We’re also following strong winds, heavy rain and possible hail tomorrow. Plus, how you can better stop thieves from stealing money and gift cards from your mailboxes and how much closer DPS employees are to seeing a salary increase. Watch WRAL NEWS at 11 and search for these and other stories on WRAL.com.

On WRAL at 11 : Strong winds, heavy rain, possible hail ⛈️ Who has the best chance for storms tomorrow

Shortages of teachers, infrastructure and technology workers will hamper schools' ability to provide the best education, facilities and tools to children, Superintendent Robert Taylor said Thursday.

Higher employee pay will be key to running Wake schools smoothly, superintendent says

Wake County Public School System Superintendent Robert Taylor speaks to the League fo Women Voters of Wake County, April 18, 2024

Consumer Reports surveyed more than 2,000 members who shared their experiences with pet insurance.

Is pet insurance worth the bark? Survey reveals middling results

Pet insurance

All assets associated with the tag: Italian

Italian Coverage

This former Italian food restaurant, located in downtown Mebane,
kept the pizza but added lots more North Carolina favorites - baby back
ribs and pork BBQ head up the new menu, with lots of healthy and tasty pasta dishes.

<p>UNIVERSAL'S CIRCUS ACT. &gt;&gt; WELCOME TO EVIDENT JUNCTION ON 7. JUNCTION IS A IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF A PASSION OF MIXED WE TOOK OVER PRIMARILY ITALIAN RESTAURANT AND TURNED INTO SOMETHING THAT WAS A LITTLE BIT MORE FITTING THAT NEEDS OF METH. AND SO WE HAVE BEEN A PRETTY PREDOMINANTLY DUE TO HEAVY RESTAURANT HERE THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF THIS LOCATION. SO WE START WITH THAT TRADITION AND JUST KIND OF MADE A LITTLE BIT MORE OF OUR OWN. BUT WE ADDED CRAFT BURGERS AND HIGH-QUALITY WIENS AND SOME OTHER NON ITALIANS LAYER WITH. WE'LL BE BACK RIBS AND PORK BARBECUE, THINGS TURN AND THAT KIND OF FIT SOUTHERN HERE IS ON YOUR TEAM. IT'S A GOOD TIME. WE HAVE AN ENVIRONMENT SET UP IN YOUR THAT IS VERY COME AS YOU ARE VERY CASUAL. IF YOU COME TO SERVE. FROM 8 YEARS OLD TO 88 YEARS OLD. SO IT'S REALLY KIND OF FOR EVERYBODY. WE LOT OF HAMBURGERS AND A LOT OF WINGS AND A LOT OF PIZZA LIKE STRAIGHT ACROSS THE BOARD. WE HAVE A OUR SIGNATURE DISH GRANDMA'S PIZZA. AND THAT IS A HOUSE FAVORITE HERE FOR EVER AND EVER AND TOWN FAVORS. WELL, IT IS A 16 BY 16 SQUARE PIZZA THAT IS STILL UPSIDE DOWN. SO BRUSH WITH GARLIC AND BUTTER AND THEN CHEESE AND TOPPINGS IT FOR HER AND ALSO SOFT ON TOP AND THEN BAKE FOR 20 MINUTES. VERY, VERY GOOD. WE MAKE ALL OF OUR 2 GREAT. ALL THE CHEESE MAKE THE SAUCE THAT THE PIZZA IS NOTHING FROM A BOX. IT IS ALL HAND AND WE DO IT EVERY SINGLE DAY. THAT IS THE MAJOR PORTS, QUALITY CHEESE QUALITY. DO. WE DON'T EVER SERVE ANY FROZEN BURGERS. WE'RE MAKING FRESH BAKED BREAD ACROSS THE STREET. SO EVERYTHING IS DONE RIGHT HERE AND HOW SUNDAY IN TOWN. THE NEWEST SPENT ON OUR MENU IS PRODUCING THE IN SEVERAL ROLES AND THE HAMBURGER BUNS IN THE RYE BREAD AND ALL THE BETTER THAT WE'RE SERVING YOURSELF. I THINK IT DOES HELP STEP UP TO QUALITY EVEN THAT MUCH MORE. IT'S A LITTLE BIT EXTRA EFFORT AND A LITTLE BIT EXTRA WORK, BUT IT'S WORTH EVERY BIT OF IT IN THE FINISHED PRODUCT. SO THERE'S A LOT OF QUALITY PRODUCTS OUT THERE TO PURCHASE. BUT WE'VE DONE EVERYTHING FROM HAND FROM DAY ONE. SO THAT'S JUST THE WAY THAT WE DO. 30 NAMES THAT I REALLY WANTED TO KIND OF GO WITH WERE TOYING WITH. BUT THE TRAIN TRACK THAT RUNS RIGHT BY US. I MEAN, IT'S LITERALLY ABOUT 30 FEET OUTSIDE THE WINDOW AND &gt;&gt; TRAINERS TO TRAIN AND TRAIN. AND WE'VE GOT TO TALKING ABOUT THAT MEETING SPACE AND LIGHT. THIS IS THE JUNCTION. THIS IS THE JUNCTION OF WHERE EVERYTHING COMES TOGETHER. DEFINITELY STUFF. WHEN THEY COME HERE. I THINK PEOPLE LEAVE WANTING TO COME BACK BECAUSE THE FOOD AND SERVICES KID, BUT EMPLOYEES AND THE ATTITUDE OF EVERYBODY THAT'S HERE IS A IT'S A VERY POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT. AND WE LIKE TO MAKE EVERYBODY FEEL LIKE THIS IS STILL MAY VARY, EVEN THOUGH WE'RE EXPANDING. WE KNOW YOU. WE KNOW SHE WE KNOW WHAT YOU LIKE AND WHAT TO JUNCTION ON 70 IS LOCATED ONE OF 7 EAST CENTER STREET WHERE</p>

Junction on 70

To celebrate all things mozzarella and marinara, Stacker compiled a list of the highest-rated Italian restaurants in Raleigh based on diners' reviews on Yelp as of January 2024. 

Highest-rated Italian restaurants in Raleigh according to Yelp reviews

Maggiano's Spaghetti And Meatball (photo courtesy PRNewsfoto/Maggiano's Little Italy)

For this installment of our continuing chefs series on WRAL.com, we are going into the kitchen with Chef Teddy Diggs from Coronato in Carrboro! 

Cook like the Pros: Coronato's Braised Meatballs​

Coronato chef shares secret to great meatballs

Take a trip to Coronato with Chef Teddy Diggs who shows us how to make these meatballs. 

<p>Hey all your cool cats and kittens Welcome to Coronado Come on inside and make meatballs with me This is corn Oh this is my home away from home You may be at home right now Thinking what am I gonna cook You've cooked 10 different things Well I would assure you have cook our meatballs what we do here and people's air Great thing to cook at home because you don't necessarily need the specific ingredient So while we do provide rescue we use here Coronado you can use a lot of different ingredients that you have around All right So when you are making meatballs there's really a couple components you need to meet portion And then equally important is the bread and the binder In this case we're using eggs and milk and then you need vegetables and aromatics And so as long as you have those doesn't matter The meat It really doesn't even matter The type of bread it could be fresh breadcrumbs stale bread used that you make your own break comes with or Lincoln's right pinko or Italian seasoned Break from any of the work Indeed Area work milk half and half even heavy cream and egg and then vegetables for our recipe here We're just using simple vegetables onions carrots celery and garlic And this is also cool recipe because you can really allow the kids in the whole family to kind of making meatballs together whether it's prepping vegetables rolling the meatballs or cooking and of course eating them right best part But I want to show you a couple different ways and how you can have the whole family help out as well So for the onions and the celery and carrots which we're gonna cook down into what we call sofrito which is almost like a pace we just want to come is finally as possible And so I have some practice so I could go pretty quick and pretty fine on these But if you didn't you just could continue to run your knife through it until you get a small in its don't If you can't get him on your first try this this time you don't worry about it You can always like I said we'll pull the onions together Just continue to run your knife through until they're very fine But what you're looking for in the vegetables is getting very fine broken down vegetable so that when they after they cooked they kind of just fall apart into the meatball Can't really taste him But if you want kids to help another little trick or happens using a cheese grater on especially for the Paris salaries onions they were really rolling a cheese grater breaking down in vegetable getting a nice and tender without having to use a lot of knife work So I recommend using cheese grater as well Vegetables If you want to be very quick with and you want to get everyone involved is a nice way to come in Get the vegetables broken down for your sofrito All right so we've cut all of our vegetables very finally like we talked about And so that's what we call so freed Oh it's just a mixture of vegetables family cut and what we do next We cook very slowly get very soft and tender so we have our carrots celery onions and I also met some garlic over here We're gonna take him to a pan and adds well to the pan just a little bit of olive oil and then we're gonna add vegetables and we're just doing Teoh Cook does until you don't wanna do high meat You want low They kind of look very softly Probably about about 30 40 minutes We've cooked down this freedom until it gets really tender and kind of into really soft kind of mixture And you could see the vegetables have broken down Now to a symbol are meatballs We're gonna bring everything together So what we do is we're gonna big bowl and the rest of the ingredients here Adam sofrito are cooked down vegetable mixture to the bowl and then we can just ask anything So we have our ground meat and again we're using ground pork today At the restaurant we used ground lamb If you were going to use ground beef ground veal ground turkey ground chicken ground sausage or a combination of any of those it could be a little bit of whatever you have in your house and you could report real beef You could do pork beef You could do lamb and sausage do any of those kind of combinations or you could just stick to one so you don't need a specific ground meat you could make any tape of meatballs We have our vegetables or ground meat and then we add the breadcrumbs And I think what's important about our rescues to know that pretty much equal parts by volume breadcrumb and meat kind of work together Because once it all comes together that breadcrumbs going what is what makes the meatballs tender If you use more meat than Brett from then that's gonna be dense and kind of tough Break promise what softens everything And then we also add our dairy In this case we're using Milk Way had eggs and then whatever we like to season or break our mixture with In this case we like kosher salt I'm using a little bit of dried chili and some black pepper but if there's any other seasonings you might like to have in there now time to add it And then you just kind of mix it together with your hands Lose the fun part for the kids You don't want to over mix it You don't want to mix it with with a spoon or anything I really just recommend mixing it with your hands just to bring all the ingredients together Andi make make it one cohesive mixture You don't want too many lumps or break from their vegetables but you don't need to over mix it either We're gonna leave it just like this and we want to let it rest for about 30 minutes to an hour Just so all those breadcrumbs kind of soak up all of the juices and all the flavors come together Now that's role This is when you want to get the whole family involved in the kids This is a small batch But if you were making a bigger backs you could really get everyone involved and keep him for a long time freezing So you just taking a pinch of the meatball mixture and you're just gonna roll it in your hands You don't wanna be too tight You just want to form a little loose ball like that and then line them up and get him ready to cook All right Now you cook our balls here You know if you have a pan dude over medium high heat I've already put olive oil in We gotta roll meatballs and once the pins gets more we're gonna see our meatballs Adam you can start to hear them sing in the pan there That means you're getting a sear on the meat balls We're gonna add them probably in batches We don't want to crowd the pan and make it cool off pants too much We want room for the meatballs to be able to do their thing We're just gonna get brown on a few sides rotating people's browning here there simmering in the extra virgin olive oil The next step is to brave them This is important We're gonna slow cooked them almost completely submerged tomato And when that doesn't let tomatoes or been read from making a very nice and tender finished cooking meat cooking through go low and slow On this we're using tomatoes You could use a tomato sauce or any canned tomato Canned tomatoes were adding it in to the pan Whether already simmering we're gonna turn down the heat Just make sure it's at a simmer We're gonna let the meatballs in a city you think like a tomato Jacuzzi and just get nice soft and tender Poke Coke in here for about 30 45 minutes to get nice and tender rotate them occasionally so they're getting nice and coded in the tomato And then we'll be ready to serve ever People though simmered and tender and you see the sauce is reduced So now it's time to take him to the plate Here we're just gonna play look real simple into a ball with cheese and basil just spooning that that braising liquid and the tomato soften you up onto the meatballs as sauce You could do so much with meatballs You could make him into a sandwich you could put him on with possible Of course you can put it on top of something like creamy polenta tons of things you can do with meatball other than just eating people He's also freeze really well So you wanted to make a big batch You could take him and freeze him at this point and then pulling out later And uh you uh eat them whenever you like But these air nice and simple brave meatballs these air again with pork Do you use any kind of meat you like Kids love These are great Easy to make it home with family So I highly recommend making a website as our recipe but take some liberties with that You will never meet You want whenever bread you have running around on Garnish it however you like Whatever cheese you like was possible Pasta Is there anything you want to do with their very</p>

Video: Coronato chef shares secret to great meatballs

Check out this recipe from Chef Adam Rose of Il Palio at the Siena Hotel. 

Cook Like the Pros: Il Palio's Pasta Carrrettiera

Chef Adam Rose of Il Palio at the Siena Hotel

At Amedeo's, Cindy still orders the same thing she ordered in 1972 -- spaghetti with side salad and Italian dressing. My order was pretty much the same as well -- ziti, sauce and meatballs. This is true comfort food.



Bill Leslie: True Comfort Food

Amedeo's Italian Restaurant

Sean Lennard, the Triangle Food Guy, has the scoop on openings, closings and foodie events.

Foodie News: New Italian restaurant opening in Durham

Brightleaf Square

An old-school, Italian, red gravy, restaurant in Southern Pines. ​(Sponsored by: US Foods and Got to Be NC)

Curt's Cucina serves up old school Italian food

It's a big weekend for festivals in the Triangle!

Weekend best bets: Sir Walter Smoke-Off, Brunch Festival

Jazz Brunch

Browse Raleigh's downtown nightlife scene. Pics taken March 30-April 4, 2013, at Oryx, Glenwood Avenue, Black Flower, Rum Runners, Myst, Still Life, Downtown Pub & Grill, Cashmere, The Longbranch, Fayetteville Street, Noir and Napper Tandy's. Photos courtesy of Carolinanightlife.com.

Downtown Nightlife Photos: April 3-8

Mid Week Partying on Glenwood Avenue

Our five favorite places to eat pasta include choices that are old standards, a family-friendly lunch option, something new and even pasta that you prepare at home.