Game 27: Valerie Wilkes - Johnny Cakes
““Let’s just say I like eating a lot more than writing.” - Vito Spatafore”
The dish that Valerie Wilkes, wife of Showtime Lakers forward Jamaal “Silk” Wilkes, contributed to the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook is a recipe for Johnny Cakes. Johnny Cakes are basically a cornmeal pancake, invented by the indegenous people who lived in what would later become New England. But for countless others, including myself, the word “Johnny Cakes” refers to one thing only: The brief and heartbreaking love affair between closeted gangster Vito Spatafore and New Hampshire short-order cook/volunteer fireman stud Johnny Cakes in season 6A of The Sopranos.
In season 6 episode 6 “Live Free or Die Hard,” Vito’s secret, which was tightly held by his “arch nemesis” Finn LaTrulio, is finally leaked when he’s spotted at a leather bar by associates of the DiMeo crew’s rival New York family. Tony and his underlings can’t believe it. It has to be Johnny Sack, who’s been feuding with Tony since season 4, just trying to piss him off. But when Benny Fazio and some soldiers visit Vito at his goomar’s beach house, Vito confirms the rumor by peeling off. He returns to his home, gathers some keepsakes and cash, and then kisses his children goodbye.
In the same episode, Tony tells Dr. Melfi that despite being a strict Catholic (lol) and hating homosexuals, he’s thinking of letting Vito live. Whatever two consenting adults do is their business, he offers. Melfi is confused by Tony’s logic of Vito continuing to work as an openly gay man in the mob. But like most of the therapy scenes, we know the real subtext behind Tony’s reasoning: Vito is Tony’s best earner and it’s not even close. Ever since Tony whacked Ralph Cifaretto, nobody else in the DiMeo family has been able to pick up his slack.
Later, Vito gets caught in a rainstorm while fleeing to New Hampshire. His car gets stuck on a fallen tree branch, forcing him to waddle several miles in the pouring rain to a bed and breakfast. The next morning, he wakes up to birds chirping and clean air. He heads into town and spots a gay couple walking down the street. The town is so idyllic and peaceful and white (the Italians of The Sopranos are not assimilated), it might as well be heaven. Is this all a fantasy? Is this one of The Sopranos’ classic dream sequences? Has Vito already been brutally murdered?
It’s not heaven. At least not literally. But it feels like that to Vito when he enters Jim’s Diner and meets the titular redheaded hunk who owns the joint. Vito tells Jim that he’s a sportswriter named Vince. Vince is going through writer’s block and just wants some Jimmy Dean sausages for breakfast. But Jim tells Vito that he’ll make him something special: Johnny Cakes.
Two episodes later in “Johnny Cakes,” Vito starts making a breakfast of Johnny Cakes his daily routine. He’s especially wowed by Jim’s heroic rescue of a small child in a burning building and soon learns that Jim is also a father. After a night of drinking with Jim’s fireman buddies, Vito and Jim have a moment outside the bar that turns into an aborted kiss. Punches are thrown and Vito is left to deal with his internalized homophobia in a bloody heap.
A few days later, Vito goes back to the diner to apologize. "Sometimes you tell a lie so long, you don't know when to stop," he tells Jim. "You don't know when you're safe." The two go on a motorcycle ride into a New Hampshire field where they have sex under the falling leaves.
Another two episodes later in “Moe n’ Joe,” Vito has moved in with Jim and has told him the truth… sort of. He’s not really a sportswriter, he’s a contractor who, like Jim, once had a family while leading a heterosexual lie. “I love you, Johnny Cakes,” Vito tells Jim, one of the most iconic lines of the show. Vito starts volunteering at the firehouse and gets a job as a handyman, but the daily minutiae of a straight life -- as in non-criminal, not heterosexual -- destroys him from the inside out. He’s barely hammering nails for a couple hours before he starts going stir crazy. While Jim is still asleep, Vito leaves New Hampshire, reasoning that the risk in New Jersey is better than the safe haven of New Hampshire.
In “Cold Stones,” Vito returns to his family, telling his children that he had to disappear for a little bit because he’s a CIA agent who’s being hunted for his work in Afghanistan. With the help of his brother, he arranges a meeting with Tony where he tells his boss that he’s not really gay. Tony doesn’t buy it. And he scoffs at Vito’s suggestion that he be allowed to run a prostitution and meth ring in Atlantic City. With Phil Leotardo, whose cousin is Vito’s wife, pushing him to kill Vito, Tony finally realizes he has no choice. But before he can get his own men to do it, Phil and co. beat him to it. They ambush Vito at his motel, tie him up, shove a pool stick up his ass, and beat him to death. The last we see of Johnny Cakes is earlier in the episode. Vito calls him to explain, but Jim has no time for Vito’s lies and the past life that he can’t escape.
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Jim “Johnny Cakes” Witowski was actor John Costelloe’s breakout role. A former 11 year vet of the FDNY, he retired in 1998 to devote his life to acting. He had done plenty of acting in the early 90s, appearing in bit parts in Die Hard 2 and Kazaam and a recurring role in New York Undercover. But Johnny Cakes was supposed to be the role that broke it open for the handsome, rugged Brooklyn native. After The Sopranos, he acted in the Oscar nominated Meryl Streep film Doubt and landed a role in playwright Jim Neu’s Gang of Seven in a part specifically written for him.
On December 16th, 2008, The New York Times published a positive review of Gang of Seven. That same day, John Costelloe killed himself. His body was found in his apartment two days later with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Those closest to Costelloe were stunned, telling the New York Post that they never saw it coming. Joseph R. Gannascoli, the actor who played Vito and Costelloe’s longtime friend, said he was “shocked when [he] heard” and that he “never detected anything troubling about him.” His former firefighter colleague Matt Dwyer told the Post “I saw him three weeks ago when he stopped by, and he seemed to be in good spirits.” Neu and director Keith McDermott noticed something seemed off about Costelloe after his final performance, but the actor kept his troubles to himself.
“He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would reach out,” Neu said. “There couldn’t have been a more supportive and friendly group. If he wanted to reach out to people, we were right in front of him. I wish he did.”
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Johnny Cakes
¾ pound pre-sifted flour
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon pastry shortening
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Oil for deep frying
In a large bowl, mix flour and baking powder together. Chop in shortening and butter and mix to a dough, adding cold water to make it easy to roll out.
On a floured board, roll out dough to ½ inch thickness. Cut in rounds with a small cutter and fry in deep boiling oil.
Every now and then, there’s a Goldstein and Gasol recipe that seems a little… off. There wasn’t a lot of quality control with this book, leaving me with a World Champion Los Angeles Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook riddled with typos, missing measurements, and vague instructions. Sometimes it’s small, like listing salt in the ingredients but not telling you when to use it. Sometimes it’s big, like listing “pre-sifted flour” in the ingredients when Johnny cakes are made with cornmeal flour. If I’d never seen The Sopranos or Googled other recipes for Johnny Cakes, I’d have used white flour.
Not that it mattered. When I gathered my ingredients and mixed together the cornmeal and baking powder, I quickly realized that a teaspoon of butter and a teaspoon of shortening (I substituted coconut oil for Crisco) wasn’t going to turn my giant bowl of cornmeal into dough, no matter how much water I added.
Am I missing something? Or is the recipe missing something? Every other recipe I found online included milk and/or white flour and/or sugar and/or egg with a lot more butter for literal good measure. I mixed my ingredients together but adding 2 teaspoons total of butter and shortening did nothing to the cornmeal. Johnny Cakes, welcome to the short list of Goldstein and Gasol disasters. Vito never would’ve fallen in love with me.
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Pasta Bedan
I’m also including the recipe for pasta bedan, the dish that Vito cooks for Johnny Cakes. I found this on the Facebook page The Sopranos: The Family
“Pasta Bedan” (Pasta With Potatoes)
Makes 8 servings
Cooking time at least an hour
This dish is best when the pasta is cooked until it is fat, juice-laden and quite soft, so there's no need to seize the ideal al dente moment. Nor is there any need to worry about the ''correct'' pasta shape; pasta with potatoes is good with several different shapes, in varying quantities, preferably broken.
Ingredients
•2 tablespoons olive oil
•1/2 cup minced pancetta or bacon, optional
•3 or 4 potatoes, about 1 1/2 pounds, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
•1 tablespoon chopped garlic
•3 or 4 small dried hot red chiles, or to taste (or substitute about 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes)
•1 28-ounce can whole plum tomatoes, not drained
•1 1/2 pounds assorted dried pasta
•Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Directions:
•1. Put several cups of water in a pot on stove, and keep it at a simmer. Place olive oil in a large saucepan, and turn heat to medium. If you're using pancetta or bacon, add it to the oil and cook, stirring occasionally, until it becomes slightly crisp, about 10 minutes. (If you are omitting the meat, proceed to the next step.)
•2. Add potatoes, garlic and chiles and raise the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes begin to brown all over, about 10 minutes.
•3. Add tomatoes and their juice, along with 2 cups of the simmering water, and bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium-low, and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally to break up the tomatoes and prevent sticking.
•4. While potato mixture is cooking, break long dried pasta, like spaghetti, into several lengths; place cut pasta, like ziti, in a bag, and break it up with the back of a pot or a hammer. After potato mixture has simmered for about 10 minutes, add pasta and plenty of salt and pepper to pot. Simmer, stirring and adding the simmering water as necessary; mixture should remain thick and stewy, never dry.
•5. When potatoes are tender and pasta quite tender -- this will take 20 minutes or more -- the dish is done. (It may be covered and refrigerated for a day or two, or put in a closed container and frozen for several weeks; it's likely that you will need to add more liquid when you reheat.) Check the seasoning, and add some crushed red pepper flakes, black pepper or salt if needed. Serve hot, in bowls.
Mangia!
