After attending culinary school in NYC, I was yearning for a more hands-on education in Italian cooking. So I packed my bags for an adventure living and cooking through five different regions of Italy.
Recently I returned to Tuscany where it all began 30 years ago: Restaurant Vipore in a small town near Lucca, working with Chef Cesare Casalle, now a well-known NYC-based chef. Here, we cooked wild game over an open fire, used fresh herbs and featured local pastas. People from all over the world came to visit the restaurant.
Flash forward to my recent visit to the Tuscan coast, where my wife and I were amazed to be surrounded by lush chestnut, olive and fig trees. All these years later, it finally occurred to me why Cesare favored chestnut flour and seasoned everything with rosemary. There is nothing quite like local ingredients found in your backyard.
Going back to my time working in Tuscany, I also worked outside Florence at Da Delfina, a restaurant that I hear so many famous US chefs reference. Here I made gnocchi obsessively and turned so many artichokes my hands were raw. I learned how to make true ribollita and properly cook cannellini beans and grew my love for extra virgin olive oil.
Another stop was in Piedmont at Ristorante San Marco in October – a perfect time for their famous white truffles and porcini mushrooms. I learned to make plin ravioli (plin is the local dialect for pinch) and was lucky enough to go on a truffle hunt. (Ironically, my 2-year old dog Barbuto is a Lagotto Romagnolo, a breed used to hunt truffles today in Emilia Romagna!)
At the Michelin-star restaurant, Albergo del Sole, I was introduced to the foods of Emilia Romagna and Lombardy by Franco Colombani, the Godfather of Italian culinary traditions. Pasta, Parmesan cheese, prosciutto, ragu, pumpkin ravioli, bollito misto among other specialties. Franco taught me the historical significance of traditional dishes, where they originated and why they were created. For example, he explained that they did not use pork casing for any sausages because the Jews who migrated to that area did not eat pork. They evolved by using goose necks as the casing…resulting in me stuffing many goose necks with a non-pork stuffing and cooking it like a sausage. Ingenuity at its finest.
These are experiences I’ll treasure forever. I would encourage anyone interested in a culinary career to immerse themselves in a culture their passionate about and to get hands-on experience. While it might not always be luxurious, it will create impressions and relationships that last a lifetime.
