Brian St. Pierre - 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.

TX723. S695 2005

641.5945DC22

2004023249

DESIGNED BY RICK RAWLINS/WORK

PROP STYLING BY NGOC MINH NGO

FOOD STYLING BY SUSIE THEODOROU

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For my son Patrick, better late than never,
never too late.

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 deFrescobaldi, 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, LAsino dOro, Orvieto; Franco and Melly Solari, C 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 dOliva 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 magazines 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.

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 its 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.