Gabriele Corcos - Extra Virgin: Recipes & Love from Our Tuscan Kitchen

Copyright 2014 by Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos
Photographs copyright 2014 by Eric Wolfinger

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

COOKING CHANNEL and associated logos and EXTRA VIRGIN are trademarks of COOKING CHANNEL, LLC, and are used under license.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mazar, Debi.
Extra virgin : recipes & love from our Tuscan kitchen / Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos; photographs by Eric Wolfinger. First edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Cooking, ItalianTuscan style. I. Corcos, Gabriele. II. Title.
TX723.2.T86M398 2014
641.59455dc23 2013032506

ISBN 978-0-385-34605-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-34606-1

Book and jacket design by Jan Derevjanik
Jacket photography by Eric Wolfinger

All photographs are by Eric Wolfinger with the exception of: by David Lang.
Photographs courtesy of the authors: .
Cooking Channel photographs on are provided courtesy of Cooking Channel, LLC. 2011 Cooking Channel, LLC.
Cooking Channel photographs on are provided courtesy of Cooking Channel, LLC. 2012 Cooking Channel, LLC.

First Edition

v3.1

INTRODUCTION

DA FIRENZE IN AMERICA

A RECIPE FOR LOVE, LIFE, AND FAMILY

DEBI: I grew up with a deep love for food, thanks mostly to a grandmother who cooked well and could win over anybody with her braciole. But it was also because of that truly unique food upbringing that a lot of New Yorkers talk about, where your street could be a meeting place not just for people, but for aromas from seemingly all corners of the earth. There would be fried chicken from one window, spicy island dishes from another, and down the block something garlicky and peppery wafting out of the Italians houses. And all that might be in the air while I was thinking about the dinner I was about to have in Chinatown!

When I was eight years old, my mother moved us to Saugerties in the Catskills area of upstate New York and essentially became a hippie. She got into gardeninggrowing corn, zucchini, tomatoes, and basiland taught herself how to cook, making delicious meals, and baking bread and pies. It was a bit of a culture shock for a young girl with the excitement of city streets in her blood, but it opened my eyes in the best way possible to good, fresh, locally grown food. We had neighbors in Woodstock who were from Northern Italy, and it was at their house that I had my first taste of freshly made pasta, which was always hanging over drying racks and draped over chairs around their house. Nothing against my grandmothers heavy, delicious Sicilian-style dishes, but this was something special, and different.

Id always adored Italian cuisine and its well-honed use of ingredients that have been cultivated and enjoyed for centuries. But meeting and falling for Gabriele, I discovered how much great food also comes from a desire to feed the ones you love. Id always thought I would have to win over a man with my own cooking. I remember plenty of times Id go to all this trouble to cook for a guy whod show up late, if at all, and whod never appreciate the time and effort I put into a meal. At the very least, I had my dinner parties, which had become popular gatherings for my friends. But here was this handsome Florentine, passionate about life, art, history, and food, who not only wanted to cook FOR me, but loved impressing me with the vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and meats of his country, region, and family. Hot, right? Then he took me to his hometown of Fiesole in the hills above Florence, to the beautiful land where his family had lived for generations, and the sense of history was overwhelming. I have a deep fondness for ancient cultures and strong traditions. Gabriele showed me the fruit trees, the wild herbs, and the rustic sweep of it all, and I fell for him all over again.

Ill be honestmerging our refrigerators involved some negotiation at first, mostly when it came to what he thought about some of my food staples. I had good extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs, quality ingredients for a sauce. But one look at my rice milk, tofu, and bean sprouts, and Gabriele had to control his impulse to take over our kitchen. I would come home exhausted from shooting a TV series, too tired to think about much of anything except learning lines for the next day, and Id find that my husband had whipped up a dish inspired by his scouring the local farmers markets. Then I understood what an act of love it is to provide a simple, fresh, and delicious meal for your amore . I may have occasionally had my head in the plate, I was so freakin tired, but you would have seen a smile as my face fell forward!

As our beautiful daughters, Evelina and Giulia, came into the picture, and since Gabriele and I decided to turn our kitchen-inspired happiness into a website to share our joys of traditional Tuscan cooking, our passion for the flavors of my husbands land has only grown. Our television show has been another outlet for what were trying to convey. But theres no substitute for this: a book with easy-to-make, joyful meals from our heart and soul.

So please use this book. Dog-ear the pages. Get sauce on it. Let a spray of olive oil from a vigorous drizzle mark its pages. Write your favorite notesyour own inspirationsin the margins. Let the love we put into these recipes become a part of your home. Your family will thank you, the friends you cook for will look at you in a new light, and maybe that special someone you hope to woo will find that decision about you a little easier to make! We crave the spice and sweetness of life after all, and as Ive learned from loving Gabriele, delicious food made from great ingredients is the means to achieve it.