The Wine Lover Cooks Italian: Pairing Great Recipes with the Perfect Glass of Wine

TEXT COPYRIGHT © 2005 BY BRIAN ST. PIERRE.

PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT © 2005 BY MINH + WASS.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER.

9781452131894

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PREVIOUS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

ST. PIERRE, BRIAN.

THE WINE LOVER COOKS ITALIAN : PAIRING GREAT RECIPES WITH THE PERFECT

GLASS OF WINE / BY BRIAN ST. PIERRE ; PHOTOGRAPHS BY MINH + WASS.

P. CM.

INCLUDES INDEX.

ISBN 0-8118-4100-6 (PBK.)

1. COOKERY, ITALIAN. 2. COOKERY (WINE) I. TITLE: PAIRING GREAT RECIPES WITH

THE PERFECT GLASS OF WINE. II. TITLE.

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Contents: Introduction

: Italian Wine and Food

: Foundations

For my son Patrick, better late than never,

never too late.

Acknowledgments

Falling in love with Italy is a quick and easy process; working there is a lot more complicated. Luckily, I had friends, and acquired more, who were generous with their time, thoughts, recipes, cooking tips and techniques, wine and wine knowledge, and, above all, their stories. Over several years, as this book built up, layer by layer, I had special reason to thank the following people.

Wineries (Italy): Piero Antinori, Marchese L&P Antinori, Florence; Roberto and Paolo Bava, Cantine Bava, Cocconato, Piedmont; Pio Boffa, Pio Cesare Winery, Alba, Piedmont; Sandro Boscaini and Tiziana Ravanelli, Masi Agricola, Verona; Pier Francesco Bolla, Agricola Boltina, Montiano; Riccardo Cotarella, Azienda Vinicola Falesco, Montefiascone, Lazio; Adolfo Folonari, Ruffino, Brescia; Diana Frescobaldi, Marchesi de’Frescobaldi, Florence; Angelo Gaja, Barbaresco, Piedmont; Marta Gaspari, Donnafugata, Marsala, Sicily; Chiara Gianotti, Fazi Battaglia, Castelpiano, Marche; Lars Leicht, Villa Banfi, Montalcino, Tuscany; Teresa Severini Lungarotti, Cantine Lungarotti, Torgiano, Umbria; Fausto Maculan, Breganze, Veneto; Mark Shannon and Elvezia Sbalchiero, A Mano Winery, Castellaneta, Puglia; Aldo, Milena, and Giuseppe Vaira, GD Vajra Winery, Barolo, Piedmont; Antonio M. Zaccheo Sr. and Jr., Carpineto, Greve in Chianti, Tuscany.

Wineries (California): Francis Ford Coppola, Niebaum-Coppola, Rutherford; Joel Ehrlich, chef at Viansa in Sonoma, and Sam and Vicky Sebastiani, Viansa Winery, Carneros; Ed Seghesio and the Seghesio family, Seghesio Winery, Healdsburg.

Chefs and restauranteurs: Bruno Barbieri, Ristorante Arquade, Hotel Villa del Quar, Verona; Luca di Vita and Bruno Gavagnin, Alle Testiere, Venice; Fulvio Ferri, Vetralla, Lazio; Susanna Gelmetti, London and various Italian locations by Italian Cookery Weeks; Alvaro Maccioni, La Famiglia restaurant, London, and Coselli School of Tuscan Cuisine, Coselli, Tuscany; Eilidh MacDonald and Giancarlo Talerico, Rhode School of Cuisine at Villa Lucia, Vorno, Tuscany; Gabriele Monti, Ristorante Vecchia Urbino, Urbino; Valentina Morriconi and chef Antonio Martucci, International Wine Academy of Rome; Lucio Sforza, L’Asino d’Oro, Orvieto; Franco and Melly Solari, Cà Peo, Leivi, Genoa, Liguria; Luciano Sona and Mauro Chieregati, Les Clochards, Verona; Arnold Eric Wong and Debbie Zachareas, Bacar Restaurant, San Francisco, California.

Hosts: Roberta Berni, Azienda di Promozione Turistica, Florence; Rita Compagnoni, Sestre Levante, Liguria; Federica Crocetta and Antonio Rosati, Le Querce, Carpegna, Marche; Rosanna Faggiani and Corrado de Luca, Marta, Lake Bolsena, Lazio; Janina Mathiasz, Veronafiere/ Vinitaly, Verona; Alison and Stephen Rudgard, Rome.

Sources: Richard Baudains and Giles Watson, Friuli; Alessandra Bottaro, Italian Trade Commission, London; Consorzio Tutela Vini Valdadige, Verona; Consorzio Tutela Montasio, Udine, Friuli; Consorzio Formaggio Monte Veronese, Verona; Consorzio Tutela Extravergine d’Oliva Garda, Bardolinio, Verona; Consorzio Tutela Vini Valpolicella, San Floriano, Verona; Mary Jane Cryan, Vetralla, Lazio; Paola Frabetti, Unione Camere Regione Emilia-Romagna, Bologna; David Gleave MW, Liberty Wines, London; Matt Kramer in Venice; Cliff Nicholson, London; Dacotah Renneau, London; Ursula Thurner, Florence.

Special thanks for knowledge, help, contacts, and optimism to Francesca Blench, Grand Heritage International, Varallo, Tuscany; esteemed colleague Michele Shah, Arezzo, Tuscany; and Stephen Hobley, Decanter magazine’s ambassador-at-large to Italy. Back in the mists of time, Doreen Schmid and Darrell Corti helped propel me in this direction, and I can never thank them enough.

Introduction

Italian Wine: The New Renaissance

More than five hundred years ago, Italy lifted itself and Europe out of the long, gloomy funk of the Middle Ages with the brightly illuminating sunshine of the Renaissance, a long-lasting, generous gift that went far beyond notions of art and beauty. It may have been dented and smudged from time to time, but the ideal of perspective, of harmony and balance is still with us. Italy has been knocked around since then, too, but it’s still standing, and still exporting good ideas. The newest one, which may seem odd because the Italians have been at it for more than four thousand years, is wine. But this is modern Italian wine, another renaissance in the making, a considerable sensual and intellectual liberation from another kind of gloomy funk, a dull global swamp of increasingly standardized wine, a potentially joyless, conformist trend threatening to pull down a lot of other ideals, gastronomic and otherwise. The Italian winemakers who are exuberantly going their own way have provided us another generous gift, ours for the taking here and now, no strings attached, right on the end of our corkscrews.

When the ancient Greeks conquered southern Italy, they called it Enotria, the land of wine, for the grapevines that grew there in wild profusion. The Greeks organized things a bit better, and taught the locals how to cultivate vineyards, and then the Romans elevated winemaking to something of an art. Roman armies took vine cuttings and seeds with them as they conquered much of the rest of Europe, planting vineyards wherever they went (wine was often safer than the local water, but they also believed in its medicinal properties). When the barbarians invaded Italy and crushed much of it into the Dark Ages, the outposts of the former empire, especially France and Germany, pressed on.

Eventually, the cycle came around again and Italy’s wines flourished alongside the rise of spectacular gastronomy, lubricated the Renaissance, and even created fortunes, as ships were built to carry wine to Belgium, Germany, and England (the British paid luxury prices for what was then known as Florence red, a precursor to Chianti, and Vernaccia, then slightly sweet and high in alcohol). Italy’s European neighbors carried out the subsequent round of invasions over the next couple of hundred years, actions not always so devastating to the local culture.

One of the things that climbed through the window of opportunity between wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the produce of the New World: tomatoes, potatoes, turkeys, chocolate, peppers, vanilla, sugar, and corn. Europeans took some of them into the kitchen, usually cautiously; Italians took them all and, with the ingenuity they still display, transformed them into Italian cuisine.

In 1861, Italy became a unified nation rather than a jigsaw puzzle of republics, dukedoms, principalities, city-states, and protectorates. For a brief time, Florence was the capital of Italy, and the creator of the formula for blending Chianti, Baron Ricasoli, was prime minister. With stability and prosperity, wine dynasties began on other great estates. Within a decade, Italy’s wine production doubled, corks began to be used widely in bottles, and the modern era began.

The estate system continued for nearly a hundred years. In the end, it was flawed, creating not only problems it took another generation to solve, but also a confused image for Italian wine. The system had been based on sharecroppers working the farms and living on a percentage of the crops they raised—an incentive to quantity, not quality, on many estates where the landowners were more interested in cash than pride. The surpluses, and inconsistent wine, continued until the 1960s, when the estates were broken up. The next generation took over in a more businesslike way, and Italy’s first set of national wine laws was written, establishing controlled denominations of origin (DOC) and the beginning of standards for vineyards and winemaking.

Change was erratic and slow, the laws were rewritten several times, and expanding exports brought in the rest of the world, sometimes with uncomfortable nontraditional ideas. There were generational shifts, with the winemakers’ children going off to work for a season in wineries in the Napa Valley or Bordeaux and returning bursting with ideas for expensive modernization, new wine blends, and promotional gimmicks. Bureaucrats from the European Union changed the rules, not always for the better. Through it all, sometimes because of this push and pull, sometimes despite it, Italian wine was steadily evolving. Italy had the soil and sunshine and great grapes, and now money, sophistication, and technology began to complete the equation. In 1988, Italian wine production finally began to decrease, as the Italians, and the rest of us, began drinking less, but better. The trend has continued.

Matching Italian Wine and Food

When it comes to Italian wine and food, the rules are the same as with any other cuisine: what gives pleasure? In a way, the whole idea is even easier, as the wine and food have grown up together for centuries. Obviously, the best way to decide about good matches is simply to taste, and decide what you like (but try everything). There are some differences between some Italian wines and the other wines of the world, however, which is less of a problem than an opportunity.

White wines aren’t as highly regarded in Italy as they are elsewhere around the globe. Most of the ones from Italian grapes are fairly subtle, not blockbusters. Most of them go well enough with food, just not with big, richly flavored food, and they are at least always pleasant, sometimes a lot more. New technology, especially cold fermentation in stainless-steel tanks, has enabled more flavor to be teased out of them, and when the wines are blended, rather than from a single grape, the blends are getting more sophisticated. Indeed, very often these modern Italian whites are more flavorful because of the virtues several grapes bring to the party: one for aroma, another for crisp acidity, a third for body.

There are, increasingly, wines made from grapes that originated in France, especially Chardonnay, a relative newcomer among the whites. A global economy creates all sorts of standardized products, including wine, and Italy unfortunately has no shortage of Chardonnays that are so swathed in oak that they taste of wood and butterscotch and tropical fruit, just like the Chardonnays of California and Australia. This is what is known as the international style, made in many countries. If they’re what you fancy, you’ll fancy them. On the other hand, there are some interesting, more subtle Chardonnay blends with native Italian grapes, especially from Sicily, that have some Italian character and are worth trying. The popular Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc are a different story. Introduced in Italy in the nineteenth century, they seem to have gone native, at least acquiring a benign Italian character all their own.

Reds are often glorious, with supple, sinewy verve and bite, often full bodied and elegant, but Italy is also becoming the last refuge of something the world badly needs: light, refreshing red wine that tastes of the grape that made it and the land it comes from, rather than of the oak barrel in which it was aged—wine that doesn’t tire out your palate or make your gums ache. Once again, there is no shortage of bold Cabernet Sauvignons and musclebound Merlots in the international blockbuster style, but few other countries have the same sort of range of unique, fascinating red wines, from light and cheery Valpolicella up through savory middleweights like Dolcetto, Negroamaro, Nero d’Avola, and Barbera, to the seriousness of Chianti, Barolo, and Aglianico, and that’s only half the story. There are other grapes, and an abundance of blends, in delicious profusion.

Red or white, those international-style wines don’t pair as well with Italian or even Italian-style food as Italian wines do. They’re too overbearing, not accommodating enough to be good partners. Taking charge is one thing for a police officer or a general, but it’s another for a wine.

The French have a useful term for the individualism of specific places: they speak, especially with regard to agriculture, of terroir. Literally, it means soil, with a secondary definition of homeland, but when it comes to wine and food, it’s defined as the ecology of a place—the soil, the rainfall and sunshine, temperature patterns, which way the wind blows, and anything else that contributes to the environmental bundle, especially anything that shapes the nature of the crop. Grapes grow in temperate zones all over the world because they’re adaptable, and when they get themselves sorted out in a particular terroir (there really is no right word in Italian or English), they reflect that place in their flavors. Sangiovese from Tuscany, the basis of Chianti, tastes different from Sangiovese from Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, or any of the other places it thrives. Pinot Grigio has as many nuances as the hillsides it grows on. The wines also fit in with the cuisine of the place, as they’re sharing the terroir with the fruits and vegetables that are cultivated there. They’ve grown up together, after all. The neighborhood is the context.

By now, nearly everybody knows that Italian food isn’t all tomato sauce and garlic and pasta, that it can be subtle, stylish, inventive, and complex. Regionality still rules, and there’s a strong sense of tradition, so that as the local cuisines have evolved, the local wines have too, in step, as partners. In this book, I’ve selected food to match the wines on that basis, with ideas and recipes either from local chefs, cooking teachers, winemakers, or home cooks I’ve talked with, or, in a few cases, modern adaptations of classic regional dishes. The aim was always harmony and balance of food and wine. In some instances, I’ve indicated good matches with either white or red wines for the same foods. I couldn’t have done that with the wines of most other countries, which simply aren’t as versatile. The best Italian cuisine has a bit of modesty, even when it’s showing off. The land of the beautiful gesture, la bella figura, has a sense of proportion.

About This Book

The recipes in this book are organized geographically, in six sections (plus dessert), from west to