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Pam Vallone

     Italy evokes so many images in the minds of countless visitors past, present and future.  To me it has always been the food.  From my very first bite of Italian food I knew there was something special about what I was eating.

     It was not until many years and many meals later I made my way to a lovely off road osteria in Castellina in Chianti where I discovered the true essence of Italian cooking…less is more.  An osteria in Italy is loosely translated as "grandmothers cooking".  When confronted with a choice between a ristorante, trattoria or osteria, choose the osteria for simple recipes brimming with flavor and lovingly passed down from generation to generation.  Italian grandmothers know what the rest of us have only tasted in Italy…it takes only a few of the finest ingredients cooked with love to produce food with flavors as complex as life itself.  Generally osterias and Italian grandmothers (unless related) are unwilling to divulge the secrets of family recipes.     

     So on my trip to Chianti this fall, Gira! arranged for a chef to come our villa and teach us how to cook--osteria style.  After a day touring the hill towns of Chianti we came back to our villa to meet Francesca and begin our cooking odyssey.

     Francesa is the chef at a famous Enoteca (wine bar) in Florence.  Married with children she spent 18 years in New Zealand perfecting her glorious talents in the kitchen.  It was especially fortunate for us to have Francesca who spoke English fluently, since our group was limited to a vocabulary of ten words in Italian.  Francesca arrived with four bottles of wine from the Chianti region and one small bag of ingredients.  We arranged our menu in advance via e-mail, so when we saw the modest amount of ingredients we wondered how we would create a meal of crostini, pasta, two sauces and dessert.

     Francesca showed us the way.  Our first course, Crostino was chicken liver paste on toasted bread rounds otherwise known as crostini.  A few ingredients were sautéed in olive oil followed by the addition of chicken livers, wine, salt, pepper and fresh sage.  This mixture was cooked down and then anchovy paste and chopped capers were added to cook for a few more minutes.  When the mixture was cooled it was spread on the bread and devoured while we began the next dishes, Cirrettiera (spicy tomato sauce) and Funghi (mushroom sauce).  Within minutes ingredients were simmering in separate pots and mouth-watering aromas filled the kitchen.  Throughout the process we learned a few Italian tips, like the secret to sweet tomato sauce is not sugar, but rather peeled plum tomatoes with the seeds taken out and the spicy pungency of garlic remains when added after the sauce is cooked down and taken off the fire.  After we finished the sauces they were covered and set aside to await tossing with fresh pasta.

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