed up with what he could find on supermarket shelves, the veteran actor has created a line of pasta sauces – using his mother Angelina’s Neopolitan recipes.
Marinara and vodka sauces from Paul Sorvino Foods will go on sale in the city this month, retailing for between $5.99 and $6.99.
“I get my tomatoes from Naples. I get the olive oil from Puglia. The spices I use are fresh, like the basil and in the marinara, a touch of oregano. No fillers, syrups or preservatives,” he told the Daily News.
“I’ve been cooking since I was 12 and people say I’m pretty good at it,” he said, recalling the family meals at his childhood home on Bath Ave. “A lot of pasta. Pasta with peas, pasta with vegetables, pasta with lentils and escarole, pasta with a ragu – three different meats – pasta at least five days a week.”
Sounds like just the kind of grub that Sorvino, the father of Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvina, served up in “Goodfellas.”
It’s one of the classic scenes from the Martin Scorsese flick: his character, mob boss Paulie Cicero, meticulously slicing a clove of contraband garlic.
Of course, that was Hollywood. Sorvino, 70, notes that “real Neopolitan chefs don’t use onions in marinara sauce – they use garlic.”
Sorvino said he didn’t start the food line because he needs the money. He was just tired of supermarket slop, a problem he couldn’t solve with a whisper or a bullet.
“Years and years of those sauces and they don’t have the right ingredients or taste,” he said. “I’m doing it because I like to cook and if you use these sauces, it’ll be like eating in my home.
“I’ve got to say though, I enjoy the idea of a business. I didn’t go to college, but right after I graduated Lafayette High School, I sold automobiles – Fords at a place on Flatbush Ave. – and the first day, I sold seven cars. I made $1,400 in commissions.
“I was doing odd jobs from the age of 12, I painted signs for local stores, I picked up dry cleaning for people on my bike. So,” he said, sounding a bit like Paulie Cicero, “I understand business.”
